Santa Clara, Calif. – November 11, 2005 – Silicon Valley Power (SVP), the City of Santa Clara’s municipal electric utility, topped its commercial customer satisfaction rankings from 2003, according to a recent independent study conducted by RKS Research and Consulting of 100 randomly selected respondents. Commercial customers were asked about their overall opinion of SVP, its prices, value, stability and reliability, customer service, billing and communication tools. This study is the sixth California Municipal Utilities Association (CMUA) Statewide Survey of California Businesses performed by RKS.

Surprisingly, 100 percent of large SVP customers sampled express high satisfaction, and 84 percent of all commercial customers in the survey are “very satisfied” with SVP compared to 66 percent in 2003.

Based on an overall satisfaction model developed by RKS for commercial customers, which uses a scoring system of 0 (low) to 10 (high), SVP shows much improvement, scoring 8.4 compared to 7.9 in 2003. The average California municipal utility scored 8.0 in 2005.

SVP leads the pack, including other California municipal utilities and Northern California Power Agency (NCPA) member utilities, in customers’ perceptions of electric service as good value–66 percent, 59 percent and 62 percent, respectively. Investor-owned utilities (IOUs) weigh in at 43 percent.

As for stability, SVP stands out against California municipal utilities and NCPA, with the smallest number of outages and interruptions. In measuring quality and reliability, SVP ranks higher than it did two years ago and higher than other California municipal utilities. In addition, overall satisfaction with SVP account representatives and with service issues, such as prompt response to questions, accessibility, understanding customer needs and providing useful information, out ranks other California municipal utilities.

Finally, survey respondents prefer SVP and its fellow municipal utilities over IOUs–67 percent compared to 16 percent–a gap that has substantially widened since 1995.

“Just as we listen to our residential customers, as exemplified by high satisfaction in another RKS survey earlier this year, we pay close attention to what our commercial customers need,” said Junona Jonas, Director of SVP. “We have improved over the last two years in satisfaction with customer service, overall perception and in reliability and stability and will continue to take additional steps forward.”

For more information about the SVP Commercial Customer Survey, call (408) 244-SAVE (7283) or email savemoney@siliconvalleypower.com.