High Voltage Customer Service Portal

1. Introduction

The peak load of Taiwan power system is daytime (10-18) during summer. Besides Taipower’s dispatch to remain system reliability, customers’ awareness of energy saving is also needed. In the case of high-voltage customers were fully deployed with AMI, Taipower has used communication technologies to build High-voltage Customer Service Portal (https://hvcs.taipower.com.tw/) to provide customers value-added services and create a win-win situation for the company and customers. 

The frequency of transmission time from customers’ installed AMI to Taipower is daily. Through information and communication technology (ICT) and analysis, the data would eventually be presented by visual charts to users.

The website was officially launched in July 2016, which can help high-voltage customers manage power by themselves and help them control power consumption and electricity costs. The customer can apply for an account by MOEACA Application online or at the counter. 

• Power Management
  The website provides visual analysis of the power consumption information (by 15min, hour, day, week, month) which helps customers understand their own consumption and provides value-added services such as electricity analysis, trial calculation and load forecasting

• Trial calculation of Demand Response Management Measures 
  The website provides a variety of trial calculation services, and the results could be used as a reference for evaluating participation in every Demand Response Management program.

• Other value-added Services
  Considering a manufacturer may have multiple factories; or a service industry may have chain stores, the website provides sub-account management service, so the main manager can easily do central management. Other value-added services such as power report, shown as figure below.

All services of the website are listed as below:

Customer Information

• Basic information
• Comparison of electricity bills during different periods
   

Power consumption management

• Power consumption analysis
• Analysis of the customer daily load shape
• Analysis of customers in same industry 
• Trial calculation of Energy charge of Time-of Use Rate (A)/(B)
• Trial calculation of load
• Trial calculation of contracted capacity
• Trial calculation of energy charge
• Analysis of equipment power consumption ratio
• Load forecasting
• Power consumption warning setting
   

Trial calculation of Demand Response Programs

Announcement and service

• Announcement information
• Customer Service Email
• Energy saving information
• Internet counter
   

Account management

• Personal account maintenance
• Sub-account maintenance
• Deletion of personal account
• Power report subscription
• Download historical power reports

3. Future development

Since the website has been launched, Taipower keeps refining the functions and services. In the future, Taipower will continue to refine this website according to customer needs and advance in analytical technology.

TPC e-Bill service

• Service Description
  The TPC e-Bill service with simple registration and customer number setting has been provided to TPC users for quick inquiry of power consumption data and easy bill management. It is presented via easy-to-understand electronic interface and micro-animation such that users can have quick access to bill related information to facilitate the self-management of amount power consumption behavior and to achieve the energy saving effect.
  
  The main visualization design of the front page is based on the illustration style with the layouts of four seasons. And there are the renewable energy subjects of wind power, solar energy, and hydraulic power generation to attract users to TPC e-Bill service in order to achieve the goal of paper reduction and environmental protection.

Function Description
General User
“General User” can have access to the website related information including payment status enquiry, bill pre-estimate, website tutorial, FAQ, and news.

Members

Users can register to become the “Member” of TPC e-Bill service. In addition to periodic bill notification and payment certificate in the form of email, users can also have access to historical bill data.

A member could login the TPC e-Bill service to have access to the functions of basic information management, bill inquiry, and analysis of amount consumption chart. To make the operation easily, the bill information of all registered customer numbers will be listed on the login screen, and the provided functions are the latest monthly bill, total amount, payment status, download the bill, and historical data.

3. AMI Real-Time Inquiry

To facilitate the real-time inquiry of amount consumption data by AMI smart meter users and thus promoting the power consumption management, the “AMI Area” icon behind the customer number of AMI could be selected to enter the AMI dashboard function, which provides various functions such as comparison of various real-time amount consumption data, self-defined upper limit of amount consumption, analysis of amount consumption statistical chart, and rate service evaluation.

Note: Users could enquire real-time amount consumption data of the previous day by noon.

• Annual electricity consumption comparison and Monthly Electricity trend
  Annual electricity consumption comparison will be shown on the indicator dashboard and present the percentage comparison of total AMI amount consumption of current year and last year. Monthly Electricity trend for the two years next to the dashboard to directly compare whether the total consumption has increased or decreased.

