Fred Fletcher, the Assistant Manager of Burbank Water & Power, just made a tough decision: which communications channel to use in deploying smart meters in the City of Burbank. In a wide-ranging interview with SGN, he described his situation and options. If you read on, SGN will give you the five reasons Burbank chose Wi-Fi.  

Why Smart Meters Now?

Burbank California has about 45,000 meters. About 200 commercial customers represent 75% of the load. Geographically flat (northeast Los Angeles,) it has a strong fiber backbone with substations almost every square mile. One hundred commercial customers already had real-time meters using legacy technology. Fred faced the issue of connecting the other 100 heavy-use customers.

Burbank has a state of the art power plant built in 2005, along with available power from hydro, coal and nuclear. Recent California state legislation required Fred to look at reducing green house emissions. He had never been able to justify purchasing smart meters based on replacing meter readers. With new legal requirements and the fact that his customers were consuming every kilowatt-hour of electricity he produced, he needed to find new sources for energy.

Enter demand response (DR.) Fred decided the best way to produce energy was to learn more about his customer’s electricity usage and to start programs that rewarded customers for energy efficiency. As he put it, “…AMR (advanced meter reading) never justified itself cost wise, but with DR, I now have the beginnings of a business case for smart meters. For me this was a Smart Grid decision, not an advanced metering decision.”

SGN Prediction: smart meters are the foundation for a Smart Grid, but utilities are looking beyond meters to the applications they make possible. Vendors should start positioning their products as part of a Smart Grid network and not just as a smart device. The devices will become commodities, but the network will keep expanding.

Considerations in Selecting Smart Meters

Fred had five requirements when he looked at his smart meter purchase: 

·         Open systems – a meter and communications platform that uses an open system reference model. He needed any new technology to ‘look & feel’ and interoperate with his existing DCS, SCADA and OMS.

·         Future proofing – seamlessly add new, interoperable technologies. His communications platform had to provide the necessary bandwidth to handle new data feeds from new applications.

·         Under glass – a meter that included its RF antennae inside the meter. This was important to him because he could do a ‘hot swap’ with one device when a meter needed replacement.

·         One antenna –communicate to housing appliances and to the substation with the same technology to lower the amount of internal hardware.

·         Control risk – avoid the "bleeding edge" with a communications platform that is reliable and can be installed incrementally with off-the-shelf equipment.

Primary Advantage with Wi-FI

In the end, Fred said that the most important consideration in choosing Wi-FI was the ability to have his line trucks outfitted with Wi-FI capability so that they could communicate with substations and meters themselves. He said this allowed his line crews to read the situation themselves and not rely on communication with the central office. This sped resolution of problems and higher customer satisfaction at a lower cost.

First Installation of Wi-FI in North America

In a further discussion with Henry Jones, the CTO of SmartSynch (the vendor for the project) SGN learned that the Wi-Fi communications platform had mesh capability with antennae located on street lamps. The meters installed do not have remote connect/disconnect but meters to be introduced next year will add that functionality.

Both Fred Fletcher and SmartSynch confirmed their belief that this is the first installation of smart meters with Wi-Fi capability in North America.

SmartSynch Press Release