Pepco Holdings opts for GE’s smart meters

Electric utility Pepco Holdings, Inc., (PHI) has chosen GE’s smart meters for use in the deployment of its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in the state of Delaware.

Installation of the GE meters is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2009 in Delaware.

PHI has chosen to work with GE at a stage when the utility is working on its vision of changing the relationship with its customers.

Joseph M. Rigby, president and chief executive officer of PHI, said with new digital smart meters and the smart grid, PHI’s utilities will be able to provide up-to-date energy information and tools that will help its customers manage their energy use and costs.

Communications technologies within GE’s smart meters will also help PHI detect and better respond to power outages, further improving the energy experience for PHI consumers.

Related links: Utilities, Advanced Metering Infrastructure, Smart Meters

Enabling consumers to know how their behaviour affects energy consumption

Energate has introduced a new solution in Consumer Connected Demand Response (CCDR).

This solution, according to the company, will enable utilities to engage their customers and deploy technology which will integrate seamlessly with AMI and the smart grid as it is built.

It builds from advanced in-home consumer options and supports multiple communication technologies from the home to utility load management software.

CCDR offers a variety of options for utilities and their customers, including ZigBee Smart Energy profile certified smart thermostats, load control switches, energy display, and web portal; communication options (broadband connectivity, FM digital radio, and support for AMI interoperability); utility application options (load management systems including one-way direct load control or two-way DR).

Commenting on the CCDR solution, Niraj Bhargava, CEO, Energate said: "It is an ideal offering to let utilities deploy Demand Response today, while building their smart grid infrastructure for tomorrow."

"Energate's strength in AMI interoperability and in-home devices gives the utility peace of mind that short term DR benefits are supportive of long term smart grid strategies."

"Smart Grid is not a fad; smart is the future of the electric grid"

A survey featuring utilities in North America has indicated that there is clearly an increasing regulatory acceptance of AMI and a need to ascertain how a smarter grid will improve utility services for consumers.

The North American utility industry is now facing growing political, societal and regulatory pressure to produce energy with less environmental impact and to help consumers use energy more efficiently. To meet this challenge, industry regulators are beginning to consider the role of a Smarter Grid, stated Capgemini, as it released the results from the first Smart Grid and Renewable Energy opinion survey of energy regulators across North America.

The findings were as follows: 38 percent of respondents already have regulations that require an AMI deployment, an additional seven percent reported that they are allowing deployments without regulations, while 22 percent report additional analysis is either underway or required; 48 percent of respondents favor the recent formation of the NARUC-Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Smart Grid Collaborative, while an additional 31 percent felt more time is needed before they can judge. Eighteen states have already joined the Collaborative.

The Capgemini survey was conducted in conjunction with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and Canadian Association of Members of Public Utility Tribunals (CAMPUT) in an effort to develop a comprehensive perspective on Smart Grid and renewable energy policy in North America.

"Smart Grid is not a fad; smart is the future of the electric grid," said Frederick Butler, president of NARUC.

Even as regulators are clearly intererested in Smart Grid and increased energy efficiency, they are not certain that the benefits outweigh the cost for customers at this point: Commissioners have not yet formed a consensus about the values of AMI (the cost of AMI may exceed direct operational savings causing regulators to rely on case-specific filings not general industry valuations); Most regulators are not ready to share the real-time costs of energy with all classes of customers: More than half (51 percent) of the respondents do not support real-time pricing for all customer classes and only nine percent do.

"Utility regulators are in the very early stages of an education and valuation process," said Roy Ellis, energy, utilities and chemicals regulatory relations leader at Capgemini.

Ellis added,"In most cases, this process is a complicated effort to view a cleaner more efficient grid through a prism of existing laws, regulations and market dynamics that were designed to promote the rapid expansion of a least-cost, highly-dependable grid using carbon-based fuels. Interestingly, the speed with which both renewables and the smarter grid take hold may be the result of a growing political belief that a rapid move to clean energy is necessary, and the only way to make the move quickly is with an equally rapid enablement of a Smart Grid."

Itron joins interoperability programme

eMeter has shared that Itron, a provider of AMI solutions, has joined its IntegratedMDM SM Programme.

The purpose of eMeter's IntegratedMDM Program is to foster closer cooperation and interoperability between eMeters EnergyIP and AMI technologies.

Larsh Johnson, CTO, eMeter said with the capabilities of AMI systems evolving so rapidly, this programme is designed to provide utilities with assurance that if they select a participating AMI technology, the technology will operate with the EnergyIP MDMS now and in the future.

Under the programme, each of the AMI companies independently agreed to cooperate in the integration of their AMI technology with the EnergyIP software.

The eMeter IntegratedMDM program consists of the following elements:

· Interoperability. Enabling eMeter's MDM to interoperate with the participating AMI technologies.
· Independence of MDM and AMI Systems. Creating open, independent MDM that allows utilities to select from the participant's offerings now and in the future.
· Integration Planning. On-going development cooperation and release planning between eMeter and the AMI companies covering existing and future functionality.

Itron joins Iskrameco, Silverspring Networks, Current Technologies, EDMI, Eka Systems, Elster, Landis+Gyr, Sensus and Trilliant as the newest member of the IntegratedMDM programme.

Gainspan and Grid Net to offer a smart grid HAN

Gainspan and Grid Net are developing standards-based Smart Grid connectivity that offers easy Home Area Network (HAN) access to utilities deploying AMI solutions using Grid Net's PolicyNet NMS.

GainSpan is an embedded Wi-Fi semiconductor company providing a low power single-chip solution.

