Operating in the Midwest Larry Szumski Vice President, Customer - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Operating in the Midwest Larry Szumski – Vice President, Customer Relations Integrys Energy Group/Peoples Gas & North Shore Gas June 12, 2013

Welcome to Chicago! 2

Integrys Energy Group, Inc. Electric Holding Regulated Regulated Natural Gas Transmission Nonregulated Company Electric Investment and Other * 3

Regulated Operations 4

Illinois Regulated Operations  Business – Established in 1900 (acquired by Integrys Energy Group in 2007). – Regulated natural gas utility. – 161 employees.  Market – Serves approximately 158,000 residential, commercial, and industrial retail sales and transportation customers located in 54 communities within the northern suburbs of Chicago. – Natural gas revenues are comprised of 100% retail sales. 5

Illinois Regulated Operations  Business – Established in 1855 (acquired by Integrys Energy Group in 2007). – Regulated natural gas utility. – 1,183 employees.  Market – Serves approximately 829,000 residential, commercial, and industrial retail sales and transportation customers in the city of Chicago. – Natural gas revenues are comprised of 100% retail sales. 6

Operating in the Midwest  Challenges & Opportunities – Rate Cases – Cost Management – Delivering Customer Value 7

Rate Cases  In the process of filing or working through rate cases for each of our six utilities.  For Peoples Gas, we are working to get a stable rate recovery for our accelerated main replacement project. – ICC ruling on funding overturned – Now taking a legislative approach to secure funding  All while settling last year’s rate case. – Required to file again in 2014 8

Main Replacement Project Peoples Gas Pipeline Facilities – 4,460 miles of distribution and transmission lines – 40% of those lines are cast iron and 27% are plastic – 11 natural gas distribution and transmission gate stations – 509,000 natural gas lateral services 9

Main Replacement Project  Challenges – Inside meters • Contacting and scheduling customer visits – Digging and reconstruction in neighborhoods, and in the middle of the City – Coordinating with Chicago’s sewer and water departments 10

Main Replacement Project  Successes – Employment for nearly one thousand contractors and other workers – Safety record of employees and contractors – Prior to 2011, average amount of pipe replaced was 15 to 20 miles • Replaced nearly 300 miles in past three years 11

Cost Management  ICE (Integrys Customer Experience) Project – Consolidate three billing systems to one – Provide a consistent and standardized customer experience across all six companies • Billing and payment processes • Credit & collections • Self-service and call center experiences • Field operations (service orders/meter records) • Communications – Major resource commitment from several departments – Capture cost savings 12

Delivering Customer Value - Integrys  New responsive designed web sites (4 of 6 sites) – Mobile/tablet friendly – Quick access to most often used services • View my account, pay my bill, report an outage – Check out www.wisconsinpublicservice.com – Peoples Gas/North Shore Gas in the works  Social media – Slowly integrating based on business needs – Need to implement customer service response process – Chicago customers use various channels (need for monitoring) 13

Delivering Customer Value – Peoples Gas/North Shore Gas  Getting the word out – Frequency of messages in a crowded/expensive market like Chicago  Involvement in the community – Little player in a big corporate setting  New Conservation programs – New administrator – Learning curve in market – Partner with other Illinois utilities 14

Welcome Enjoy your stay – have fun! 15