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Glendale Water & Power's (GWP) smart grid project ranked among the highest in the country in a survey of 93 utilities. It won the highest customer score of all smaller utilities and among the highest scores for all utilities involved in the survey. The utility is in the midst of a $70 million smart grid project to replace all electric and water meters with smart meters.

Survey findings showed GWP's project achieved the highest level of maturity of all utilities in the areas of strategy, management and regulatory, and organization and structure. Overall, GWP's maturity level is more advanced than most and the utility was recognized as a pioneer in its development of a corporate level smart grid strategy.

Glenn Steiger, GWP general manager, said "As utilities are all underway to modernize their electric grids they have to strike an appropriate balance between all the hype and the real progress they are making. Findings from the Smart Grid Maturity Model and the Software Engineering Institute help utilities determine their progress and where to focus their efforts on achieving their goals."

The SGMM is hosted by the Software Engineering Institute with support from DOE.

GWP's metering project is intended to give customers access to in-home displays, Web portals and other tools to manage their energy use, support integrating new power sources, improve power quality, provide pricing options, improve data acquisition to reduce outage frequency and more.

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