Itron has signed with Lubbock Power & Light (LP&L) to deploy smart electricity meters and management software to improve service for around 107,000 electricity customers in Texas.
The move will bring LP&L up to speed with most other utilities in the state. The new equipment – comprising Itron’s OpenWay Riva meters and subscription software – will enable LP&L to eliminate manual meter readings and improve billing accuracy.
Customers will be able to track and manage their electricity usage and usage patterns. Itron will manage network operations, endpoints and cloud infrastructure on LP&L’s behalf. The solution will improve outage management and service reliability with the ability to pinpoint outage locations, send automatic alerts to customers and restore power more quickly, said Itron.
The city and state will be able to combine with the local utility to hang smart city applications in the future off the Itron network.
Greg Taylor, electric utility board chairman at LP&L, said “The metering technology currently employed by LP&L passed its relevant life decades ago. With the implementation of advanced meters, LP&L will join the vast majority of our fellow Texas utilities in providing our customers more information and control over their energy usage.”
Sharelynn Moore, senior vice president of networked solutions at Itron, said: “LP&L will have access to real-time information about its electricity distribution network to improve outage management and deliver more responsive service to customers. It will be equipped to implement smart city applications in the future to help address growing energy demand.”
Itron works across utilities. It signed a contract with the Tampa Electric Company to connect and make ‘smart’ new LED street lights in the West Central Florida district last month. Tampa Electric will install more than 260,000 Itron smart photocells in the next five years, according to Itron. The new photocells bring connectivity to the lighting network.
It struck a deal with the Texas city of Waco and the local Waco water utility at the end of 2018 to install 45,000 modules and 12,000 leak sensors in combination with the same Riva IoT solution. The utility will be able to improve ite operational efficiencies by access to detailed consumption data and insights, said Itron.
Nevada-based NV Energy is using Itron to upgrade its demand response management system for improved load management capabilities and enhanced cybersecurity. Itron has migrated the Nevada utility from its legacy Comverge load management system to its own cloud-based solution.
The company has also signed recently with Brazilian utility Elektro to deploy its Gen5 network in three cities in the state of Sao Paulo, and with Conelectricas, a group of four electricity cooperatives in Costa Rica.
In February, it started work to certify devices under the Wi-SUN Field Area Network (FAN) 1.0 programme. It follows fellow Wi-SUN leader Cisco to have its products passed by the Wi-SUN Alliance. Itron’s Bridge 5-WS product was the first to gain certification.
