metering

CenterPoint Energy’s natural gas distribution business will install Itron advanced metering technology across the utility’s six-state service territory by the end of 2015. Communication modules to nearly 1.3 million gas meters have already been installed in parts of the company’s service territory in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. Upon project completion, 3.3 million communication modules will be installed in these states as well as Arkansas and Mississippi.

The City of Georgetown, Texas, chose Elster’s EnergyAxis for its system-wide, multi-utility meter replacement project. Georgetown will deploy Elster's EnergyAxis solution throughout its service territory and install 21,000 each of Elster’s water and electricity meters.

Commonwealth Utilities Corp. (CUC) in Saipan ordered two-way electric meters with Nighthawk communications technology. The meters are expected to enable a pre-paid metering system to improve collections and cash flow. CUC also expects the meters’ voltage monitoring to provide better information about system status in remote locations.

Lower Yellowstone Rural Electric Association signed an agreement to deploy Gridstream PLX, Landis+Gyr’s power line carrier system for advanced metering and grid management. L+G says Gridstream PLX provides greater data capacity than legacy PLC systems, for delivering 15-minute interval data continuously from each meter on the network. Sidney, Mt.-based Lower Yellowstone REA is a cooperative serving residents of northeastern Montana and parts of North Dakota. The deployment is scheduled to begin this spring.

Echelon was selected to provide smart grid systems for the Smart Grid Gotland project, a large-scale, technology demonstration on the island of Gotland, Sweden. The project is sponsored by a joint venture between Vattenfall, Gotland Energy, ABB, Swedish National Grid, Schneider Electric, and the Royal Institute of Technology, and and is partly financed by the Swedish Energy Agency. Echelon will provide its edge control node, its control operating system (COS) -based application platform, and 3,000 advanced grid sensors, which also provide smart metering functionality.

IBM was selected to operate Independent Electricity System Operator Ontario’s meter data management and repository (MDM/R) system with new computing infrastructure and an updated operating environment. The five-year, $68.5 million contract includes options to extend to seven or 10 years. Under the agreement, IBM will develop the overall performance of the MDM/R through new computing and networking infrastructure, disaster recovery capabilities, and operational improvements to reduce risk and costs.