Smarter Utility

During a week when there was scuttlebutt that the United Kingdom was second-guessing its own smart meter strategy, industry product introductions and deployments continued apace—in China, Europe, and worldwide.

Silicon Valley-based Glen Canyon Corporation—a developer of innovative and economical AMR (automatic meter reading) and AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) platforms— has announced that it will deploy 1.5 million single-phase meters using its V-AMI (virtual AMI) system in China. This initiative will be executed in collaboration with Beijing Guozhiheng Power Management Technology Group (GZH Power Corporation), one of the authorized technology platform providers for the China State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC). V-AMI is an AMI-as-service business model in which up-front capital cost is replaced by a low monthly service fee. To offer V-AMI, Glen Canyon uses standards-compliant smart meters from NEXGEN Industries of Westminster, Colorado. The meters communicate via existing network infrastructure to NEXGEN Cloud meter data management software and browser-based applications.

While children are traditionally taught not to cry over spilt milk, in today’s world, water is an entirely different matter. According to the World Meteorological Association, managing water could be very important in the future, as an international response to climate change. Droughts rank first among all natural hazards and, during the past year, serious water shortages occurred in the Horn of Africa and in parts of China and the United States. Indeed, even in relatively good times, water management can be an expensive and complicated business. To address the problems that water utilities face, at the Smart Metering UK & Europe Summit 2012 in London last week, Raleigh, North Carolina-based Sensus introduced its new iPERL endpoint. The new iPERL delivers the capabilities of a smart water network, enabling utilities to: collect and share data to improve supply-demand management; monitor the system to reduce leaks and supply interruptions, as well as to control pressure and flow rates; and create operational efficiencies and reduce costs. Water utilities are inter-dependent within the energy business, with typically up to 20 percent of operating costs directly related to the cost of buying electricity to pump water. With rising prices making electricity an increasingly expensive factor in the cost of supply, Sensus identifies smart metering and smart water network management as the answer, which will enable time-of-day tariffs and sub-metering.

Dublin, Ohio-based Kentrox, Inc., a provider of site monitoring, management, and control solutions, recently announced the availability of its tower management module for enhanced site management. Due to the fast growth of tower providers, it has now become even harder to understand site conditions, especially when it comes to monitoring tower assets like access, commercial power, tenant power, generators, batteries, and tower lights. The Kentrox (News - Alert) tower management module offers specifically designed applications that will enable tower providers to meter, monitor, and manage multi-tenant sites. In a release, Ben Stump, Executive VP and CTO of Kentrox, said, "Understanding conditions at a tower site is often a challenge for tower providers, and knowing how to properly bill each tenant for actual energy consumption has been difficult. By adding the tower management module to their network, a tower provider can now ensure the tower assets are functioning correctly, be notified if issues arise, and accurately bill tenants for actual energy consumption."

San Diego-based On-Ramp Wireless —which provides wireless utilities monitoring that reduces costs, manages employees, and locates equipment for more efficient operations—has entered into a partnership with Shreveport, Louisiana-based ElectSolve, a global provider of smart grid data management solutions. According to the terms of the agreement, both the companies will join forces to provide a smart metering and critical infrastructure monitoring solution to cooperative and municipal utilities. On-Ramp will integrate its Ultra-Link Processing (ULP) wireless infrastructure system with ElectSolve’s uCentra meter and operational data management platform to come up with an easy-to-implement solution that will be able to reach all multi-service utility assets from a single wireless network. With the combined solution, the utilities will be able to provide service for electric, water, and gas smart meters; and distribution automation applications in overhead, pad mount, and below-ground circuits. Moreover, the solution will also provide a centralized platform that will enable utilities to manage, analyze, and report the operational data.

In related news, On-Ramp Wireless was recently selected as a 2011 Efficiency Awards winner by Greenbang, a UK-based smart technology and business analyst organization, for its Ultra-Link Processing (ULP) wireless communications technology. On-Ramp’s ULP, which won in the ‘Best Communications Technology’ category, has been successfully deployed within the smart grid and other applications for device monitoring in metro-scale and other challenging radio environments.