CONTACT INFORMATION

MORRISTOWN, NJ., April 16, 2003 - "Large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers want energy services better tailored to their needs," says SPL WorldGroup CTO Guerry Waters. "Complex billing is one of the best available tools through which utilities can respond."

A new SPL white paper, "Energy Data Management: Complex Billing and Pricing," examines that tool in detail.

Author Brian Owenson, SPL's chief architect and vice president for solution management, explains that complex billing - sometimes called interval or real-time billing — allows utilities to offer a much wider variety of products to large customers.

"Despite the fact that wholesale electricity prices can change hourly or even more frequently," Owenson says, "traditional commercial and industrial electricity rates reflect only a small number of pre-defined time-of-use periods like ‘on-peak,’ ‘off-peak,’ or ‘weekend.’ That rate structure is a barrier to cost-cutting for companies that could change their demand behavior to take advantage of lower wholesale prices when they are available."

Traditional rate patterns also hamper utility efforts to manage temporary load constraints through price-responsive demand, Owenson notes.

Complex billing, in contrast, helps utilities offer favorable pricing strategies to customers willing to vary the price they pay more frequently, often in response to wholesale market changes. The technique starts with consumption metered separately during prescribed time intervals — every quarter or half hour, for instance. To produce a bill, customer management software prices the consumption according to the terms of a contract between the utility and the customer.

In theory, customers using complex billing products could have separate prices for each time period — almost 1500 per month, for instance, for a customer using half-hour billing increments. In practice, however, utilities and customers frequently map the time-series data to time-of-use periods to reduce the number of separate calculations needed.

The new white paper explores various billing models along with settlements among utilities, hedging tools, load flexes, ratchets, hybrid pricing, loss factors, and capped loads. "Developing complex billing contracts requires that both utilities and customers understand the risks, the options, and the goals," says Owenson.

While the concepts underlying complex billing are not new, says Owenson, interest has grown with the development of competitive wholesale markets and with the need for better grid-management tools.

"Large electricity users definitely support additional billing options," says John A. Anderson, Executive Director of ELCON, a Washington, D.C-based trade association that represents industrial electricity users. "While our members do not want mandatory real-time billing, which would force them to purchase from a spot market, they welcome developments that offer choices and greater flexibility with respect to rates, terms and conditions."

Additional applications could well emerge — in the environmental arena, for instance. A soon-to-be-released report from Resources for the Future suggests that emissions entering the atmosphere between 4:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. contribute more to high ozone levels later that day than do emissions released at other times. "Pricing strategies that could be put in place for short time periods when meteorological conditions warrant," says study author Dallas Burtraw, "could help industry and government increase market-based options for reducing pollution."

"Energy Data Management: Complex Billing and Pricing" is available without charge by visiting the SPL website. To request a copy via email, please send to splinfo@splwg.com, or call 1-800-ASK4-SPL.

Editor's Note:

• SPL's Brian Owenson can be reached through Richard Virgilio/Stephenson Group, at 973-989-1177.
• Dallas Burtraw of Resources for the Future can be reached at 202-328-5087.
• John Anderson and John Hughes of ELCON can be reached at 202-682-1390.

The inclusion of non-SPL experts in this release has been done with their permission but does not imply any mutual endorsement of views, products, or services.

# # #

About SPL WorldGroup
Established in 1994, SPL WorldGroup is a leading provider of best-of-breed customer management solutions. With a 100% record of successful implementations, SPL continues to demonstrate its place as the market leader, providing companies with flexible and scalable customer management solutions that offer a crucial advantage in an increasingly customer-centric environment—the proven ability to attract, nurture and maximize the value of customers through billing excellence and innovation in customer management, sales and marketing. With particular strength in energy sector markets that require multi-language, multi-jurisdiction, multi-currency, and multi-product service lines, SPL has delivered its customer management solutions to financial services, energy, water and waste management customers worldwide. The company employs more than 650 professionals in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

About CorDaptix™
SPL's CorDaptix solution is the innovative, adaptable and fully upgradeable customer management product designed to provide scalable solutions that withstand the test of time, growth, and product and service line introductions and extinctions. Its automated handling of direct-access service requests and its billing flexibility—including its ability to handle combinations of commodity and non-commodity products and services—make it particularly well suited for energy retailers. The CorDaptix solution scales readily from a few thousand customers to many millions, and its intuitive interface and customer-centric data model give retailers' customer service representatives the immediate information access they need to serve and retain customers.

©2003 SPL WorldGroup, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SPL WorldGroup, SPL, and CorDaptix are trademarks owned by SPL WorldGroup B.V. or its subsidiaries. SPL WorldGroup, SPL, and CorDaptix and are registered as trademarks in the United States and in certain other jurisdictions. All other brand, product and company names herein are used for identification purposes only and are the property of their respective owners.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risk or uncertainties. Future operating results of SPL WorldGroup may differ from the results discussed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to factors that include, but are not limited to, risks associated with customer relations, such as the availability of SPL products and services, customer implementation of products and services, third-party vendors and systems integrators, the pace of deregulation in the global utility industry, concentration of revenues in a relatively small number of customers, significant current and expected additional competition and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings.