Operational Benefits of GIS Help Utilities Improve Service While Cutting Costs

Redlands, California—February 5, 2009—Green Mountain Power of Vermont can now rely on accurate asset data and respond quickly to outages with geographic information system (GIS) technology procured through ESRI's Small Utility Enterprise License Agreement (SU-ELA) program. GIS is a mission-critical tool proven to support dozens of business functions of a utility, extending from asset, vegetation, leak, and outage management to inspection, maintenance, and as-built record keeping. The SU-ELA program makes it easier and more affordable for utilities in the United States with 100,000 meters/connections or fewer to get started or expand their GIS.

Through the SU-ELA program, Green Mountain Power is assured unlimited deployments to desktop, server, and mobile devices of ESRI's ArcGIS platform; maintenance and support for products; staff training; and passes to the ESRI International User Conference. Green Mountain Power plans to extend the use of GIS to storm and restoration mapping, damage-prediction models, renewable resource identification, and vegetation management. The utility transmits, distributes, and sells electricity and utility construction services in a territory of approximately 94,000 meters, serving one quarter of Vermont's population.

Mike Burke, distribution engineering lead for Green Mountain Power, says, "We immediately saw the benefit of the SU-ELA program, which gives us the GIS software and support we need at a lower cost than we anticipated. GIS provides us with accurate outage numbers to report to our customers and regulators. We now know exactly what is going on with our electric system, based on the model we created and the prediction service that sits on top of the model. Before GIS, we had to rely on information from customer calls and what the linemen found when they arrived on-site. With GIS and the prediction service, the program calculates where the trouble is and what protective device is most likely affected, allowing us to direct the crews more efficiently."

Bill Meehan, director of utility solutions for ESRI, says, "We created the SU-ELA program to give small utilities access to the operational benefits of GIS within a simple, tiered pricing plan. We welcome Green Mountain Power as it achieves greater success through GIS and the SU-ELA program."

At the heart of the SU-ELA program is ESRI's ArcGIS software, an open, scalable, and interoperable platform that provides a complete system to create, serve, and use geographic information. An enterprise GIS, based on ArcGIS technology, benefits designers, analysts, decision makers, field staff, and customers through mobile, Web server, and desktop applications.

For more information on the SU-ELA program and to listen to the SU-ELA podcast, visit www.esri.com/suela. To speak to an expert, call 800-447-9778, extension 2990.

About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.



Contact:

Jessica Wyland
ESRI
Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-3345
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