Jeff Evans is NV Energy’s trusted smart grid advisor. What started as a two-day smart grid workshop in 2008 has evolved into a long-term partnership that continues today. With the help of Jeff, NV Energy continues to enhance and augment smart grid capabilities and increase the value delivered to its 1.3 million customers and stakeholders. 

NV Energy initiated efforts in late 2008 to understand the business opportunity of implementing an advanced service delivery program. Jeff became NV Energy’s primary advisor to evaluate the opportunity and launch the program. The activities and critical roles performed by Jeff include:

• Assisting in the development of the overall smart grid strategy and eventual smart grid program design.
• Development of a comprehensive financial analysis and business case.
• Creation of an overall program design, schedule, and implementation plan.
• Assisting in obtaining executive support and approval.
• Leading the procurement processes including the creation of Advanced Metering Infrastructure, Meter Data Management System and Deployment RFPs.
• Supporting the vendor selection and negotiation process.
• Leading the solution requirements and design workshops with the selected vendors.
• Finalizing the overall solution requirements and architecture and developing the project releases plan.
• Assisting in the development of regulatory approval strategy and associated public utilities commission filings.
• Helping NV Energy secure a $139 million DOE smart grid investment grant.

Once the project received regulatory approval, NV Energy needed a trusted advisor/subject matter expert to ensure that the $303M smart grid project was implemented on-time, on-scope, and on-budget by leading the overall program integration services and working with other market vendors to perform the full scope of delivery including :

• Project Management and PMO Support – Management of Program Management Office and associated schedule and budget tracking and reporting.
• Solution Architecture and Requirements Management – Identification of solution requirements across multiple legacy and new applications and the integrations necessary to achieve the business case.
• Releases Management – Creation of manageable work packages to implement applications, integrations, and business processes.
• System Testing – End-to-End testing of functionality, process, application, and interfaces.
• Field Acceptance Testing – Validation that the technical capabilities of the AMI solution could be achieved as committed to by the vendor.
• Vendor Management – Facilitating the relationship between vendors and NVE and ensuring commitments fulfilled as expected.
• Regulatory Support – Provision of DOE and PUCN regulatory support in ARRA, general rate case, and opt-out proceedings.
• Subject Matter Expertise – Providing the industry knowledge and technical expertise to address evolving smart grid related questions and issues.
• Business Intelligence/Analytics – Developing project metrics and reporting dashboards. Implementing a geospatial metrics dashboard to understand the AMI data captured and glean the information necessary to make customer billing-related decisions.
• Performance Management - Conducting ongoing audits of the smart grid solution and contracts to ensure compliance with performance thresholds and delivery of promised functionality. Negotiating contract amendments to ensure delivery of functionality and performance and to extract concessions for missed compliance thresholds and deliverables.

The scope and components of the program have grown over time as NV Energy has successfully delivered on the core project and additional value added capabilities have been identified. The effort comprises a number of systems and represents a complex, integrated program positively impacting the entire organization. The components that have been delivered include:

• System-wide electric and gas AMI solution
• Meter Data Management System
• Deployment vendor work management and scheduling system
• Upgrades to the customer billing systems
• Demand Response Management System
• Advanced rate programs
• Pre-payment solution
• Integration of AMI with OMS