Southern California Edison Begins Full Field Deployment of OpenWay® by Itron
Itron plans to ship more than 4 million smart electricity meters
Washington, DC — GridWeek 2009 – Sept 21, 2009 — Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) announced today the start of full field deployment for its OpenWay advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solution to Southern California Edison (SCE), an electric service provider to nearly 14 million people in central, coastal and southern California.
By the end of 2012, Itron will have shipped more than 4 million OpenWay residential and small-commercial smart electricity meters.
SCE’s senior vice president of Customer Service, Lynda Ziegler, said that SCE selected Itron’s technology as a foundation for the utility to help its customers become smarter energy consumers. “We’re proud to launch this new generation of meters, providing customers with new options and information to help them better manage their energy use.”
These new digital, secure, two-way communicating meters will measure electricity usage up-to-the minute and, when fully implemented, will enable customers to track how much they use, and how much it costs them. As part of its Edison SmartConnect™ program, SCE plans to offer customers time-of-use rates, as well as peak-time rebates and critical-peak pricing programs—all of which are immediately supported within the new AMI system. Many of these advanced features and functionality will go into effect in the second half of 2010.
“The launch of Edison SmartConnect is a key step in transforming the electric system to a smart grid,” said Ziegler.
Meters from the newly installed population were commissioned to verify full system operation and smart grid support. The devices successfully registered, authenticated and were read interactively using Itron’s enhanced security architecture based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Encryption and key management appliances from Itron’s partner, Certicom, successfully secured end-to-end messages from the OpenWay Collection Engine down to end devices on the OpenWay system.
“OpenWay offers SCE a smart metering and communication system with advanced benefits and functionality,” said Malcolm Unsworth, Itron president and chief executive officer. “We are delighted that our technology can be foundational to a program like Edison SmartConnect, which is considered among the most advanced in the nation for its thought leadership and management. SCE is to be commended.”
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