NCMPA1 Selects SoftSmiths' Electronic Tagging Solution

Houston, TX. – April 15, 2003 – Today, SoftSmiths announced that North Carolina Municipal Power Agency No. 1 (NCMPA1) has selected SoftSmiths Electronic Tagging Portal Suite (ETPS) to provide a NERC E-Tag 1.7 compliant tagging solution. NCMPA1 is an association of 19 North Carolina cities that own and operate their own electric systems and has a 75 percent ownership interest in Catawba Nuclear Station Unit 2 located in York County, S.C., which is operated by Duke Power. NCMPA1 has more than 150,000 customers and a peak load of 1,000MW. SoftSmiths delivers critical e-Business solutions and services that enable energy industry participants to enhance profitability and reliability in the competitive marketplace.

SoftSmiths Electronic Tagging services will help manage and support the Power Agency's ownership interest in generating facilities and contractual arrangements to ensure that the power needs of participants will be met. The agency purchases supplemental power above its ownership allotment as they need it in the wholesale market, generally from investor-owned utilities and federally owned hydro-electric systems.

"SoftSmiths presented a compelling solution, enabling us to automate a number of manual processes, improve accuracy, and support our settlement activities," said Clay Norris, Director of Planning at ElectriCities, which provides management services to NCMPA1. "The flexibility and intuitive user interface of ETPS is superior, and SoftSmiths has responded quickly and effectively to the needs of the Agency in this critical engagement.”

The Electronic Tagging Portal Suite (ETPS) provides virtually limitless scalability and availability. ETPS includes three components (e-Agent, e-Authority and e-Approval) and enables all entities (Control Area Operators, Purchasing/Selling Entities, Transmission Providers, Load Serving Entities, and Generation Producers) involved in energy delivery transactions to create, verify, approve and manage transactions electronically using the Internet as its platform. The ETPS software not only supports integration with SoftSmiths' e-Merchant and e-Wheel transaction and scheduling systems, including automatic tag creation, but also provides tight integration with legacy back-office systems.

"We welcome NCMPA1 to our growing customer base", said Hugo Stappers, Director of Sales/Marketing at SoftSmiths. "It demonstrates that our ETPS, as well as e-Merchant and e-Wheel Product Suites, are being recognized for providing a rich feature set and being intuitive, easy-to-use solutions that look at the challenges from a business perspective."

About SoftSmiths

SoftSmiths is a leading provider of proven business critical Transaction Management Systems and services for Load Serving Entities, Generation Production Entities, Purchasing Selling Entities, and Transmission Providers who operate in physical markets to sell, purchase, trade, and deliver energy in the most efficient and cost- effective way. SoftSmiths’ seamlessly integrated, scalable, and adaptable solutions provide ready-to-deploy, out-of-the-box functionality that is highly configurable and customizable to meet companies' unique needs. SoftSmiths' proven solutions and in-depth knowledge of the industry's business practices allow its customers to automate manual processes, eliminate redundancies, and increase business visibility across the enterprise to allow faster decision making and more informed decisions, thereby improving profitability, operational efficiencies and cash flow. The company has been successfully delivering e-business solutions to energy service companies since 1997.

SoftSmiths is a registered trademark of SoftSmiths, Inc.

Contact Information:

Softsmiths Inc.
Hugo Stappers
Phone:    713.626.9184
Fax:          713.626.0186
Email:      mkt@softsmiths.com
Website:  www.softsmiths.com

© SoftSmiths 1997-2004 - All Rights Reserved. Legal/Privacy