Pioneering the Future of Grid Edge Intelligence at DISTRIBUTECH 2024

A huge thank you to our customers, partners and industry leaders who recently joined us in Orlando, Florida for DISTRIBUTECH 2024. It was an important week for Itron in all aspects – new brand on display, new product offerings and new partnerships revealed. We especially appreciated the opportunity to connect with colleagues, the insightful sessions, innovative demos and collaborative ideas shared. Here’s a summary of the key highlights, including the news about key industry partnerships.  

To kick off the conference, our president and CEO, Tom Deitrich, welcomed attendees on the keynote stage where he discussed the “new neighborhood” and the convergence of dynamic forces within the industry and across the globe that are driving the need to modernize the grid. The increasing amount of distributed energy resources (DERs), microgrids, photovoltaic (PVs) solar and electric vehicles (EVs), showing up in utilities’ service territories in combination with extreme weather, cybersecurity attacks and other factors, are creating an enormous amount of pressure for utilities to maintain reliable service delivery. While there’s more stress on the grid than ever before, grid edge intelligence gives utilities the ability to understand, control and optimize assets across the grid. What once was a matter of balancing supply and demand has evolved into a highly complex challenge for utilities everywhere, which is exactly what intelligence at the grid edge can help address. 

Attendees were invited to visit Itron’s booth to experience the new era of Itron’s grid edge intelligence solutions. Our booth, which was bustling and full of energy from start to finish, displayed our distributed intelligence (DI) applications, intelligently connected industrial IoT networking, smart city solutions, smart gas and water solutions, the Itron Enterprise EditionTM and Itron Optimizer solutions, to name a few. We also unveiled our Active Transformer Load and Voltage Monitoring (ATLM/ATVM) applications to the world, which provide utilities more visibility into the low-voltage distribution grid. 

 

A major area of focus at this year’s DISTRIBUTECH was the increasing influx of EVs on the grid. For transportation electrification to continue accelerating at its current rate, the barriers for EV charging deployment need to be removed for utilities and the end consumer. Below is the EV that was on display in the Itron booth in addition to Itron’s EV solutions, which ensure that charging assets work in harmony with the grid. Itron’s focus is on managed charging, which ensures end customers manage their charging costs while utilities protect the grid.  

 

Attendees were invited to explore the possibilities of Itron solutions and technologies firsthand through the Itron Experience. Each person was asked to “Choose Your Own Grid Adventure” and watch the impacts of their decisions unfold on the electric grid. The demo included EV Awareness, Grid Edge Management, Location Awareness, Active Transformer Load Monitoring and the DER Optimizer. See the Itron Experience team in action below.  

 

Itron had the chance to facilitate meaningful discussions and engaging presentations with customers. Pictured below, Con Edison’s Elizabeth Cook joined Itron’s Rebecca Hussey and Tim Claes to discuss our collaboration toward a more sustainable future and the role that environmental social governance (ESG) plays in achieving a more resourceful world. Itron also presented alongside Commonwealth Edison and Eversource to discuss the value of distributed intelligence and the wide variety of use cases it can support. On day two, Itron facilitated insightful sessions with Tampa Electric Company, CenterPoint Energy, Sentient Energy, CORE Electric Cooperative and the City of Chicago on topics ranging from networked distribution automation for enhanced reliability and efficiency to carbon reduction through streetlights.  

At DISTRIBUTECH 2024, we were delighted to share what the future holds for our recently announced collaborations with industry leaders GE Vernova and Schneider Electric, which focus on data integration to enable greater visibility at the grid edge and optimization of DERs. A related topic of discussion was the growing importance and role of distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) to assimilate renewables. Although consumer-driven sustainability efforts like EVs, solar, battery storage and more are necessary to navigate the evolving DER landscape, utilities need to proactively address their impact on the grid. Through our collaborations, we are enabling cities and utilities to manage all the new flexible loads entering the grid while improving grid stabilization and reliability, power quality and conservation efforts. 

It was refreshing to spend time collaborating, exchanging ideas and sharing solutions to utilities’ most pressing challenges. The excitement around the transformation happening in the industry was palpable. Join us next year to do it all over again at DISTRIBUTECH 2025 in Dallas, Texas!