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Initiative: ZigBee working with DLMS User Association

December 29th, 2009 No comments

Press Release

The ZigBee Alliance announced a liaison agreement with the DLMS User Association to collaborate on metering data compatibility.

The two groups will define a method to transport IEC standard DLMS/COSEM messages sending metering data through ZigBee Smart Energy networks. The result will expand ZigBee Smart Energy to support complex metering applications, and will provide utilities and energy service providers with a standard for a variety of Smart Grid energy management and efficiency programs and services.

“This is an opportunity to enhance the profiles of both ZigBee and DLMS in the eyes of our potential customers,” said Gyozo Kmethy, head of the DLMS Users Association. “DLMS already has other transport options available so the addition of ZigBee Smart Energy adds another compelling option.”

The agreement with the DLMS UA adds to a growing list of strategic relationships forged by the ZigBee Alliance with energy and international standards groups to expand global functionality for ZigBee Smart Energy.

“Our agreement with the DLMS UA is another important move to expand ZigBee Smart Energy’s position in the global energy markets,” said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance. “Utilities in Europe, North America, Australia and other regions are looking at ZigBee Smart Energy to deliver home area network connectivity to their Smart Grid programs.”

Categories: Initiatives, Zigbee Tags: ,

Deal: Alcatel-Lucent and Vodafone partner in Germany

December 29th, 2009 No comments

From coverage

Major European Telecoms Operators partner up to provide smart meter/smart grid services to German market. The companies will work together to develop an “extensive offer” for the German market meant to provide consumers with real-time information about their energy and water use. Both subsidiaries will market the offering as a managed service through their respective sales organizations.

The companies said the deal matches each firm’s core competencies. Alcatel-Lucent will provide its Smart Metering Management System, an IP-based software platform for real-time monitoring of utility meters, as well as services to help integrate the new smart meter services with an energy provider’s existing back-end systems, such as those for resource planning and data management. Vodafone will provide the communications connection between the smart meters installed at homes and Alcatel-Lucent’s metering management system. That connection will be provided over Vodafone’s network using either a fixed-line DSL or wireless GPRS connection, according to the release.

The companies said their partnership will enable German utilities to meet EU rules related to the smart grid, including the requirement to bill customers based on their actual energy usage (as opposed to flat rates) and the call for adoption of technologies to provide the “same open-access principles” that apply to the Internet today. The partnership has already inked at least one German deal, with municipal utility Stadwerke Pasewalk, to monitor and control its smart meters and integrate related systems. As part of the deal, Alcatel-Lucent will give the utility’s customers devices to monitor their energy use in real time.

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Categories: Deals, GSM Tags: ,

SFPUC Selects Aclara for Water AMI Implementation

December 29th, 2009 No comments

Press Release

The municipal water board in San Francisco has selected Aclara to provide an AMI solution for its’ 170,000 retail water customers.

The STAR Network system will send hourly consumption data to the SFPUC four times daily. Currently, most residential water meters in San Francisco are read once every two months and commercial meters are read monthly, with meter readers required to individually visit and read each meter manually. This labor intensive and infrequent process makes it difficult to detect silent leaks, which can result in significant water loss and high water/sewer bills for customers.

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OG&E Selects GE and SSN for it’s next pilot

December 29th, 2009 No comments
29.12.09
OG&E announced partners for it’s trial of smart grid technologies in Norman, OK in 2010.

GE will provide 42,000 meters, which will communicate using Silver Spring Networks RF Mesh solution.

OG&E undertook an earlier pilot of 6000 homes in Oklahoma City, also using SSN technology – information about this and the customers who took part can be found at
www.itsyoursmartgrid.com

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SP Ausnet Announces Partners for 680,000 meter roll out

December 29th, 2009 No comments

From google alert

Electricity distributor SP AusNet yesterday announced its partners in the rollout of more than 680,000 ‘smart meters’ to homes and small businesses across eastern and north eastern Victoria.

SP AusNet’s smart meter rollout is expected to commence over the coming months, which will see over 680,000 meters installed in Victorian homes by December 2013; with roughly 40,000 meters to be installed by the end of June next year.

Independent analysis performed for the Victorian Department of Primary Industries has shown that the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) program will deliver net benefits to Victoria of up to $700 million over the next 20 years.

Partnering with SP AusNet in the AMI program are: Landis+Gyr, GE and GridNet, UXC Limited, Electrix, Motorola, Unwired, eMeter, Logica, Accenture, Enterprise Business Services, and Geomatic Technologies.

WiMAX technology will be used to communicate electricity consumption from the smart meters back to SP Ausnet. WiMAX, (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), is a telecommunications technology that provides wireless transmission of data at speeds of up to 10 Mbit/s without the need for cables.

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CFE Selects Aclara TWACs for Implementation in Acapulco

December 29th, 2009 No comments

From newswires

Press Release

Impementation of Aclara TWACS PLC system for 90,000 residential and commercial customers by national electricity utility. Order includes option to purchase 90,000 more units if required. Main driver for implementation is to prevent non-technical losses.

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Categories: 10k to 100k, AMI, Electricity, PLC Tags: , ,

Essensium N.V. joins the Wavenis Open Standard Alliance

December 29th, 2009 No comments

Essensium N.V. has joined the Wavenis OSA

Essensium N.V., a fabless provider of low power System-on-Chip (SOC) solutions, today announced it has joined the Wavenis Open Standard Alliance (Wavenis-OSA), as a Participating Member, enabling them to positively influence the voting committees as the first semiconductor member, all the while continuing its partnership with Coronis S.A.S. to complete Coronis´ first Wavenis compliant SOC.

