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

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

Operating in the Midwest

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Welcome to Chicago!

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Integrys Energy Group, Inc.

Regulated Electric Regulated Natural Gas Electric Transmission Investment Nonregulated Holding Company and Other

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Regulated Operations

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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

• f 100% retail sales.

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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

• f Chicago.

– Natural gas revenues are comprised

• f 100% retail sales.

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Operating in the Midwest

• Challenges & Opportunities

– Rate Cases – Cost Management – Delivering Customer Value

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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

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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

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Main Replacement Project

• Challenges

– Inside meters

• Contacting and scheduling customer

visits

– Digging and reconstruction in neighborhoods, and in the middle

• f the City

– Coordinating with Chicago’s sewer and water departments

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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Welcome

Enjoy your stay – have fun!