POWERGRAMS

4 Five of the Top 20 ideas in the SO Prize competition were submitted by Alabama Power employees and their co-workers. Voting for the Top 5 opened Sept. 8 and continues through the end of the month. Here's an abbreviated look at each of Alabama Power's best ideas, as voted by employees systemwide and a panel of judges: ALWAYS ON – BEYOND 99% RELIABILITY WITH STANDBY GENERATION Team leader: Shiloh Lay Team: Howard Smith, Marie Thompson, Maria Burke, Liza Philpot, Dino Sfakianos, Nick Whatley, Sandra McCain, David Brand, Mike Marler, Larry Evans The public already looks to the power company as the energy expert, so why not provide backup generation during outages ourselves instead of sending customers to other providers? That was the reasoning behind the idea Lay, project manager in Resource Planning and Operations, and his team submitted for the SO Prize that made the Top 20 cut. "It seems to be a good fit for us," Lay said. "People look to us as the energy experts." In addition to creating a new business line for Southern Company, getting into standby generation could benefit residential, commercial and industrial customers during outages. Lay said it would also create a dependable, safe source for backup generation for customers. Lay can envision entire neighborhoods, office parks or large industrial plants having a single standby generation unit to serve several customers. There could even be ways to incorporate solar and microwave technology, he said. "This would meet a need the customers have and I believe many would prefer receiving from us," Lay said. MAKING SMART METERS SMARTER: UNLEASH THE POWER OF AMI Team leader: Derl Rhoades Team: Susan Gamble, Jesalyn McCurry Today's meters are smart. But Rhoades and his team believe the power of meters is yet untapped. Their idea: Add a network of communication towers to the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system that can collect near real-time customer data. Instead of gathering a customer's kilowatt-hour usage four times daily, the powerful communication infrastructure would send data at five-minute intervals, allowing the company to gauge the impact of even the smallest electrical items. "Our idea, collecting real-time data, is a gateway to many of the other SO Prize ideas," said Rhoades, Corporate Headquarters System Development and Support manager. "Since Southern Company began using the AMI system, we have been able to get a limited amount of customer data. Let's leverage our investment in AMI to get vast amounts of data to help us better understand how our customers use energy and how our own distribution system operates." The benefits would include target marketing to customers, pricing and rate design, improving power quality, detecting theft on the distribution system and providing information about electricity usage patterns among individual customers. "Employee comments on the SO Prize site prove that other employees value its potential to help us run our business in the future," Rhoades said. soConneCted Team leader: James Young Team: Nick Sellers, John Smola, George Stegall, Noel Black, Jeanne Wolak, Stoney Burke, Hannah Flint, Todd Perkins, Tom Schmaeling Anyone in business knows it's important to maintain "stickiness" with customers: Stick with the customer, and they'll stick with you. "We want to maintain relationships as the customer's trusted energy source, strengthening the relationship and developing it even more, defending against groups who want to replace us as an energy supplier," said Financial Analyst Young, Regulatory Planning. The SoConnected team assessed how employees can better understand what customers want, and value, about their electric products and services, to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and increase revenues. The idea: Use existing customer information at the fundamental level and leverage established unregulated business units to strengthen Southern operating companies as the customer's single, trusted source for electric products and services. Enhancing customer satisfaction strategies by harvesting our big data to model satisfaction at the customer level will be used to specifically cater offerings, Young said. "We want to be proactive and predictive and respond to the needs of our individual customers, to engage them as individuals and raise satisfaction to new heights," said Government Affairs Director Noel Black, Washington, D.C. so Communities Team leader: Aaron Latham Team: John Hudson, Nick Sellers, Tony Smoke, Anthony Oni, James Young The idea behind SO Communities is to make money out of SO Prize heading into stretch INNOVATION Front – McCain, Brand, Philpot, Burke, Marler, Lay. Back – Whatley, Kelley, Thompson, Smith, Sfakianos Top – Smola, Schmaeling, Stegall, Young, Sellers, Perkins Bottom – Burke, Wolak, Flint, Black McCurry, Rhoades, Gamble

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