David Lukcic, Senior Director of Operation Technologies and Strategy (second from the right), receiving the Energy Best Practice award at the Excellence in Resourcefulness Awards in Marco Island.
Tampa Electric received a top honor at the seventh annual Excellence in Resourcefulness Awards in Marco Island. The awards recognize utilities and municipalities going above and beyond to minimize electric, natural gas and water waste.
Tampa Electric won the Energy Best Practice award for our highly strategic and methodical approach to executing a successful transition to clean energy. Accepting on Tampa Electric’s behalf was David Lukcic, Senior Director of Operation Technologies and Strategy. David’s teams oversee advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), network operations, smart street lighting, lighting/meter operations, grid modernization, electric vehicles and data analytics.
“We are so proud to be honored for our Energy Planner program in particular. We launched this automated price-based demand response program in 2005,” said David. “These technologies consist of Itron’s GenTMX load control switch, IntelliSOURCE® EnterpriseTM and smart metering solutions.”
There are about 4,500 residential homes enrolled in the Energy Planner program. Customers engage with a smart thermostat with a secure online portal to program their HVAC systems, and intelligent load control switches for water heaters and pool pumps. They monitor their appliances’ runtime and reprogram them to operate when it is most cost-effective. Customers can expect to see as high as 10 percent in savings on their electric bill. This program also enables Tampa Electric to shed as much as 3.1 kilowatts (kW) during winter peak and 2.0 kW during summer peak per customer enrolled on the program.
“Our team has greatly benefited from the partnership with David’s teams and their efforts to bring our Energy Planner program on board with AMI,” said Rob Johnston, Program Manager of Load Management. “I recently compared some of our team statistics from July 2019 (pre-pandemic and pre-AMI roll out) to our team statistics from July 2022, and I was pleased to see that our trouble calls were down 43 percent. That’s due almost entirely to improved meter communications, which resulted in a reduction of over 2,000 miles driven by our four field team members for the month. That is an amazing lift for a small team that allows us to better focus on delivering the best service and innovative offerings that give customers greater choice in how they use energy.”
As Tampa Electric humbly accepts this honor from Frost & Sullivan, we will continue to look for ways to empower our residential customers to gain greater control of their energy use, save money on their electric bills and reduce consumption during times of peak demand.
