State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Company: “Nth Power Sunshine” facilitates better and faster power supply

Company profile
 
State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of State Grid Cooperation of China, takes grids building and operation as its core business and undertakes the mission of guaranteeing safer, more economical, cleaner and more sustainable power supply.
 
The company was awarded honors of National Civilized Unit, First-class Electric Company in China, National May 1st Labor Certificate, AAA grade credit enterprise in electric power industry, pioneer company in China's power supply industry, Electric Power Industry Award of Zhejiang province successively, and was selected as company with the highest sense of social responsibility in Zhejiang province for 6 times.
 
Challenges
 
Yekuobaozhuang, in general sense, is dealing with power supply business. After receiving the electro-application put forward by the customers, the company will make a safe, economical and reasonable power supply plan based on customer needs and the condition of the supply network as well. For most customers, the higher transaction speed means economic benefits earned from putting into production as quickly as possible.
 
Despite the growing demand for Yekuobaozhuang, the transaction efficiency is still rather low, and the conflict between the two is sharpening. Let's take Xiaoshan district of Hangzhou as an example. Statistics estimate that the average completion period of each high voltage program was as long as 102 days in 2014. Customers need a more convenient and rapid Yekuobaozhuang system badly. Many customers believe that power supply companies should be blamed for the long transaction period and they have doubted about the services of power supply companies.
 
Yekuobaozhuang procedure includes 9 steps in total. Power supply companies are responsible for 6 of these, that is, service windows handling customer application, scene investigation, making power supply plan, drawing inspection, checks during the process, and completion inspection, which take only 24 days. However, the other 3 socialized steps, that is, designing, civil engineering and installation, take as long as 78 days. Nowadays, the Yekuobaozhuang market is totally open. Customers have full autonomy in the steps of designing, civil engineering and installation and they can select corresponding companies freely on the market. The lack of coordination between of designing, installation, civil engineering and supply leads to reworking and stalling, which in turn influences the transaction efficiency.
 
Solutions
 
In order to solve this sharp conflict, State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Company conducted pilot activities to improve Yekuobaozhuang management in Xiaoshan district, Hangzhou city. Corresponding to the liability subjects and relevant stakeholders in each step of Yekuobaozhuang, it has located 8 stakeholders, including power supply company, customer, designing company, construction company, civil engineering company, electric equipment supplier, energy supervision office and media. They carried out field investigation and used questionnaires to find out the primary cause for the low efficiency of Yekuobaozhuang. It is found that there are three main causes.
 
First, customers are unfamiliar with the process. Second, there isn't adequate communication between each step. Third, there isn't enough capable person to integrate and coordinate these steps.
 
Xiaoshan Power Supply Company proposed a whole set of solution, known as the N^th Power Sunshine, to these three causes and achieved branding operation.
 
The 1st power sunshine is that each performs their duties. The company arranges customer needs in a reverse chronological order and makes a sunshine plan which is traceable during the whole process. The final conduction time is determined by customers. The responsible person of each step is clearly stated in the plan. During the transaction process, the power supply company will inform customer the progress and following work timely through texts. The sunshine plan connects steps like service windows handling customer application, scene investigation, power supply plan reply, designing, drawing inspection, purchasing, civil engineering, checks during the process, installation and construction, and completion inspection, which helps to achieve a good situation where each performs their duties and all function well.
 
The second power sunshine is communication and cooperation. The power supply company establishes the Sunshine 365 workshop, which provides stakeholders of each step a platform for communication and negotiation. For instance, customers can come there to consult about the process of applying for power supply. If there are any problems, all the relevant stakeholders can gather here and consult together. The professional staff of power supply company will also provide technical support to help solve problems whenever and wherever. The government, power supply companies, designing companies, suppliers, civil engineering, installation and the public communicate and work together to satisfy customers' power supply needs.
 
The third power sunshine is to build a transparent Yekuobaozhuang ecosphere. Power supply companies have carried out plenty market investigation and gained the first-hand quotation of Yekuobaozhuang market. They made a price guide for each input in each step according to the average price on the market and complied a Fair Scale for Yekuobaozhuang in Power Industry for customer, which breaks the unspoken rules of black box in social power application completely.
 
Achievements
 
Social benefit
 
The safety awareness of customers are improving steadily. On the one hand, the company introduced new meter reading technology and smart meter reading system for cell phones, thus reducing bothers caused to customers by household safety check, improving efficiency and reducing customer complaints. On the other hand, the company launched various activities and training on safe use of natural gas to improve customers' safety awareness and help them develop the habit of engaging with meter reading actively. In 2015, the company held 344 communities and campus safety campaign, sent out 44870 promotion materials, performed 1688520 safety checks, and conducted 1239757 household safety checks successfully. The safety hazard improvement rate has reached 100%, which reduces the incidence of natural gas accidents effectively. Besides, it carried out "safe use of natural gas from me" activities in safety production month, during which over 30000 leaflets, 27000 publicity materials and nearly one hundred natural gas coupons were sent out, which not only improved customers' safety awareness, but also was highly praised by leaders of the supervision group of the national safety month committee.
 
Economic benefit
 
Contributed to above measures, the time needed for handling Yekuobaozhang business in Xiaoshan district is greatly reduced and it has improved the working efficiency of the whole Yekuobaozhang chain. In 2016, the average time needed for Yekuobaozhang program in Xiaoshan district is 72 days, reduced by 30 days compared with that of 2014. The economic value created by this in the district reached over 100 million yuan.
 
The improvement in the efficiency of Yekuobaozhuang significantly lowered manpower and resources cost of power supply enterprises. In 2015, the working time of customer service staff in power supply industry was reduced by nearly 6500 hours. Due to the reducing of repeated investigation caused by re-doing, the traveling distance of working staff was reduced by over 5000 kilometers. Reduce in yekuobaozhuang transaction time realized the increase of power supply and expand of sales, which increased electricity income by over 30 million yuan. The transparent and high-efficient yekuobaozhang procedure broke down the black box, removed the grey zone on the yekuobaozhang market and eliminated integrity risks in key customer service posts of some power supply enterprises in the past.
 
The customer satisfaction degree of power supply company increased significantly. The experience of stakeholders and customers was optimized obviously and the customer satisfaction degree improved from 78.6% to 95.9%.
 
Prospect
 
For the near future, the company will deepen the development of tracking platform for N^th Sunshine Power to realize the connection with the public platform and widely use big data and cloud services to establish power supply service database, and further connect with the government public service platforms to conduct predictive service according to the power property and scales of projects. The company will summarize the sustainable yekuobaozhuang for replicable and transformable mode and will promote the sustainable eco-chain in State Grid Corporation of China.