Korea Electric Power Corporation is rolling out a series of tailored customer-convenience services using artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time power data analysis. With use of air conditioners and other cooling appliances surging in the recent summer heat, it is moving to help reduce the increased electricity bill burden on the household.
KEPCO's "AI electricity bill safety notifier service" runs on in-house developed AI and big data technology. After learning a customer's power usage data over the past two years, the AI calculates the expected usage and electricity bill for the current month 10 days after the meter reading date. If the bill is forecast to increase by 30% or more compared with the previous month or the same month a year earlier, or by 50% or more compared with the average of the previous three months, it sends an alert message to the customer.
For example, because the alert message is sent with specific figures such as "this month's expected usage 460kWh (kilowatt-hours), expected electricity bill 101,650 won, and up 41% from the same month a year earlier," customers can adjust their power use on their own before receiving the actual bill.
KEPCO said a pilot program conducted last year for 20,000 households in parts of Seoul and Gangwon found that 66% of customers who received alerts successfully reduced their power consumption.
KEPCO also unveiled a new "real-time alert service for changes in residential progressive tiers." It sends a real-time alert when a customer's electricity use reaches 360kWh, which is 80% of the summer threshold (450kWh) for entering the third progressive tier.
For residential summer electricity bills, the unit price jumps from 120.0 won in tier 1 (300kWh or less) and 214.6 won in tier 2 (301–450kWh) to 307.3 won upon entering tier 3 (451kWh or more), and the basic charge also rises sharply from 910 won to 7,300 won. It provides advance notice before entering tier 3 to encourage voluntary power saving by customers.
KEPCO will also introduce a "preemptive welfare system" that identifies and informs potential beneficiaries of electricity bill welfare discounts in advance using AI technology, in partnership with National Pension Service (NPS), Seoul Welfare Foundation, and Naver Cloud.
By matching administrative data from related agencies with KEPCO's customer information, it will identify households that were missed, and use Naver Cloud's AI care call service to have an AI counselor call and guide them on bill discounts. With Seoul Welfare Foundation, it plans to jointly develop customized welfare conversation scenarios tailored to customer characteristics to improve effectiveness.
A KEPCO official said, "We will continue to develop tailored services that combine real-time power data with AI technology to resolve customer inconveniences and spread a culture of voluntary energy saving."