meterpedia.com

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.

From press release

eMeter have signed agreements with Vattenfall of Sweden and Electralink in Great Britain for possible deployments of the EnergyIP Meter Data Management product.

MDM supplier eMeter has formed a consulting arm – eMeter Strategic Consulting (ESC). ESC will provide strategic consulting services to a variety of metering and demand response industry participants, including utilities, regulatory agencies, and technology companies.

“ESC fills a niche that focuses on high-level strategic issues but requires intimate technical and practical knowledge of these specialty areas. These strategic areas include long-term technology strategies to avoid obsolescence, industry standards, regulatory policies, business process and change management considerations, and, above all, technology and program risk management.”

With its focus on new areas of strategic and regulatory interest, ESC is distinct from and complementary to various firms now providing advanced metering business case consulting, market assessments or technology evaluations. Instead, ESC plans to partner with such firms via subcontracting or other arrangements when client needs extend into the strategic or regulatory arenas. ESC is structured to operate independently of eMeter’s meter data management software and software implementation business.

Coverage

From googlemap and  press releases

Working with SmartSynch to install up to 45,000 residential and 6,000 business smart meters using the municipal Wi-Fi. Using smart water meters from Itron, electricity meters featuring Trilliant communications modules.

Overall ‘smart grid’ budget is $70 million.

Using eMeters EnergyIP as MDM, and may use EnergyEngage as the home portal/display solution.

Have applied for $20m in stimulus grants to support the project.

From google alert Coverage

Bluebonnet Electric has selected Control4 to provide the HAN elements of its’ smart metering implementation.

“After an extensive search process that included several product demonstrations, Bluebonnet chose the Control4 Energy Management System for its ability to provide up-to-the-minute information about energy usage and price that our members can use to manage their monthly electric bill,” said Mark Rose, Bluebonnet CEO. “Control4’s EMS-100 combines an easy-to-use touch screen with a flexible and expandable system at a reasonable price. These features will enable Bluebonnet’s members to be better consumers of energy and help us achieve our cooperative goal of a 20 percent reduction in system load by 2020.”

Also included in announcement is use of eMeter for backend solution, and Silver Spring Networks for communications.

From press release

Electralink have chosen eMeter’s EnergyIP solution to be part of their Smart Meter Data service proposal to support the future British Smart Metering market.

EnergyIP will process smart meter interval data as well as events such as new customer registrations, and communicate them in real-time or as needed to UK market participants.

From old site

eMeter’s EnergyIP MDMS will be used to capture 15 minute usage data provided by the smart meters and route home area network commands. The new metering technology is a key step in CenterPoint’s upgrading of its electric system to a Smart Grid. It will encourage greater energy conservation by giving Houston-area electric consumers the ability to better monitor and manage their electric use and cost in near real-time. CenterPoint Energy has conducted extensive testing and has seen excellent results from smart metering technology through a pilot deployment of smart meters that began in late 2006. EnergyIP has been used in that initial deployment. EnergyIP will also provide outage and restoration event services to support the CenterPoint Energy’s Outage Management System as well as electric service connection and disconnection, which should reduce the time required for customers to have new electric service connected or to switch REPs.

Itron announced that the start of full field deployment began on March 1 2009 for its OpenWay smart metering solution at CenterPoint Energy’s electric transmission and distribution utility. Itron’s recent initial shipments of OpenWay devices will eventually culminate in 2.4 million smart meters being installed by early 2014.

OpenWay residential and commercial smart electricity meters and accompanying wide area network relays were successfully tested using Itron’s enhanced security architecture based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). The system’s encryption and key management appliances successfully secured end-to-end messages from the OpenWay Collection Engine down to end devices on the OpenWay system.

The system is also utilizing multiple open standards, such as IP, SOA, XML, WSDL, American National Standards Institute C12.22, ZigBee, and GPRS, to enable strong, secure communications and integration. Itron’s commitment to a standards-based approach ensures CenterPoint Energy’s system is fully extensible to support additional security mechanisms the industry may require in the future.