SAN FRANCISCO – Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced Tuesday the formation of the SmartMeterTM Technical Advisory Panel (TAP), a group of experts, regulators, business stakeholders and customers, to review the impact of PG&E’s SmartMeter program on customers and help the utility follow best practices while rolling out the program across PG&E’s service area.

The announcement is the latest step by PG&E to enhance customers’ experience of the SmartMeter program. Other measures adopted by the utility over the past few months include increasing the number of Customer Answer Centers throughout new deployment areas, creating a dedicated SmartMeter customer call center, and adding more dedicated and trained SmartMeter customer service representatives.

The new advisory panel will be moderated by Bill Devereaux, senior director of PG&E’s SmartMeter program.

Members include a customer from one of PG&E’s regional Customer Advisory Panels, PG&E’s Customer Outreach team, Chris Danforth of the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, David Hungerford of the California Energy Commission, Aloke Gupta of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Energy Division and Erich Gunther of Enerex.

“As we continue to expand the customer benefits of our SmartMeter program and participate in the state’s evolution toward a smart grid for all Californians, we want to make sure our technology rollout empowers our customers to take charge of their energy use, follows the best practices available, and helps California achieve a low-carbon, clean-energy economy,” said Devereaux. “The Technical Advisory Panel will ensure that PG&E hears a wide range of opinions on the meter program and the future of the smart grid. They will have our customers first and foremost on their minds.”

The company already has increased the number of answer centers, created a dedicated SmartMeter call center, introduce a set of new communications timed to introduce customers to their newly installed meter and its benefits, communicated with customers about the meters and how they can reduce energy usage and posted online results of side-by-side meter demonstrations, which can be found at www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/smartmeter/sidebyside/.

PG&E continues to make public monthly reports on SmartMeter program milestones and key developments that it has been providing to the CPUC and its Division of Ratepayer Advocates (an independent division of the Commission that advocates on behalf of customers). The reports are available on PG&E’s Web site at www.pge.com/SmartMeterCPUCreports.

Additionally, PG&E updates program deployment, billing and performance statistics weekly at www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/smartmeter/programdata/.

PG&E’s SmartMeter program is part of a statewide effort approved by the CPUC to upgrade California’s energy infrastructure with automated metering technology. The overall program budget and rollout timeline, set in 2005, remains on target. PG&E continues to seek additional program efficiencies.