Echelon Wins Home Smart Metering Pilot Project

Wireless News
03-31-2011
Echelon Wins Home Smart Metering Pilot Project
Type: News

Echelon, a provider of electricity grid solutions and services, announced that its NES Energy Control System has been selected as one of five solutions in a 50,000 home smart metering pilot project by PermEnergo, part of the MRSK group, one of Russia's largest utilities.

Echelon reseller Engineering Center Energoauditkontrol was awarded a contract for networking 10,000 homes in a pilot project that is being monitored by the Russian government as a potential model for the country. With experience networking over 300,000 smart meter points in smart grid projects using Echelon's Networked Energy Services (NES) smart grid infrastructure system, Energoauditkontrol is a smart grid services provider in Russia. PermEnergo expects the pilot project to save its customers up to 20 percent of their electricity usage while lowering its operating costs and improving the overall efficiency of the grid. Installation is expected to begin over the summer and be completed by the end of 2011.
"This is an important step for Russia in establishing a successful working model for moving their national smart grid plans forward and an important milestone in Russia and U.S. cooperation," said Ron Sege, Echelon's CEO and president. "Russia's ambitious energy strategy is to establish a smart grid strategy that goes well beyond smart meters. This makes a strong business case for our solution, with an emphasis on reducing technical and non-technical losses, operational improvements, load management, and more responsive customer service."

The PermEnergo pilot project falls under a federal program called "Count. Save. Pay." This is a key part of Russia's plan for infrastructure modernization, and has attracted the personal interest of President Medvedev. The project is part of a smart grid initiative by Interregional Distributive Grid Company of Urals and Volga (IDGC URAL), the business that manages distribution companies for the Perm, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Kurgan regions of Russia. Over two million households are serviced by IDGC URAL companies.

The pilot project win follows closely on an early March Russian- American smart grid summit in the Kaluga region of Russia, where Energoauditkontrol presented their Echelon-based smart grid solution. The summit was a follow up to a meeting held in July 2009 between the U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev to open a dialog and establish contacts among smart grid companies from the two countries. Participants included representatives of city and regional administrations, FSI "Russian Energy Agency," IDGC of Center and Volga Region, the Regional Center for Energy Efficiency (Kaluga), and others. The U.S. contingent included representatives from the United States Energy Association (USEA), the American Association for the Advancement of International Relations (USAID), and Echelon. The summit discussed laws and regulations for the development of the smart grid in the U.S. and Russia, as well as continued a dialogue on economic and financial mechanisms to encourage investment in the technology of intelligent networks.

Echelon Corp. is leading the worldwide transformation of the electricity grid into a smart, communicating energy network, connecting utilities to their customers, enabling networking of everyday devices, and providing customers with energy aware homes and businesses that react to conditions on the grid.

Echelon's NES System - the control networking infrastructure for the smart grid - enables intelligent distributed control applications and devices that deliver maximum reliability, survivability and responsiveness. Through the Echelon Control System (ECoS) platform, the NES system enables any device, speaking any protocol, connected over any network to be integrated into local decision making and connected securely to enterprise IT systems through virtually any IP network. The NES System helps utilities compete more effectively, reduce operating costs, provide expanded services and help energy users manage and reduce overall energy use.

Echelon's LonWorks Infrastructure products extend the smart grid in to smart buildings factories, homes and other systems, powering tens of millions of energy aware, everyday devices made by thousands of companies - connecting them to each other, to the electricity grid and to the Internet. LonWorks based products work together to monitor and save energy; lower costs; improve productivity; and enhance service, quality, safety, and convenience in utility, municipal, building, industrial, transportation, and home area networks.

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