It’s no secret that public power marketers are working with limited resources, especially compared to larger Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs). Even still, you have customers to connect with, goals to meet and important information to share.
How is your municipal utility keeping up with the never-ending to-do list? How are you maximizing your time, energy and resources?
Just know: You’re not alone.
Discover how four leading public power utilities work smarter, not harder to achieve their marketing goals. Hear from Elk River Municipal Utilities, Conway Corporation, Westfield Gas & Electric and Mason County PUD #3 about their insights, tips and advice for achieving impressive results, even with a small marketing team.
Questline Digital’s whitepaper explores:
- Strategies for effectively using and prioritizing marketing resources
- Insights into community partnerships that drive education and engagement
- Recommendations for creating memorable marketing initiatives
And more!
CHICAGO, March 13, 2025 – S&C Electric Company, a leading innovator of resilient grid technology, announced today a combined solution featuring S&C’s EdgeRestore System and Ubicquia’s UbiGrid DTM+. This integrated package allows utilities to add communications and leverage analytics as they deploy S&C’s EdgeRestore system.
Combining EdgeRestore System’s intelligence and automation with the grid visibility of UbiGrid DTM+ allows utilities to monitor critical restoration operations and other device statuses, providing greater situational awareness and predictive analytics for enhanced system reliability and more efficient fault responses.
“S&C continues to drive intelligence and action for resilient power distribution by integrating cost-effective visibility and communication solutions into our portfolio. Situational awareness and actionable information help customers improve reliability, reduce outages, and optimize operations,” said Joseph Matamoros, Chief Product Development Officer of S&C Electric Company. “S&C’s approach allows customers to add visibility where needed through a simple integration between UbiGrid DTM+ and EdgeRestore.”
Delivering Underground Grid Resilience
S&C’s EdgeRestore system is a first-in-the-world solution that modernizes the last mile of underground power distribution. When a fault occurs on an underground residential loop, the EdgeRestore system automatically locates and isolates the fault and reroutes power from an alternate source—all within 60 seconds. When paired with Ubicquia’s UbiGrid® DTM+, which independently monitors the underground network to provide fault information and device health status, the solution delivers utilities 24/7 visibility and communication flexibility for monitoring, reporting, analyzing, and responding to faults on underground distribution circuits.
"This collaboration with S&C is a game-changer for underground circuits. This bundled solution delivers insights beyond algorithms, incorporating extensive field testing and collaboration with storm response and asset management experts,” said Dave Herlong, Chief Operating Officer of Ubicquia. “By integrating real-world expertise, we enhance operational efficiency and service reliability, empowering utilities and municipalities to respond swiftly to emergencies, minimize storm impacts, and reduce outage durations.”
To enhance grid infrastructure visibility features now or in the future, please get in touch with an S&C sales representative or visit https://www.sandc.com/edgerestore.
Read the full white paper here.
Managing customer payments is becoming increasingly complex in the rapidly evolving Energy and Utility (E&U) sector. Economic uncertainties, coupled with higher unemployment rates, have resulted in escalating customer defaults. According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), one in six US households is behind on their energy bills. By December 2023, the national arrears reached a record USD 20.3 Billion, up from USD 17.7 Billion earlier in the year. In the UK, regulatory bodies are taking proactive steps, including raising the energy price cap to safeguard suppliers from financial collapse.
E&U providers are additionally challenged by stringent consumer protection regulations designed to minimize environmental impact, protect vulnerable customers and ensure safety compliance. These challenges are compounded by certain customer segments exploiting loopholes in E&U processes, leading to increased defaults and revenue losses.
In this constrained environment, how can E&U companies mitigate bad debt write-offs? This paper outlines a three-pillared framework leverages predictive analytics, Generative AI (Gen AI), speech analytics and income-qualified customer strategies to enhance collections, minimize bad debts and foster customer loyalty.
