Two years ago, Greentech Media asked if utilities could rebuild trust with customers. According to a recent study by Accenture, it appears that it hasn't happened yet.

Less than one-fourth of consumers trust their utility, 9 percent below last year and the lowest figure since Accenture began the annual survey four years ago. Globally, customer satisfaction also dropped 12 percentage points to 47 percent in the past year alone.

The result is that people are increasingly looking past the utility for energy-related services. Home services providers, security companies and commercial retailers are all taking a piece of what could be new revenue streams for utilities. More than 70 percent of consumers surveyed by Accenture said they would consider a provider other than the utility for energy services if it were available.

“Utilities need to consider radically rethinking their customer satisfaction investments with a targeted approach to simplifying the consumer energy experience, addressing the concerns of dissatisfied consumers and closing the expectation gap,” said Greg Guthridge, managing director for Accenture Energy Consumer Services, in a statement. Increasingly, consumer engagement cannot just be a panel topic at smart grid conferences, but instead must become a core undertaking for utilities.

In the next few years, utilities will not only have to build out those platforms while also maintaining and upgrading an aging electrical grid, but also do it all while providing a level of customer service many have never had to provide before.

“Many utilities are at an inflection point at which they should redefine their role in consumers’ lives and refocus on building a base of trust,” said Guthridge. “The first step is making interactions simple, and in particular, getting the basics right the first time."

Merger benefits increased significantly from '11 to '12 to '13. As I said, Gary's going to speak more to that, but this is the pretax earnings impact associated with those and you'll see that, that's in excess of $1 billion.

We're also targeting O&M reductions beyond the synergies of between $75 million and $175 million in 2012 and 2013. We expect asset sales in the range of $800 million to $900 million per year, and we expect to reduce debt by $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion over this time period.

...we continue to look for opportunities to reduce O&M. I just want to give you one, very quick example, of what we're doing on the O&M side.

We closed the transaction February 28 of last year. There are roughly 75 major applications that have to get integrated between the 2 companies. For some of the operating savings to occur, those systems have to be integrated. I'm pleased to say that our IT folks are basically going to integrate all of those applications in record time, and they'll make their cut-over shortly. They've had 5 test runs, so you'll see that some of the synergy has been accelerated and some of the synergies too, become, as we integrate our systems. And we're quite pleased with where we are. We'll continue to look for incremental costs. It's kind of our nature. But we're not going to do anything simply for a short-term benefit that puts the company at a longer-term risk. That's just not something we are going to do. Everything we are doing is to place FirstEnergy in the best possible forward position.

U.S. power company FirstEnergy Corp said Monday there were no evacuations at or around the Perry nuclear power plant in Ohio after the company shut the plant to fix a coolant leak that was contained within the plant, company spokeswoman Jennifer Young told Reuters.

In a report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) the company said it shut the reactor due to a small reactor coolant leak on a recirculation flow control valve vent line.

Young said the event caused no harm to plant workers or the public and radiation did not leak out of the plant.

Signatories to this brief raise a number of challenges to the Orders. Several object that the transmission-planning mandate exceeds FERC’s statutory authority, which they argue is limited to encouraging, not requiring, coordinated planning. Various petitioners argue that FERC’s Orders are arbitrary and capricious because they are aimed, not at correcting specific abuses or unreasonable existing rates, but at addressing what FERC describes as the “theoretical threat” that existing planning arrangements might not produce a “more efficient and cost-effective” transmission system. Several petitioners object that mandating consideration in planning processes of transmission needs driven by myriad federal, state, and local public-policy requirements violates the FPA by making the needs of load-serving entities (e.g., public utilities) an optional consideration and is arbitrary and capricious. Some petitioners object that the cost-allocation mandate exceeds FERC’s statutory authority by allowing and directing allocation of transmission costs to entities having no customer or contractual relationship with the transmission provider.
Several petitioners argue that FERC lacks authority to order public utilities to remove exclusive construction rights from their tariffs and to adopt mechanisms allowing third parties to develop the transmission facilities the utilities need to satisfy their service requirements. These petitioners argue that FERC’s actions reduce the efficiencies inherent in vertical integration and arbitrarily interfere with their public-service obligations to maintain reliable service. Some petitioners also challenge the Orders for infringing upon the authority reserved to the States as the States, not FERC, regulate transmission development. Non-jurisdictional utility customers contest FERC’s authority to expand the reciprocal-service condition on their receipt of transmission service to include the Orders’ planning and cost- allocation mandates. An association of jurisdictional utilities objects that FERC’s refusal to invoke FPA section 211A to impose the Orders’ mandates on non- jurisdictional utilities was arbitrary. These and several other challenges to the Orders are discussed in the issue-specific briefs.

The Orders, they noted, were based, not on evidence of specific problems, but on FERC’s determination that “inadequate transmission planning and cost allocation requirements may be impeding the development of beneficial transmission lines,” and that the Orders “could” or “may” identify transmission solutions that “meet the needs of a transmission planning region more efficiently or cost-effectively.”