Customers are top of mind for Atlantic City Electric, Delmarva Power, Pepco, and our parent company, Exelon. Whether we’re devising new ways to reduce energy consumption or improve reliability, our belief that we must innovate and improve the customer experience drives us every single day.

This explains why underwater drones, talking robots, and virtual reality simulators took over the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center this week for the 2017 Exelon Innovation Expo. We hosted this year’s Expo, welcoming a record 2,800 people – including more than 450 Exelon employee presentations – to Washington, D.C.

…our belief that we must innovate and improve the customer experience drives us every single day.

This year’s Expo gave employees a chance to showcase their cutting-edge technology ideas, focused on the theme: Customer Centricity, exploring how the company’s work and investments can secure a safe and brighter future for customers.

“Innovation is arguably the single most important ingredient to the success of any enterprise today,” said Bill Von Hoene, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Exelon. “We see customer expectations evolving and expanding – customers want more control over their energy use and higher levels of service and reliability. How do we meet those growing expectations? We have to innovate!”

Innovation is arguably the single most important ingredient to the success of any enterprise today.

Pepco employees shared their ideas to enhance underground cable and offer customers an app to find electric vehicle charging stations, Atlantic City Electric developed a post-storm app to help reduce the length of customer outages, and Delmarva Power shared ways to decrease bird interactions with power lines.

“The 2017 Innovation Expo was a phenomenal success,” said Dave Velazquez, President and CEO of Pepco Holdings. Velazquez spent time walking the Expo floor throughout the event, and noted, “it was beyond inspiring to walk the floor, chat with employees, and learn about the incredible solutions they developed to better serve our customers.”

Pepco’s underground transmission engineering team has been collaborating with a similar team from ComEd, our Chicago-based sister company, to redesign underground cable. Participant Sara Bishop from Pepco appreciated the opportunity to share her team’s idea on such a wide scale with her Exelon colleagues.

“It was an amazing opportunity to share what the underground transmission engineering team has been working on over the past couple of years,” said Bishop. “Many of our peers from across the Exelon utilities, as well as other departments [internally] were excited about the potential of our innovative underground transmission cable designs and what it could mean for Exelon and the customers we serve.”

Fellow innovators from Apple, Microsoft, and GE also shared their insights on keeping customers at the center of their business strategies.