Meetings 10/16/97-MDCS Continuation + MDMA Users Group

As we agreed last week, our next meeting is this Thursday at CellNet's
facility in San Carlos, about 10 miles south of San Francisco International
Airport.

The morning session, from 9 am to noon, will be a continuation of our
review of MDCS issues, focusing on those issues we did not cover last
Thursday. As we did last week, we will not attempt to resolve the issues,
only specify when they need to be resolved and which require CPUC
decisions. The list includes the following:

- Identification of meter readers on a customer’s property (impostors)
- Maintaining site compliance for safety and access, including
notification,  to customer property
- Transcription/transmission accuracy
- Unauthorized use (energy theft)
- Market participant’s ability to read various meters
- What has to be displayed on the display?
- Data and communication security issues
- Password management
- Certification/acceptance qualification
- Process for adhoc reads (aka re-reads, pick up reads)
- Can customer read own meter?  Or under what conditions?
- What is the auditing process?
- Who can post data on the server?
- Minimum frequency of reads consistent with settlement cycle?
- For load profiling customers between 20kw and 50kw, if no IDR meter, need
TOU reads for billing [HANDLE OFF-LINE]
- Read cycle for customers
- Metering pilots
- (SCE) billing cycles for special tariffs
- Grandfathering; what kind of existing meter reading systems architectures
continue to be used and what schedule to do they need to be reintegrated
with any standardized  meter reading?
- Interim reads prior to 1/1/98
- How do we assure ourselves that particular national standards are in fact
relevant to the electric service industries without offering a forum to
recontest issues settled in the standards process?
- Does local regulatory agency (LRA) mandating of ANSI standards violate
underlying principals of standards process?



The afternoon session, from 1 pm to 4 pm, will be the first meeting of the
"MDMA Users Group" or MUG. The MUG meeting will focus on implementation and
technical items and is intended for engineers and others working on
implementing meter and meter data collection systems for Direct Access.


Please RSVP via email so we can make appropriate refreshment arrangements.
I'll send directions when I get RSVPs. Thank you, and I will see you there!


Chris S. King
Vice President
CellNet Data Systems, Inc.
.