A real-time prepayment solution

Carina FlexPay™ provides utility companies with a unique opportunity to receive payment days or even weeks before services are rendered. With FlexPay™, any utility can provide flexible payment solutions while empowering customers to better self-manage energy usage.

Carina FlexPay™ can provide consumption, balance, and rate information to customers in real time via smart phone app, email, or text message. This unprecedented transparency increases customer engagement and satisfaction.

Carina offers standalone real time M&V and will automatically reconcile (typically monthly) with the billing system to incorporate new rates, fees, or additional services. FlexPay™ can integrate into existing billing, mapping, and outage management systems. Daily rates for fixed services including rental agreements, private lights, service availability fees, and enrollment fees are calculated at the meter and deducted hourly or daily.

The utility maintains control of the meter, exceeds due process requirements, and maintains flexibility to reschedule disconnects during inclement weather days. Multiple services can be added to the prepay account including water, cable, internet and telephone.

Benefits of FlexPay™

Utility benefits

Receive revenue up front
Fully integrated billing and metering system
Fully integrated remote payment system
Always-available two-way communication with the meter
Tampering notification
Reduce bad debt write-off and energy theft
Reduce costs and time associated with collections
Real time consumption available to utility – grid and customer level
Integrated visual and audio due process notification
Integrated current limiting for life support and other no cut-off accounts
Results in a positive image of the utilities to the customer, PSC, and advocacy groups
Customers are in control and no one visits the house

Benefits of FlexPay™

Customer benefits

Real-time payments can be made with cash, online, or through a smart phone
Convenient pay stations – almost all within 10 minutes driving
Eliminate reconnect fees and large deposits
Eliminate large unexpected bills – budget power like any other bill
Reduces need for third-party access to property
Customers normally save about 19% on their monthly bills with prepay
Customers can take control of their utility bill with real time information on rates, balance, and usage
Low balance alerts via text messages, emails, or push notifications
Total visibility through the Carina FlexPay™ app

W ISE I NFORMATION S OLUTION FOR E NERGY

Carina's WISE™ solution provides demand flexibility to generators, distributors, and customers by making water heaters of any size grid-interactive while maintaining zero customer discomfort.

By combining insights gleaned from years of data, real-time control applications, and sophisticated M&V analytics, Carina can streamline grid operations to conserve and manage energy intelligently.

Daily water heater usage

Typical for two working adults

Performance metrics

Two flexible control periods per day

100% shift out of peak hour
92% shift out of TOU (8-10 hours)
2.5 kWh shift in the summer
3.5 kWh shift in the winter
Valley fill - 4.5kW, 29-45 minutes

WISE™ benefits

Customer benefits

Green and helps meet energy efficiency mandates for generator and distributor
Reduces CO2 emissions daily
Reduction in energy usage due to elimination of several maintenance events
Zero Discomfort – No inconvenience or behavioral changes necessary
Automatically shifts water heater energy load outside of TOU – Saves money daily
Helps keep rates down for generator and for distributor
Available incentives for participating in multiple programs
Reductions in replacement water heaters with some free programs
Proactive notification of water heater maintenance problems

WISE™ benefits

Distributor benefits

Green and helps meet energy efficiency mandates
Helps manage monthly demand charge by shifting load out of peak hour (98%)
Shifts water heater load outside of time of use (TOU) billing period (94%)
Minimal margin loss from energy sales
Increases participation and retention rates with “Zero Discomfort” feature
Mitigation of artificial rebound through intelligent feathering
Can receive incentives from the generator for frequency regulation, store, and valley fill
It is a viable carbon reduction strategy and reduces carbon emissions daily
Shift twice per day to ensure peak is captured in spring and fall

WISE™ benefits

Generator benefits

Power generator: Benefits EE, DR, FR, and generation planning
Green and helps meet energy efficiency and carbon reduction mandates
Reduces peak demand – flattens daily load shape every day
Store ability allows efficient and economic utilization of generation assets – avoids plant turndowns by providing valley fill opportunity
Utilizes real time frequency regulation to help manage changes in the grid due to new solar and wind generation
Generation avoidance – virtual power plant – meets 10-year capacity planning
Avoids artificial rebound with intelligent feathering
Defers capital investments in new or expanded generation facilities
Large volumes of aggregated WISE™ units can relieve overloaded circuits and reduce line losses

Carina Technology saw the need for real time information and lots of it during the AMI Smartgrid boom for 900 mhz AMI 8-10 years ago. When federal smart grid money was readily available to large utilities, there was an explosion of AMI companies trying to capture the meter reading market which resulted in many utilities choosing the older slower 900 mhz communication technology. Carina working with one of its core customers developed and patented a fiber to the home solution which would power the ONT or charge the battery from the meter base and provide a very large communication pipe to take millions of rows of data and perform analytics in real time on the mass amount of data. This real time avaibility of large amounts of data resulted in new analytics to provide real time solutions to utilities to save money and run their systems more efficiently. It recognized that in the future multiple appliances will provide billions of rows of data in real time that need to be analyzed to make changes to the grid within seconds. It looks like the right decision was made, as many utilities are now installing fiber or partnering with telephone and cable companies to get this real time information to manage the grid.

Carina knew that everything at the house would eventually impact the grid at the generation, transmission and distribution network levels. With the continued growth of solar and wind, the future grid needed to be managed in real time with an extremely fast communication platform and the software that had the ability to make changes on the grid instantly all the way down to frequency regulation at the water heater in just a few seconds 24/7. The FTTH solution was that solution that could take miilions of rows of information and instantly transform them to workable solutions on managing the grid. Not only did the grid have to be managed in real time with real time communication, utilities demanded that the M&V solutions had to measure everything that was done in seconds.

Features

Power the ONT – by powering the ONT or charging the battery on the outside of the house, utilities can avoid the high cost of permits to run power from the inside of the house and problems with getting access to change out batteries that are located inside the house. This savings of $80-$100 per installation can help the ROI of the fiber system to read meters and perform demand side management, since fiber revenues and costs are required to be kept separate from electric revenues and costs.

Address Energy Initiatives – With the continual growth of solar and wind and new energy efficiency mandates, it is necessary to react in real time to manage changes on the grid. New energy environmental regulations require real time information from multiple appliances in each home with analytics to manage all of them.

Take Control – Instantly transform the vast amount of data into meaningful solutions to manage the grid utilizing the high speed, high bandwidth fiber and the CarinaPoint software.

Create Value – These analytics can create multiple new value streams to more efficiently manage control systems that save utilities and consumers money daily and sometimes on an hourly basis.

Get Smart – New apps are coming out daily, but utilities must have a communications system capable of handling all the data on a continual basis.

Our CarinaPoint™ solution is vital in voltage and power quality control programs
In reducing line losses by having real time load on transformers and circuits
Meter data management – Broadband AMI
Remote disconnect/reconnect
FlexPay™ on multiple services including electric, gas, water, cable, internet, telephone and fixed charges
Voltage and load profiling down to the minute or even seconds
Outage management with GIS connectivity to reduce customer outage time
Demand side management with ancillary services to manage the frequency regulation of the grid
Analytics to evaluate mass amounts of data and automatically make changes to the grid

With Carina's broadband solution, customers are presented an inherently future-proof system and can easily migrate to new innovative applications using the broadband communications platform and the CarinaPoint™ software.