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Scenario 08: GreenGrid Energy Services

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Practice Information

Difficulty: Intermediate | Time: Designed for 90-120 minute prep window No solutions are provided. Build your solution artifacts before checking the worked solutions.

Before You Start

Read this scenario twice using the Two-Pass Reading Method — once for understanding, once to extract implicit requirements.

Project Overview

GreenGrid Energy Services is a regulated utility providing electric power and natural gas distribution across three US Midwest states (OH, IN, KY), with a growing renewable energy division managing community solar and battery storage. Serving the region for 60+ years, GreenGrid has completed full AMI/smart meter deployment across its territory.

AttributeDetail
HeadquartersColumbus, OH
Business unitsElectric Distribution, Gas Distribution, Renewable Energy Services
Employees6,200 total
Field technicians1,800 across 34 service centers
Customer service reps420 across 2 contact centers
Residential customers2.5 million
Commercial/industrial180,000
Annual revenue$4.8 billion
Smart meters deployed2.5 million (full deployment completed 18 months ago)
Annual work orders500,000+
RegulatoryState PUCs, NERC reliability standards, renewable portfolio standards

The CEO’s “Customer First 2027” initiative modernizes customer engagement, field service, and energy management. Phase 1: 24 months, $18M. Total program: $52M through 2030.

The COO has noted that during the last ice storm, field crews sat idle 30 miles from an outage because dispatch still relies on phone calls, paper, and whiteboards. The VP of Renewable Energy notes that community solar subscribers want engagement dashboards that current systems cannot provide.

Current Systems and Pain Points

SAP IS-U (Customer Information System): System of record for all 2.68M accounts. Processes $400M/month in billing across 850+ rate structures. 12 years of billing history (~385M line items). Heavily customized (2,000+ ABAP programs, 14 years old). Interfaces: BAPI (real-time), RFC (synchronous), IDoc (batch). Full billing cycle: 5 days, ~15M transactions. Authoritative source for customer info, meter assignments, and service addresses.

Itron Smart Meter Platform (AMI): 2.5M meters transmitting 15-minute interval readings via mesh radio. Generates ~240M meter readings/day. 3-year raw data retention. Daily/monthly summaries pushed to SAP IS-U for billing. REST APIs for meter data, events (tamper, power loss, voltage anomalies), and diagnostics. Supports webhook event notifications (last-gasp power-loss events for outage detection).

Oracle WAM (Work and Asset Management): 500,000+ annual work orders. Tracks assets: 2.5M meters, 180K poles, 45K transformers, 12K miles electric line, 8K miles gas pipeline. Mobile app on Oracle MAF (being sunsetted) — requires cellular, no offline. Manual scheduling; emergency dispatch via radio and whiteboards.

GE ADMS (Distribution Management): Real-time grid monitoring across 34 substations and 2,800 feeders. Detects/localizes outages via smart meter last-gasp events and SCADA. APIs: OPC-UA, REST. Outage data not shared with customer-facing systems.

Esri ArcGIS (GIS): Geographic system of record for all network assets with map services and geocoding APIs. Field crews rely on GIS maps for navigation.

Custom Outage Management (12 years old): Manual agent entry, no ADMS integration, 30-minute batch website updates. Degrades during storms (60+ second loads at 50K+ affected customers). No mobile reporting.

Avaya IVR: 250,000 calls/month (60% automated). Storm volumes spike 300-500% with 45+ minute queues. End-of-support within 2 years.

Business Process Requirements

Customer Account Management

  1. Unified customer view across all three business units showing accounts, services, billing, meters, work orders, interactions, and active outages — within 4 seconds.
  2. Real-time outage assessment: check meter status, correlate against known outages, provide immediate assessment (confirmed with ETA, suspected requiring dispatch, or no outage detected).
  3. Smart meter daily usage summaries available to CSRs for billing inquiries and energy efficiency recommendations — without direct metering system access.
  4. Community solar subscribers get dedicated views: credit allocations, production data, environmental impact (CO2 offset), and subscription details.
  5. High-bill complaint workflow: auto-pull 12-month usage, compare weather data, identify anomalies, present structured analysis to reduce handle time from 14 to under 6 minutes.

Field Service Operations

  1. Single work order system replacing fragmented Oracle WAM, radio dispatch, and paper processes.
  2. Scheduling by skills/certifications, GPS proximity, workload, equipment, and appointment windows — map-based dispatcher view with intra-day reassignment.
  3. Emergency mode: auto-prioritize life-safety work (downed lines, gas leaks), track mutual aid crews, dynamic reallocation, command-center visibility.
  4. Mobile work order management with full offline capability and auto-sync on reconnection.
  5. Auto-update customer accounts and notify within 15 minutes of service-affecting job closure.
  6. Auto-generated preventive maintenance schedules by asset age, condition, regulatory requirements, and failure history.

