Smart meter data management: Elster snags Salt River Project

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Quick Take: Given the successful rollout of Elster's smart meters and communications, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based firm was the natural choice when Arizona's Salt River Project was ready to expand into meter data management for its 900,000 endpoints.

Take a moment to glance at the benefits the utility is touting for the smart meters. It's good to see that utilities are getting smarter about explaining all the different benefit streams. And in putting them in terms the public can easily relate to. – Jesse Berst

Arizona's Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District (SRP) will deploy Elster's MDM solution to manage more than 900,000 smart meters planned for the utility's territory. The MDM solution means better energy management and operations for the utility and goodies for customers too, like flexible pricing options and new services that cut costs and energy use.

SRP, the third largest public power utility in the U.S., has been installing Elster's Energy/Axis® advanced meters in its service area, and has been so impressed with their performance that it's bringing in the company's EnergyICT MDM and energy management solution to manage the advanced metering system and expand the utility's smart grid.

For utilities, the benefits of the Elster AMI deployment have been the ability to remote address service orders, save more than 400,000 hours of labor and substantially cut driving time and fuel costs for crews. The MDM deployment will add the intelligence for SRP to make better informed energy management and pricing decisions, streamline operations and more.

SRP says customers also win with enhanced customer service, flexible pricing in the form of time-of-use and new services that mean cheaper power bills and less energy consumption. The MDM implementation is underway now, and is expected to be completed in July of this year.

Jesse Berst is the founder and chief analyst of Smart Grid News.com. He consults to smart grid companies seeking market entry advice and M&A advisory. A frequent keynoter at industry events in the US and abroad, he also serves on the Advisory Council of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Energy & Environment directorate.

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