• Comparison of average total consumption in the same area/industry
  The users could check their own total consumption and the average power consumption in the same area or industry. And it would provide different contents via different scenarios to guide users to change their energy consumption behaviors. (as shown in Figure 8)

• Self-defined amount consumption upper limit and abnormality notification
  Users are provided with the function of self-definition of upper limit of amount consumption. When the amount consumption of this day is going to exceed the self-defined upper limit, it will automatically notify the user via email or message. If there is no self-defined upper limit, it will be compared with the average monthly amount consumption of the same area.

• Carbon Emission
  According to whether the amount consumption exceeds the " average total consumption in the same area " or " Self-defined amount consumption upper limit ", the icons of carbon emission and trees are provided to strengthen the connection between amount consumption and energy saving.

• Monthly Consumption
  The total amount consumptions of all months are presented and compared in the form of monthly pie chart, and different colors (green, yellow, red) are used to show whether or not it is increased as compared to the base month.

AMI statistics

The real-time and detailed AMI amount consumption charts are presented in graphics to show the statistics based on “year”, “month, “day”, “15 minutes”, and the daily (24 hours) comparison.

• Rate Suggestion Pre-estimate
  The trial calculation comparison amount of simple rate plan is provided according to the past AMI real-time amount consumption information of users to help users assess which rate plans are more appropriate according to their energy consumption habits.

• Amount consumption analysis chart
  Users are provided with the power consumption charts of recent 48 hours for comparative analysis with the same timeframe of last week and last month.

Other APPs (such as Taipower, and power is points)

Web service Taipower App 
App launched at the end of 2016.Innovative and diversified products and services will be developed via mobile carrier in order to enhance customer’s experience and to strengthen customer satisfaction. The App provides five major functions of management of user’s electricity, power use application, push notification, account service, and inquiry of service center. In 2018 we introduced the App service for intermediate settlement application and payment, and for payment of line installation fee for power use application. In 2020, we add new function such as power failure report, prepaid, AMI service, and so on. At the same time, revising the name of App to Taipower. In the future we will continue to integrate diversified products and service modes to the APP to develop the five major mobile carrier development strategies of diversified payment services, transparent power consumption information, bilateral safety report, integrated energy service, and customer management community in order to comprehensively strengthen user experience and implement the business vision based on the orientations of customer and smart mobile service. 

• Taipower App function
  Personal zone (management of user’s customer number and case), power use application, pay bill, push notification, account service, and more.

• Account service – electricity bill inquiry and payment
  Not only provide settlement of electricity bill, prepaid, but also provide inquiry of power consumption and amount of due payment of this period. And the payment can be made by either credit card or bar code.

• Power use application – change of power use data and application for onsite inspection, power supply circuit failure report.

• Personal zone – management of user’s customer number and case 
  The latest electricity bill information and case progress can be checked at any time by entering the customer number and case in the personal zone of the App.

• Push notification
  By joining the customer number and case in the personal zone of this App, the user will receive the notification of the latest status of electricity bill , collection, payment result ,case progress according to the customer number, important information , power supply circuit failure report progress, and so on.

• MORE
  News, Customer Service Hotline、Inquiry of service center、Website link.

Power is point
In order to strengthen the interaction with users and to enhance the energy saving awareness, TPC developed the “Power is point” APP, which was launched on April 20, 2018, and it provided creative energy saving activities such as puzzle quiz and treasure hunt games. Then, TPC launched a revision of “Power is point” APP on October 2020.In addition to optimizing the user interface, we also rolled out a new feature – power saving prediction.After an user signed up as a member with the ID of cell phone number, he/she can be granted certain points by participating in various activities on this APP. The accumulated points can be used to redeem certain products or to participate in the lucky draw.

“Power is point” is the first point collection APP introduced by TPC. It appears to be an APP for users to collect and redeem points, it is actually the specific application of customer loyalty program which has been going on for years in foreign countries. A lot of foreign electricity enterprises (such as Tokyo Electric Power Company, Kansei Electric Power, and E.ON Power Company) and some domestic businesses (such as Pxmart, 7-11, and HappyGO) have also tried to keep their customers via close interaction and point collection and redemption mechanism.

Even though now the point collection function of this APP is mainly about the promotion of energy saving, it has been under consideration into all sales and activity promotion of TPC in the scope of point collection such that TPC’s ideas, products, and services can be more accurately delivered to users to obtain the feedback opinions from them. And the horizontal alliance can be formed via point exchange strategy so that users using TPC’s services can be awarded the value-added benefits, and it can be put in the first place.