Discover how our new, integrated platform simplifies the user experience by combining diverse functionalities in a unified view. Learn about its rapid value realization and cost-effectiveness, by streamlining the integration and deployment processes. We'll explore the new possibilities enabled by our new platform, including advanced use cases, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning applications, and robust security features. Don't miss the opportunity to see how our platform, set to launch at Inspire, can transform your operations by quickly enabling advanced analytics capability for business value.

Many utilities currently lack real-time visibility into the secondary distribution grid network. Having this visibility is critical as the grid gets more dynamic due to the increasing penetration of EV charging and solar generation, and as you are asked to extract more out of existing grid assets. In addition, having continuous awareness of your device’s electrical connectivity in relation to other grid assets provides the ability to monitor and control your secondary distribution network. Through the Transformer Awareness Bundle, distributed intelligence applications such as Active Transformer Load Monitoring, Active Transformer Voltage Monitoring, Location Awareness and Virtual RTU/DNP3 Gateway provide real-time information and detection of distribution transformer events (specifically loading and voltage), enable ADMS management and protection of distribution transformers, minimize repair costs and enhance reliability, resiliency and predictability. Learn how utilities are monitoring their transformers in real-time and gaining valuable, actionable insights.

The business case for smart lighting is clear with cities deriving significant cost and energy savings by upgrading to LEDs with controls. However, building the business case beyond lighting looks different for every community. Learn how cities and utilities of all sizes are exploring ways to address problems such as congested roadways, aggressive carbon reduction mandates, high energy costs, and lack of visibility and control across city infrastructure. Many cities and utilities are adopting IoT sensors and solutions that can effectively address these problems by expanding on smart lighting network platforms, giving them a head start in this digital transformation. Join this session to hear insights and strategies cities are using today to enable the realization of a smarter, more connected, and sustainable future.

The grid is becoming increasingly dynamic and complex — and our customers are on the forefront of this evolution. While some utilities have established smart metering programs already, others are newly embarking on the grid edge and distributed intelligence by reinventing their meter-to-cash solutions. Attend this session and hear perspectives from utilities in various stages of their distributed intelligence journeys to better understand how they justified the value, developed strategies, prioritized use cases, evaluated applications and began executing their deployments.

Streetlights are more than just sources of illumination, they are valuable assets with significant financial implications for municipalities and utilities alike. As the trend toward municipalization continues to grow, understanding the true value of your streetlight infrastructure becomes increasingly crucial. In this session, we will explore the multi-faceted process of calculating the value of streetlight poles, examining how municipalization affects this valuation. We'll address common perceptions, such as viewing lighting as a sunk cost, and discuss why a more nuanced approach is necessary. Attendees will gain insights into the various factors that contribute to the valuation of streetlights, from initial installation costs to ongoing maintenance and operational efficiencies. Join us to uncover practical strategies for maximizing the value of your streetlight assets and ensuring sustainable, cost-effective lighting solutions for your community.

Key discussion points will include:

• Effects of Municipalization: Understand the financial and operational impacts when municipalities take control of streetlight infrastructure.

• Valuation of Streetlights: Learn methodologies for accurately assessing the value of streetlight poles as infrastructure to support smart city applications.

• Strategic Collaboration: Discover best practices for successful utility-city collaboration to extend lighting and smart city benefits throughout the community.

• Utility-as-a-Service Model: Explore the benefits and challenges of utilities serving as the lighting maintenance contractor, providing streetlighting as a service to municipalities.

Presenters will share updates on the globally adopted DLMS/COSEM meter communications protocol standards and the initiative to produce a Generic Companion Profile (GCP) specifically for North American utility business processes and use cases.  Learn about the industry-wide benefits of adopting a secure, standards-based approach to accelerate the path to greater meter diversity, achieve consistency of use case support across vendors, and reduce the cost of equipment specification, qualification and validation. Further, simplifying equipment and application interoperability unlocks possibilities to adopt a broader range of multi-vendor industrial IoT solutions for grid edge intelligence, smart cities, behind-the-meter assets and much more.

Amidst the growing complexity of metering systems, the need for efficient and accurate testing is paramount—specifically for distributed intelligence applications. This session explores various approaches to testing distributed intelligence agents which demonstrates a professional methodology, quality agents that work the first time when deployed, the diversity of use cases DI can address and how the collaboration and partnership between utilities and solution providers is key to the energy transition. In addition, this session will highlight the broader implications of these advancements for the metering industry and a glimpse into potential future enhancements in automated testing methodologies.

Discovering and addressing potential safety concerns on your low-voltage distribution network is paramount. Having visibility into issues associated with outages and fires, energy theft and hot sockets can prevent catastrophic situations. Through the Safety Bundle, distributed intelligence applications such as High Impedance Detection, Meter Bypass Detection and Active Temperature Monitoring detect and locate poor electrical connections, discover meter tampering and energy diversion, and use high-resolution temperature readings to detect meter socket problems, respectively—all before they create a safety hazard or interrupt service. Learn how utilities are decreasing customer outage minutes, minimizing repair costs and field visits, and ultimately ensuring customer safety and satisfaction with distributed intelligence applications.

Using data from an AMI system and devices at the edge provides utilities better methods for managing their grids.  As more non-linear, variable demand and distributed generation sources penetrate the distribution network, managing the dynamic voltage conditions at the edge has become more challenging than ever. This session presents how utilities can use the ability to more frequently capture AMI metrology data from their GenX AMI system and operational analytics tools to make adjustments in the distribution network as part of an active voltage management solution, ensuring grid resiliency, optimizing capacity and resource management, and improving emergency response and energy efficiency.

