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Pacific Gas and Electric Company Ranks #1 in the Nation Among Energy and Utility Companies on InformationWeek 500

Posted on: Wednesday, 26 September 2007, 18:00 CDT

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- InformationWeek magazine has recognized Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) as leading the energy and utility industry in business technology innovation. Overall the utility ranked 39th in the InformationWeek 500, an annual listing that identifies and honors the nation's most innovative users of information technology.

Major enhancements and changes to PG&E's information technology systems are one of the cornerstones of an ongoing, multiyear, enterprise-wide business transformation effort, focused on providing better, faster, more cost effective service to the utility's customers. To help enable significant advances in the company's customer service and operations capabilities, PG&E has been successfully replacing dozens of legacy systems with state-of-the-art tools such as SmartMeter(TM) technology and flexible network infrastructure.

"New tools, new technology and new processes are transforming the way PG&E serves customers. The innovative and flexible IT platform that PG&E is building will serve as a solid foundation as new and improved customer services and business applications are developed in the future," said PG&E's Chief Information Officer, Pat Lawicki who was named among the top 100 CIOs in the country earlier this year by eWeek. Lawicki has also been credited with helping the utility "practice what it preaches" by making significant energy efficiency improvements to the company's data centers. Since Lawicki joined PG&E in 2005, she has orchestrated the company's IT vision and worked toward modernizing its technology infrastructure.

PG&E's SmartMeter(TM) initiative will automate the meter reading system and in the future, enable PG&E to pinpoint outages more quickly and expedite power restoration. The SmartMeter(TM) program will offer a range of new rate options and provide detailed energy usage data to customers online. With this technology, customers will have greater insight into how and when they use energy, giving them greater flexibility and control of their energy bills.

PG&E is also implementing new technology to standardize and consolidate key applications like asset management, work management and a geographic information system. This technology upgrade will allow PG&E employees to efficiently schedule resources and deliver materials where they are needed and when they are needed to better serve customers and help reduce costs.

In addition, PG&E's website, http://www.pge.com/, ranked first out of 111 utility websites in the United States and Canada by the "E Source 2007 Review of North American Electric and Gas Company Web Sites." E Source researchers looked at the utilities' websites from the customer's point of view, looking for and rating 27 different tasks and functions that were identified by customers as those they most liked to see on a utility's website. Websites were then given a score, based on a number of factors, including ease of use, functionality and how well it serves the customer.

For more information about Pacific Gas and Electric Company, please visit our website at http://www.pge.com/

Pacific Gas and Electric Company

CONTACT: Pacific Gas and Electric Company News Department,+1-415-973-5930

Web site: http://www.pge.com/

Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall

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