Outage Management

  1. Auto-create incident on ADMS outage detection: estimate affected customers, publish to customer channels within 5 minutes.
  2. Multi-channel outage reporting (phone, web, mobile) with correlation to avoid duplicate dispatches.
  3. Proactive notifications (confirmed, ETA changes, restoration) via preferred channel, throttled during prolonged events.

Data Model and Migration Requirements

  1. Customer account data (2.68M accounts) synchronized from SAP IS-U (remains account master). Target latency: 15 minutes for any change.
  2. Smart meter data: daily/monthly aggregates in the new platform for customer inquiry; raw 15-minute interval data (240M/day) stays in Itron, accessible on demand (<10 seconds for a single customer’s 30-day interval data).
  3. Migrate 5 years of work order history from Oracle WAM (~2.5M work orders with labor, materials, equipment). Asset data (meters, poles, transformers, substations, pipelines, valves with ArcGIS coordinates) must accommodate all three business units with different attribute sets.
  4. 3 years of customer interaction history (~9M records including call recordings and disposition codes) migrated or referenced.
  5. Clear data ownership model: which system is master per entity, flow direction, and conflict resolution for the coexistence period.

Accessibility and Visibility Requirements

  1. CSRs see customer data relevant to their role but not internal cost data, infrastructure vulnerability assessments, or SCADA/grid control info.
  2. Field technicians see assigned job details, asset info, maps, and safety alerts — no billing data, payment history, retention notes, or other customers’ records.
  3. Emergency operations center staff get real-time view of all active outages, dispatched crews, mutual aid resources, and customer impact on large-format displays and mobile devices.
  4. Community solar subscribers see only their own credits, usage offsets, and subscription details — not other subscribers on the same array.
  5. Third-party solar contractors have limited access: create/update assigned solar work orders, view service addresses and interconnection details — no other customer data, internal work orders, or grid infrastructure.

Reporting Requirements

  1. VP Customer Ops dashboard: CSAT/NPS by channel, FCR rates, handle time by inquiry type, outage call volumes, digital adoption — hourly refresh (15 minutes during storms).
  2. VP Field Ops: daily technician utilization, jobs completed vs. scheduled, emergency response time, overtime by service center, fleet efficiency — drill down by business unit, center, and individual.
  3. VP Renewable Energy: monthly solar program metrics (enrollment/attrition, production vs. forecast, credit accuracy, engagement scores, waitlist depth) with financial modeling for proposed new arrays.
  4. Regulatory: quarterly reliability indices (SAIDI, SAIFI, CAIDI, MAIFI) from outage data with IEEE 1366 major event day exclusions. CFO: monthly SAP IS-U vs. platform financial reconciliation with variance drill-down.

Integration Requirements

  1. SAP IS-U: sub-second account lookup, 15-minute change sync, daily batch billing/payment sync.
  2. Itron AMI: daily batch usage aggregates; on-demand interval data API (<5s). Event push: ~15K events/day normal, 500K+ during storms.
  3. Oracle WAM: bidirectional work order sync during transition with conflict resolution.
  4. GE ADMS: outage events within 2 minutes; restoration confirmations from field service.
  5. ArcGIS: map services for field mobile and customer outage map with crew/outage/work order overlays.
  6. Customer web/mobile: account management, usage, outage reporting, payments — 85,000 peak concurrent sessions during storms.

Development Lifecycle Requirements

  1. Three groups on shared environments: internal platform team (12 staff), systems integrator (25 consultants), and IT ops (8 staff). Clear ownership boundaries and change management procedures.
  2. Regulated utility: all changes affecting billing, metering, notifications, or regulatory reporting require documented change approval with business owner sign-off, retained for PUC audit.
  3. Parallel operation during transition with defined cutover criteria, rollback procedures, and data reconciliation checkpoints per business unit.
  4. Zero-downtime deployments for customer-facing channels during Sunday 2-6 AM maintenance windows. Integration testing with realistic data volumes (240M daily readings, storm-level spikes, concurrent user loads) without impacting production.
  5. Post-go-live regulatory changes (rate structures, reporting requirements) typically have 90-day implementation windows that cannot be delayed.

Implicit Requirements

Pay attention to: 3 business units and org strategy implications. 240M daily meter readings and on-platform vs. off-platform data architecture. 1,800 field technicians with offline requirements. Storm-event scaling (500,000+ events, 85,000 concurrent sessions, 300-500% call spikes). 7 integration systems and middleware/error handling complexity. Regulated utility context affecting change management and data retention. Mutual aid crews and temporary user provisioning. 34 service centers and emergency coordination. Oracle MAF sunsetting urgency. Multi-system coexistence period.