Itron Announces Major Delivery Milestones

LIBERTY LAKE, Wash. — January 25, 2010 — Today, Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) announced two major delivery milestones for both its legacy CENTRON® electricity meters, as well as electricity and gas end points for its smart grid platform, OpenWay®.

To date, more than 30 million CENTRON meters have been shipped to utilities throughout the world. Introduced in 1998, Itron’s first-to-market electronic residential meter secured the company’s market leadership in digital meters and automated meter reading (AMR) systems—a cumulative market share of nearly 50 percent in North America and 30 percent globally. The unique flexibility of the CENTRON solid-state platform offers utilities the best in metering technology, proven to easily and affordably expand as business needs change.

Coinciding with this milestone, Itron also announced the shipment of 1 million OpenWay units. The shipments support several industry-leading utilities’ smart grid deployments including CenterPoint Energy (Texas), DTE Energy (Mich.), San Diego Gas & Electric (Calif.), Southern California Edison (Calif.), and Glendale Water and Power (Calif.). Itron smart grid technologies are demonstrating how built-in, high-speed two-way communications give consumers more information about their energy usage, allow utilities to offer their customers greater choice in rate plans, and provide higher reliability at lower cost.

After attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Itron president and chief executive officer Malcolm Unsworth stated, “There is now overwhelming recognition for the need to address how we’ll protect our dwindling resources and secure our energy future. This delivery milestone, and the benefits our customers are experiencing, validate that Itron is well-positioned to lead utilities in addressing the new water and energy reality.”

The market adoption rate of OpenWay has already doubled the adoption rate of the CENTRON. Itron has shipped as many units in half the time, proving strong industry demand and adoption of smart grid technologies.

The delivery milestones are made possible by expanded manufacturing capacity for OpenWay meters in South Carolina, which was recently recognized by the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Energy as an innovative clean energy manufacturing project. The acknowledgement came as part of President Obama’s announcement awarding $2.3 billion in Recovery Act Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for clean energy manufacturing projects across the United States.

Concluded Unsworth, “It is gratifying to see this momentum and acceptance of OpenWay from customers and the administration. Three years of diligent research, development and testing are coming to fruition in the form of increased manufacturing and shipment levels. This is an exciting time to be a part of this industry, and there’s never been a more opportune moment for Itron to be leading it.”