Utilities are under increasing pressure to act to ensure their critical infrastructure is ready to meet future grid modernization, resilience, security, and clean energy requirements. Foundational communication networks play a key role in helping utilities to meet these challenges while also mitigating technology risks, increase customer satisfaction, and improve operational metrics. Join this panel of industry experts as they explain the fundamental building blocks and stages in successfully building out private wireless broadband and multi-carrier networks. It’s clear that flexible networks will be required to support required increased data speeds, capacity and security needed to operate modern, safe, and resilient utility infrastructure. Learn more about private LTE utility use cases and how utilities, technology vendors and carriers are working together to accelerate the evolution to private wireless broadband.

As utilities decide between public and private cellular networks to expand coverage and ensure operational continuity, this session will focus on Verizon’s ability to address issues that are top of mind including:

o Advanced Cellular Network Planning

o Visibility of Cellular Connected Devices

o Network Prioritization & Quality of Service for Utilities

o Verizon Frontline

o Device Certification process

o & MORE!                 

Hydro One is proactively preparing for the energy transition by adopting grid edge solutions, with a focus on distributed intelligence. Hear about results and lessons learned from their testing and how they used a phased approach with multiple environments to validate business value and to inform their technical and business designs for large-scale deployment of DI applications. Learn about key findings on this experience based on their small-scale “distribution model” in a metering lab used to test DI apps and their real-world lab environment of 500 customers (the opt-in “myEnergy Connect” program) which includes a second in series meter at each premise that is utilized for innovation. In addition, attendees will hear about results related to the customer experience. 

Join this session to learn more about Itron’s Intelligent Connectivity network strategy and how it provides a foundation for the future of connectivity for utilities and cities. We are transforming the scalability of deployment and maintenance of tens of millions of cellular devices and hundreds of millions of mesh-connected devices. Intelligent Connectivity leverages hybrid combinations of advanced multi-carrier, vendor-agnostic eSIM technologies for comprehensive connectivity and device management and seamless network operations for a wide range of devices, including electric, water, and gas meters, DER gateways, load control switches, and networked lighting controllers. Presenters will discuss how to balance network reliability and resiliency with cost by combining private LTE and public MNOs, ensuring robust performance for multiple use cases. Learn how our innovative approach can help you manage and scale your operations efficiently, setting the stage for a smarter, more connected future.

Itron’s commitment to sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices is core to how we create a more resourceful world. We have a holistic approach to sustainability, which is embedded in all areas of our business. Our solutions help our customers and end users save energy and water resources. Come see how the solutions you are already using are helping you on your journey to be more sustainable and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You will also learn how our new solutions can further accelerate your sustainability initiatives. 

ComEd (Exelon), an electric utility, provides access to its fully built-out industry level, secured AMI network to the gas utilities, Peoples and North Shore Gas (WEC Group). This allows 1.2 million gas meters to gain the benefits of AMI technology without the investment in time and money of   building out a separate single-use network. Multi-purpose networks such as ComEd’s, which contains ComEd’s AMI electric meters and smart streetlights, alongside an external natural gas utilities’ smart gas meters (in addition to   external municipality-owned smart water meters) are both a novel and an efficient solution in the modern communities these utilities serve. A year into this partnership, the two distinct utilities have established a variety of protocols for managing the deployment and the successful communication of smart gas meters on ComEd's AMI mesh network. With almost a quarter of a million gas endpoints deployed to date, day to day operations and   collaboration between the two utilities is crucial to managing the   partnership. The operations aspect involves two separate companies with their own data access and data visibility, institutional field knowledge, and two different work management processes. This session will focus on the   application of a range of radiofrequency remediation solutions to reinforce and strengthen the mesh network, including but not limited to socketAPs, relays, smart streetlights, MPACs, as well as upcoming devices such as the   streetlight microAP. Troubleshooting devices like the FSU and IMR are also within scope. The partnership is founded on collaboration using such technologies, data management, and deployment strategies, as steps are taken   to move to steady-state operations. 

Come hear PG&E  talk about their “Socket of the Future” initiative and how it is driving a fundamental change in the way PG&E thinks about when, where and why to invest in the capabilities of their AMI system. This session will provide an overview of the specific use cases that are driving this change, including their EV Connect program and PG&E’s vision to deploy Riva meters and Distributed Intelligence applications on a use-case driven basis.

Utility SCADA solutions are critical to keeping the grid operating at its maximum availability, but these systems rely on communications systems that connect the head end to sensors, reclosures and other distribution elements to enable a reconfiguration of the distribution grid. Many utilities rely on cellular communications (public and private) to enable the required connectivity. The challenge is that cellular networks were never designed to maximize availability but rather only considered resiliency as secondary to mobility. One way to address the low availability (~99.9%) of cellular is to leverage the emerging GSMA eSIM standards which enable access to multiple public and private networks. Join this session to hear how Eversource is exploring adding fallback connectivity to a primary cellular network, enhancing overall communications availability, as network outage events are often independent random processes. The added redundancy to the one or more fallback networks has the potential to improve network availability by and order of magnitude.

Part of improving Customer Experience includes taking effort out of interactions and allowing our customers to get more value out of the relationship with Itron.  We appreciate the feedback that customers provide and want to ensure you know that we are listening.  Attend this session to learn about some of the top initiatives to address key improvement areas pointed out in our annual survey. This session will focus on delivery, lead times and response times for quotes and contracts.