Wavenis is a leading edge wireless technology platform that was originally developed by Coronis to address the needs of Advanced Metering Infrastructures, wireless sensor networking and other M2M applications. In June 2008, Coronis gave the specification of Wavenis to the Wavenis-OSA (royalty-free), who now manages the Wavenis technology roadmap and standardization activities. Wavenis is currently installed in more than 4 million devices in the field around the world. The largest Wavenis network in operation covers 100,000 nodes and is the largest of its kind. The core of the Wavenis technology is its power optimized wireless communications protocol combined with an advanced sub-GHz RF transceiver.

In October 2007 Coronis joined forces with Essensium to develop its next generation wireless silicon platform. Essensium has a strong background in developing wireless low power System-on-Chip devices and used its expertise to develop a high performance low power transceiver that meets both Wavenis specifications and Coronis stringent design requirements. After extensive design and testing phase, a first production batch of silicon has already left the foundry as the start of a large production order.

Laurent Maleysson, Managing Director of Coronis stated: ¡°Thanks to the professional collaboration between our two teams, Essensium is helping us to successfully deliver the first Coronis Wavenis compliant SOC. This is a major step for us and will serve as the cornerstone for all our future offerings in target markets such as smart metering, home & building automation, alarm & security, industrial, environment, smart cities, medical, UHF track & trace and more.¡±

Essensium power optimized the Coronis wireless transceiver architecture and merged it with an innovative low power 32-bit RISC microprocessor into a single SOC solution. The embedded RISC controller runs a RTOS and the Wavenis communication protocol stack, while 1Mb of embedded memory is available for program code and data. This new Coronis SOC is going to replace the 2-chip current platform and its multitude of discrete components, resulting in a higher performance, lower cost and smaller form factor module to better fit a wide variety of metering and non-metering applications in a very competitive wireless landscape.

Johan Danneels, the CEO of Essensium, said: ¡°With the successful implementation of Coronis´ first Wavenis-enabled SOC, we see the opportunity and importance of taking a strategic position as a key player in the market and within the Wavenis-OSA, with the ability to influence Wavenis technology ensuring that semiconductor technological capabilities are adequately taken into account.”

Implementation in Arizona by Salt River Project

October 23rd, 2009 No comments

From googlemap

SRP serves over 925,000 customers with electricity and water in metropolitan Pheonix.

Originally were deploying a low power radio (900 MHz) to concentrator solution based upon Elster’s Electricity AMR infrastructure. 300,000 smart electricity meters installed as at July 2008. Running at 10k per month.
Company product guide here

In early 2009, Landis+Gyr won a $52m contract to supply 300,000 meters to SRP as part of a three year contract.

Landis+Gyr said the deal expands Salt River’s M-Power prepay program with the delivery of 300,000 AMPY Pay-Smart meters and related communications solutions.

Landis+Gyr said the AMPY Pay-Smart system can be configured to operate in one of four different modes — credit, credit with in-home display, wireless prepayment or critical peak pricing-demand response.

“The flexibility we build into our solutions enables this one-to-one approach when utilities define and manage the delivery of energy,” said Jonathan Elmer, CEO of Landis+Gyr Ampy Solutions.

“Together, Landis+Gyr and SRP share a vision of easily managed and adaptable business models which support consumer choice and empowerment, and we are proud that SRP has chosen to expand their relationship with us as their solutions partner.”

Landis+Gyr said Salt River’s M-Power customers, on average, experience an annual reduction in household energy consumption of about 12 percent, or 1,750 kilowatt-hours. More than 59,000 Salt River customers currently use M-Power, and another 10,000 customers per year are expected to be added during each of the next five years, according to Landis+Gyr.
Picture of Elster meter being installed:


Press Coverage:
EVliving.com Electric Light & Power

Markets:

Implementation by VKG Elektrivõrgud OÜ in Estonia

October 23rd, 2009 No comments

From notes

VKG Elektrivõrgud OÜ is the 2nd largest distributor in Estonia, serving 10% of the 1.34m population of the country.

Following pilots in 2000, and the introduction of retail competition in 2002, VKG Elektrivõrgud OÜ have undertaken an AMI solution for 35,000 customers in and around Narva.

The solution has been provided by the ADD group of Moldova. Its’ ADDAX IMS solution uses PLC to backhaul equipment in MV/HV substations, supports in home displays and prepayment.

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Deal: Itron and Accent

October 23rd, 2009 No comments

From Coverage at Smart Grid Blog

Itron has selected Accent to supply a developed integrated circuit for its OpenWay CENTRON smart meter product line.

The design will integrate ARM Cortex-M3 processor technology, a complete ZigBee wireless solution (RF, baseband and protocol stack), as well as an LCD driver and on-chip embedded flash memory to deliver best-in-class performance, highly reduced BOM and lowest system cost.

Powerful processing capability combined with broad range analogue, digital and RF hardware peripherals will enable a single processor core solution for communication, control as well as user application software, thus eliminating the need for multiple processors while significantly reducing power consumption, the company explained.

Categories: Chips, Deals Tags: ,