According to the two companies, Grid Net's broadband smart meter HAN interface, coupled with GainSpan's ultra low-power chips that leverage the widely-deployed Wi-Fi infrastructure, will enable programmable, connected devices (such as thermostats and smart appliances) to optimise the control, delivery, and usage of power.

Over time, the companies plan to extend these capabilities to enable intelligent gas and water metering.

According to Ray Bell, CEO, GridNet, the "combination of GainSpan's ultra low-power Wi-Fi chips and GridNet's leading Smart Grid software and firmware enables utilities to benefit from cost-effective, secure Smart Grid home energy management solutions".

PG&E opts for Landis+Gyr as one of its primary AMI suppliers

Landis+Gyr has signed a four-year contract to supply a major portion of the planned deployment of more than five million advanced electric meters to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).

The San Francisco-based utility plans to deploy Landis+Gyr Focus advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) meters to empower residential and small business customers in Northern and Central California.

Landis+Gyr's electric meter contract is part of PG&E's SmartMeter programme. Through this initiative, PG&E is rolling out advanced metering technology to its entire customer base, including over four million natural gas and five million electric customer accounts. As per the information available, this $1.7 billion deployment ranks as one of the largest ever undertaken in the US.

The company added that some of the services and products under the agreement are contingent on regulatory approval as part of PG&E's SmartMeter Programme Upgrade.

PG&E recently began billing a portion of its customers on data collected through its SmartMeter automated metering infrastructure. This data has been consolidated and validated using the meter data management solution provided by Bloomington, MN-based Ecologic Analytics, which is part owned by Landis+Gyr.

Evaluating the role of IT tools in automatic electric meter installation

smartelectricnews.com Special

Consumers are being proactively approached for the activation of programmes, in which they control electric consumption costs any time from their homes.

One such initiative was recently taken in Sweden, where Telvent completed the automatic electric meter installation for Vattenfall.

During the “Amrelva” project installation phase, Telvent acted as the main meter supplier by providing 600,000 of the 850,000 total meters, and allowed Vattenfall to bill all of its clients through remote reading of electric consumption. This real-time technology offers a benefit like reduction in billing errors, apart from increasing customer satisfaction.

Utilities like Vattenfall intend to transform their power grid by making electrical distribution more efficient, economical and secure, in addition to, in this particular case, permitting the electric company to comply with Swedish legislation requirements aimed at reducing energy consumption through performance and demand response.

The operational and maintenance phase, also managed by Telvent since 2006, is to be completed by 2011, with a six-year extension option.

Commenting on projects where consumers control consumption costs, Ignacio Gonzalez-Dominguez, Executive Vice President of Telvent’s Energy division told smartelectricnews.com that the technology exists today to make these programmes a reality.

The industry now has the tools, expertise, solution suites and finally experienced integrators to execute small pilots or large deployments such as Vattenfall’s AMI programme including 600,000 smart meters, communication and data infrastructure.

“Utilities will respond to customer demand for options and flexibility as consumers of electricity. Utility investors will demand the robust and stable distribution grids to deliver their product. And customers will become proficient in managing usage that can lead to efficient utilisation of exiting power distribution assets,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

On challenges in shaping up the project, Gonzalez-Dominguez referred to project management and IT tools as the main considerations.

“(It is significant) to have the right partners with clear and effective communications with the overall system integrator and the customer,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez. During the project, Telvent implemented very intensive control, weekly detailed reporting and regular meetings through all stages of the project, looking for ways to improve and quickly mitigating problems in the roll-out plan.

The IT tools in place to track, report and execute the plan, are equally important.

“In a large project like this, with so much material involved, so much customer data to manage and dispatch, it is mandatory to have the IT tools minimise the possibility of human error in the process. For example, the technicians were dispatched with PDAs used to electronically communicate a clear sequence of instructions to follow at each installation site. All this information was sent to the installer as a final outcome of the different work flows generated by utility and system integrator systems, and customer information. The up-front development of these interfaces has been an important part of the project’s success,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

Telvent also highlighted that it is very important to define clean-up procedures, check lists and field technician commentary to facilitate early detection of potential problems during the rollout phase while the technicians are still in the field. With a comprehensive set of clean-up routines and the PDA tools to support the installation, the company was able to avoid costly delays and additional field visits that can destroy the deployment plan.

Specifically, on factors taken into consideration while installation, Gonzalez-Dominguez said the two main factors contemplated in the project were: roll-out & logistics and system performance.

In the first one, rollout and logistics, of critical importance is the pre-planning in each geographical zone where the meters were to be installed. This planning demanded accurate customer data, specific installer work orders and route plans, equipment, specific meter types and tools needed to efficiently execute the plans in a timely fashion.

The second critical consideration, system performance and design had to insure a reliable network capable of automatic communication and detection of all meters as they came on line. During the roll-out phases of the project, Telvent’s applications monitored the system in parallel with operations to optimise data flow, ensure integrity and most importantly to validate and confirm performance targets were being met.

“Today, the system is achieving performance levels exceeding 99.70 percent,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

When planning a large AMI deployment, it is important to understand the need to define a very precise set of installation routines and related system support.

“Once those routines are defined and validated and the system is ready to accept the remote meter data, the attention must shift to thorough training of the installers and verification of the entire process in a pilot phase. An important milestone is created from the pilot to verify the system and process and make modifications before going into massive rollout,” said Gonzalez-Dominguez.

The AMI network management system plays a key role, with a single interface allowing operators to monitor progress, field devices as they are commissioned and overall system performance on a real-time basis for each geographical area. A powerful AMI management platform and its integration with other utility systems will be key to a successful and uneventful installation.

Work flows between both the work order management and meter data management systems is critical in feeding the overall AMI network management system with validated and high quality data in real-time, according to Telvent.


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