Automated Energy Expands in Florida with Partnership with Lakeland Electric

Deal will allow customers to manage energy use with real-time data

Automated Energy Inc. has reached an agreement with Lakeland Electric in Lakeland, Florida, allowing the utility to provide customers with tools to better manage energy usage.

Lakeland Electric is the second public power utility in Florida to partner with Automated Energy, which is based in Oklahoma City. Automated Energy works with municipal and public utility companies as well as commercial and industrial energy customers throughout the United States to create data-driven opportunities for customers to manage their energy consumption.

In addition to data collection and management, Automated Energy offers a suite of tools that allow customers and residential users from coast to coast to better understand their energy usage and cost.

Lakeland Electric is Florida’s third-largest municipal electric utility and the 24^th-largest in the U.S., with about 137,000 customers. Lakeland Electric’s service area covers about 246 square miles in Polk County and includes the cities of Lakeland and Polk City, in addition to rural areas of the county. About 300,000 people live in the utility’s service territory.

Automated Energy provides its industry-leading Load Profiler service to a targeted group of Lakeland Electric commercial customers in this first phase of a pilot program, including education, health care, grocery and distribution/logistics segments.

“We are glad to have another public power utility partner in Florida, especially one as respected as Lakeland Electric, and we believe this relationship will benefit both parties,” Automated Energy President Cody Graves said.

“Load Profiler will allow Lakeland Electric’s customers to make more informed energy decisions. It uses its own meter data to provide analytics to manage energy consumption and costs. It provides a real-time look at usage compared to previous periods and factors in environmental conditions in an easy-to-manage computer dashboard.”

During this pilot, Lakeland Electric will provide each of its selected commercial customers using Load Profiler with a quarterly usage recap that provides hourly incremental data for the previous three months, along with a simple analysis of the data. Historically, this information is provided every billing cycle (30 days). The dashboard will allow the customer to dial into its consumption hour by hour, providing a better understanding of its energy use.

“We’re always looking for ways to provide both value and information to our customers and working with AEI will allow us to do both,” said Korey Bush, Lakeland Electric’s Assistant General Manager-Customer Service. “It is important to the utility that customers have the most accurate information about their energy consumption and that they can make important business decisions to help control cost. AEI’s product provides an easy-to-understand dashboard with power-usage data that can help customers determine how they can best manage their energy use.”