Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC), a not-for-profit electric distribution cooperative based in Florida, announced its adaptation of Oracle (News - Alert) Utilities Meter Data Management, Oracle Utilities Smart Grid Gateway, and Oracle SOA Suite. LCEC also plans to upgrade its existing Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing application to enhance customer experience and hence is working in conjunction with Oracle Consulting to achieve the same.

By adopting the Oracle Utilities Solutions, Lee County Electric Cooperative seeks to enhance its smart grid initiatives. Through the Oracle Utilities, Meter Data Management and Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing LCEC plans to further open up the line of communication between them and its 200,000 customers. This can easily be achieved, as the Oracle applications can meter data provide near real time usage and cost information to customers.

“We are expanding our relationship with Oracle as we continue to invest in the company's technology stack to support our long term strategic roadmap and the LCEC business direction. The software's interoperability should give us the scalability and functionality we need to improve our operational efficiency, streamline our processes, and enhance service delivery while empowering our customers with information to understand their usage,” said Frederic Kunzi, chief information officer, Lee County Electric Cooperative.        

The Oracle Utilities suite has also been designed to improve meter-to-cash process by enhancing master data synchronization, batch billing, bill cancel/rebill and online billing. The integration will also decrease LCEC costs and by using Oracle Utilities Smart Grid Gateway (News - Alert), they can establish a single point of connection between existing and future smart grid devices and applications. This will lead to a timely flow of data to appropriate applications.

LCEC can further enhance its overall performance by using the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition solution. This helps in organizing consistent, relevant, and timely data from across the organization and also record payment collection trends into integrated reports.

“We are pleased to support Lee County Electric Cooperative as it embarks on its smart grid initiatives. With Oracle, LCEC can organize vast quantities of consumption data generated by automated meters and turn it into intelligence that helps them run their business more effectively across every department,” said Rodger Smith, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities.        

To hear more about Oracle’s position in the utilities market and Oracle Fusion Middleware, be sure to check out, “How Oracle Fusion Middleware Can Address Data Challenges OEMs & ISVs Face Designing and Deploying Smart Grid Solutions.”