Sense Joins Itron’s Expanding Ecosystem of Distributed Intelligence Partners

LIBERTY LAKE, Wash. — Feb. 2, 2023 — Itron, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI), which is innovating the way utilities and cities manage energy and water, announced that Sense, whose mission is to reduce global carbon emissions by making homes smarter and more efficient, has joined Itron’s expanding ecosystem of distributed intelligence (DI) partners. Through the collaboration, the Sense Home Analytics application will leverage Itron’s proven, scalable DI platform to enable a new and innovative approach to improving grid resiliency and transforming the relationship between utilities and consumers.

Sense provides consumers a real-time engaging view into energy use in their homes. Sense technology uses high-resolution waveform data to detect devices in the home based on their electrical signatures and also connects to other smart home devices for control and automation. Through Sense’s mobile app, users can identify and track energy usage, get a better understanding of electricity costs and ultimately save money. The technology can also be used to detect appliance failures and performance issues, alerting consumers about maintenance or replacement before it occurs. Utilities and cities can benefit by having engaged consumers who are better able to understand and manage energy use in their homes with significantly improved participation in utility driven programs to help achieve demand flexibility.

The Sense application runs on Itron’s DI-enabled smart meters and takes advantage of Itron’s DataHub, a secure, scalable, cloud-based platform that makes data streams easily available to third parties with consumer authorization. This will allow consumers to seamlessly utilize the Sense mobile app without needing to purchase additional hardware. To date, Itron has shipped more than 5 million DI-enabled meters integrated with Itron’s DI platform.

“Taking advantage of Itron’s DI platform and DataHub, Sense and Itron are transforming the energy value chain by delivering predictive insights about homes, businesses and the grid to energy suppliers – while also strengthening the consumer relationship by providing true real-time visibility into what’s happening in the home,” said Don Reeves, senior vice president, Outcomes at Itron. “We are excited to expand our DI ecosystem by collaborating with Sense and giving our customers access to new and innovative approaches to solving critical challenges facing the world’s power grids and transforming utility consumer engagement.”

“Working together, Sense and Itron can achieve our goal of making homes smarter and more efficient by providing real-time energy experiences to all consumers. Through this collaboration, we are ensuring that grid modernization investments offer immediate value to consumers by enabling meters with consumer-facing applications to manage household energy and demand, optimize cost savings and reduce carbon emissions.” said Sense CEO Mike Phillips. “At Sense, our focus is to empower our customers to care for their homes while contributing to a cleaner, more resilient future. Leveraging Itron’s DI ecosystem, we can provide applications centered around a decarbonized future more rapidly than ever before.”

Itron’s robust DI platform allows innovators to build open, interoperable, value-driven applications on Itron’s secure platform which evolve with market and consumer demands. The DI development program enables an ecosystem of third-party developers to ensure a greater selection of applications to meet utility needs today and into the future. These applications are available via the Itron Enterprise Application Center, which features an increasingly diverse portfolio of Itron and third-party applications that connect to Itron's industry-leading, IoT-based network. The Itron Enterprise Application Center is the operational backbone for utility customers to manage applications for customers via a private, secure web portal. 

The Sense application will be available in the Itron Enterprise Application Center by the end of Q3 2023.