PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PECO President and CEO Craig L. Adams will participate in a CEO roundtable at the White House, hosted today by Presidential Science Advisor Dr. John P. Holdren and U. S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, which will focus on the growing visibility of the White House-inspired, industry-led Green Button initiative.
The Green Button initiative is a national effort to empower consumers to take control of their energy bills by making energy data available to customers in a consumer-friendly and computer-friendly format. Utilities participating in the Green Button initiative will allow electricity customers to download their own detailed energy usage information in a common, easy-to-use electronic format through secure web portals in order to reduce their usage and costs. Customers can also provide this information to energy suppliers and other energy companies in order to participate in programs that can further reduce their energy costs.
At today’s White House meeting, Adams will join nine other utility leaders, including the CEOs of sister Exelon Companies ComEd, based in Chicago, Illinois, and BGE, based in Baltimore, Maryland.
“We plan to launch this new consumer-friendly feature on our website in 2013, providing customers with access to important energy consumption data,” said Adams. “We will add this energy efficiency tool to our PECO Smart Ideas toolbox, which empowers customers to better understand how to manage and save both energy and money.”
In October 2009, PECO was one of six utilities nationwide that was awarded a $200 million federal stimulus grant in support of new metering technology. Altogether, PECO has made a $650 million technology investment – one of the largest in the company’s more than 100-year history – to help bring its infrastructure to the next level, enabling PECO to provide electric service more reliably and efficiently and provide future new products and services to our customers.
Work is underway at PECO to upgrade metering technology to all of its 1.6 million electric customers during the next 10 years.
PECO plans to incorporate the Green Button initiative into its online tools so that customers can view their information in the same format as customers of participating utilities and energy companies across the country.
The Green Button initiative is based on a consensus industry technical standard that was facilitated through a public-private partnership – the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, with the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology serving as the lead Federal entity. The initiative has been gaining momentum across the country since it was introduced last fall.
“Providing consumers with easy access to data on their energy consumption can help give them the tools they need to make informed decisions about their energy use,” Secretary Chu has said. “Developing applications and services to help consumers understand and control their energy use is a field ripe for American innovation.”
Based in Philadelphia, PECO is an electric and natural gas utility subsidiary of Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC). PECO serves 1.6 million electric and 494,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and employs about 2,400 people in the region. PECO delivered 82.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 38.1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2011. Founded in 1881, PECO is one of the Greater Philadelphia Region's most active corporate citizens, providing leadership, volunteer and financial support to numerous arts and culture, education, environmental, economic development and community programs and organizations.
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