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Duquesne Light Provides Update On Implementing Accelerated Switching

March 3, 2015

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Copyright 2010-15 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Karen Abbott • kabbott@energychoicematters.com

Duquesne Light on February 27 filed an update regarding implementation of its Phase I accelerated switching mechanism.

Phase I of the interim accelerated switching solution, which would be applicable to 91% of customers, would allow customers to complete one off-cycle accelerated switch, completed within three business days, per billing cycle.

Duquesne Light is aiming to implement this Phase I solution on March 8, but stressed such outcome is contingent on successful testing this week.

"The Company began its second phase of regression testing on February 22, 2015, and has identified a number of defects to date, six of which were critical defects. These critical defects must be addressed in order to implement the Phase I Solution. To provide some additional information about what some of these critical defects involve, three of the defects would send incorrect usage information to the third-party supplier through EDI transactions, and one of the defects would prevent the Company from issuing reconciliation bills to large hourly priced service customers," Duquesne Light told the PUC

"Once the defects that must be corrected are fixed, the Company will begin a third round of regression testing to ensure that the code changes function as designed and that the introduction of the new code did not cause other existing code to break or fail to function as designed. Because of the level of defects found in the second phase of testing, our recent experience with FOCUS and from a prudency standpoint, the Company has little alternative but to perform at least a third round of regression testing before the OCS [off-cycle switching] Phase 1 Solution is implemented," Duquesne Light said

"In addition, the OCS Phase I solution deployment takes at least 15 hours to implement and can only be introduced on a Saturday so as to not impact batch billing. Therefore, the Company is targeting March 7, 2015 to begin installation of the Phase I Solution with a go-live date scheduled for March 9, 2015. Unfortunately, the Company cannot guarantee that the Phase I Solution will go-live on March 9, 2015, but is targeting this date. A go-live decision continues to be dependent on the resolution of existing defects and whether any additional defects are found during the testing scheduled for the week beginning March 2, 2015 and the impacts of those defects on customers and suppliers," Duquesne Light said.

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