Seguin, Texas, is an hour northeast of San Antonio and has just over 30,000 residents. The City of Seguin serves the community with electric, water, and wastewater utilities. Smart grid solutions manager John Saldana manages geographic information system (GIS) maps for the electric and water utility departments.
“If anyone needs a map for internal, nonpublic information to support utility infrastructure projects—whether it’s electric, water, or sewer—that comes from us,” Saldana said. “We are the [go-between] between utilities and the city, so we support all of their technology needs beyond the traditional IT department.”
Seguin is experiencing solid growth as it expands toward neighboring New Braunfels, and vice versa. As farmland between the cities is developed, demand for municipal utilities is rising.
Challenge
The city wanted to accurately map existing assets prior to development to avoid construction hits. Staff also wanted to map all new construction, ensuring that field crews could easily service legacy and new assets in the new grid in the future.
“The assets are all very close in proximity to each other, so it’s important that we have the best accuracy we can,” Saldana said.
To collect location data with high accuracy, Saldana deployed four Arrow Gold Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers from Esri partner Eos Positioning Systems. The Arrow Gold receiver connects to a base station that provides real-time kinematic (RTK) corrections, allowing crews to stream survey-grade locations into ArcGIS Field Maps using iPad devices.
A man stands outside wearing a yellow visibility vest and uses surveying equipment attached to a wooden poleCity of Seguin smart grid solutions manager John Saldana maps a temporary electric meter in the Hannah Heights neighborhood. To capture the data, he’s using ArcGIS Field Maps on an iPad device, connected to an Arrow Gold GNSS receiver receiving real-time kinematic (RTK) corrections from the city’s Arrow Gold base station. Assets like these can often be close to each other, creating a need for survey-grade accuracy in staff’s mobile maps.
“Data does not exist in a silo,” Saldana said. “It’s designed to be shared, expanded upon, integrated, and consumed upstream and downstream. We keep this in mind as we’re building and capturing something as simple as a point.” Today, the City of Seguin employs one full-time data collection employee.
Solution
At city meetings, stakeholders discuss how to tie existing utilities into the municipal system and whether these require upgrades to accommodate growth. Saldana’s team then maps the utilities. During construction, the as-built drawings are mapped in real-time. This dramatically improved them.
“When we receive a big roll of paper drawings, those are not 100 percent accurate,” Saldana said. “By going out there and validating everything ourselves, we can be sure years later [that] when we receive a call, we know where our assets are.”
Utility data analyst Felecia Helms performs QC on the incoming data before publishing it to an enterprise GIS. Helms leads the city’s ArcGIS Utility Network migration. Previously, Saldana created Utility Network prototypes. Helms now inputs the city’s electric assets, ensures that data meets production-level standards, and migrates it to the production utility network.
“We’re ensuring the data is correct,” Helms said. “Then we can do a full connection for our utility network to move to the next phase.”
Results
Once the migration is complete, ArcGIS Utility Network will be used to manage the entire electric system and feed the outage management system (OMS) with valuable data for proper intervention. After that, Helms will tackle the Utility Network migration for water.
Map of a power distribution substation in blue and white with asset features labeled in red and blueSeen here is the Seguin substation; collecting location data about nearby electrical assets helps Saldana and Helms identify assets that are missing on the map.
Ultimately, Saldana says, the city’s success lies in its extremely accurate GIS data powering utility services. The City of Seguin’s enterprise GIS acts as the system of record for countless downstream systems including the OMS and the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and billing systems.
“I’m passionate about traversing all these data integrations and making sure it’s accurate,” Saldana said. “People have to recognize that good asset management starts with collecting good data as step one.”
Partner
Eos Positioning Systems is the Canadian designer and manufacturer of premier, high-accuracy GNSS receivers for the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) market. Eos GNSS receivers, which include the Skadi Series and Arrow Series, provide real-time submeter-, subfoot-, and centimeter-level location accuracy into any device or app. All Eos GNSS receivers are completely device agnostic and support iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Eos also offers advanced mapping solutions—tilt compensation, underground utility mapping, and much more.
