04/06/2009 by David Slade.

NES Benefits Flash

Overview of the complete NES System
Reduce costs, improve operations, and generate new sources of income.

The NES System benefits every aspect of your utility’s operation — from metering and customer services to distribution operations and value-added business. We offer an unparalleled return on investment with a payback period for most utilities ranging from two and five years.
Direct Benefits

Metering

The NES System:

* enables completely automated scheduled reads of electric, gas, water, and heat meters
* allows real-time, on-demand reads
* eliminates most meter-reading costs for both scheduled and unscheduled reads, due to wage, insurance, equipment, office space, and vehicular cost savings

Customer Service

The NES system:

• reduces billing errors, complaints, and inquiries, as well as call center staff and related costs

• extends the use of flexible tariffs (available to commercial accounts) to residential customers, allowing new tariff structures to be remotely downloaded into meters, such as:

•   time-of-use pricing
•   critical peak pricing
•   real-time pricing
•   prepayment without card

• offers remote connect and disconnect features — useful in high-turnover environments such as apartments — that:

• eliminate costs associated with manually managing service connections

• increase customer satisfaction through improved response times

Distribution Operation

The NES System’s detailed per-meter supply quality statistics, broad load-profiling capabilities, and extensive provisions for theft detection enable:

• load-balancing of meters and transformers
• improved energy forecasting and conservation
• blackout and brownout prevention
• comprehensive revenue protection

The system also:

• rapidly detects outages

• verifies service restoration while field crews are still in the area

Operating

The NES system:

• eliminates re-bills caused by incorrect reads or data entry errors

•   eliminates the need for estimated bills

•   improves cash flow by reducing read-to-bill turnaround and uncollectibles

• reduces unnecessary services calls and field investigations through remote monitoring

• enables load shedding to manage peak energy use by controlling the direct load of appliances such as air conditioners, pool pumps, and water heaters

Regulatory

The NES system offers:

• power quality reporting for any subset of meters or service areas

• historical as well as on-demand outage and connection reporting for accurate calculation of service quality

• remotely configurable meter-reading capabilities by time, period, or service area to comply with changing regulations

Value-Added Benefits

Since the NES System is built on open, internationally recognized standards using existing infrastructures, your utility can add new devices over time — anywhere within the electricity network — using the same communication infrastructure already installed for electricity metering.

Products such as thermostats, boilers, appliances, air handlers, lights, and load control modules based on our LonWorks technology — the backbone of the NES system — are available from thousands of manufacturers worldwide. By adding communications and control over these devices, utilities can offer their customers or partners a number of benefits and services, such as:

• remote monitoring and control of in-premise devices such as thermostats and appliances

• predictive warranty services

• consumer use reports

Posted in Lonworks, Networked Energy Services (NES) System, Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), metering | Print | No Comments »

04/06/2009 by David Slade.

The NES System is the cornerstone of the smart grid

Echelon’s Networked Energy Services System is the first, fundamental step for utilities seeking to update their metering infrastructure. The NES System provides utilities with:

• A metering infrastructure that delivers core services such as:
  • Automated meter reading
  • Outage detection
  • Theft and tampering detection
  • Very accurate data collection
  • The industry’s highest level of reliability
  • Extensibility from 10,000s to millions of customers
• An open service infrastructure with an ecosystem of software, hardware, project management, and service companies with expertise in extending the NES System to meet any existing or future competitive or regulatory need.
• Future-proof hardware and remote firmware upgradability built into the meters.
• The ability to use any existing WAN backhaul including GPRS modem, WiMAX, BPL, and others.
• A smart grid backbone for:
  • Residential and light commercial demand response
  • Seamless connection to the home area network (HAN)
  • Wired or wireless (such as Zigbee or 6LoWPAN) connectivity to energy-aware products

Elegant System Architecture

The NES system consists of a tightly integrated set of components that provide the infrastructure to deliver networked energy services to your utility. The system architecture includes intelligent, communicating digital electricity meters; powerful IP-connected data concentrators; and scalable system software.

Posted in Lonworks, Networked Energy Services (NES) System, Automatic monitoring and targeting (aM&T), Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) | Print | No Comments »

04/06/2009 by David Slade.

One crucial aspect that sets advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) apart from automated meter reading (AMR) is two-way communications between the utility and residences. That level of communication is intended, in part, to help all consumers participate in energy management and efficiency programs. But how does that two-way communication reach beyond the electricity meter and into a consumer’s home?

Several standard technologies exist that consumers are familiar with in their home. Two that consumers are most familiar with over the last decade are Wi-Fi and broadband over cable. These technologies are well suited to carry huge amounts of audio and visual data, but are far more powerful and expensive than what is needed for utility communications at any individual residence – regardless of home size.

Another technology reaching consumers in their home and finding great acceptance in the energy industry is ZigBee® wireless networking. ZigBee is a global wireless language that connects different, often everyday devices to work together. It is built on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networking standard, in much the same way that Wi-Fi is built on the IEEE 802.11 standard. The core benefit of ZigBee is that it is designed for situations that need to communicate small amounts of data while using less energy to transmit that data.

ZigBee supports energy management and efficiency mainly by connecting a utility to an in-home network typically comprised of ZigBee-enabled devices, including appliances, thermostats, water heaters, pool pumps, and more. This network of ZigBee devices is easy to connect and allows users to customize and monitor their energy consumption in an environment where devices communicate to each other and can connect to the outside world to enable remote access and control either by the utility, a third-party service provider or the customer.

As a global, open standard, ZigBee enables interoperability between numerous devices. Open standards like ZigBee provide everyone in a market a common point of reference to build upon. This way, utilities and consumers gain a competitive marketplace for products and services. Vendors like meter and thermostat manufacturers benefit, because open standards create a competitive semiconductor marketplace in which they can purchase wireless networking ZigBee chips, also known as ZigBee Compliant Platforms.

The ZigBee Alliance is a global ecosystem of technology companies creating wireless solutions for use in energy, home, commercial and industrial applications. ZigBee Alliance members work together to develop public application profiles for various applications to foster device interoperability, regardless of manufacturer. ZigBee certification and compliance tests ensure ZigBee solutions offer reliable and robust wireless networking.
Only ZigBee has multiple suppliers providing the core technology used in wireless solutions for home, commercial and industrial applications. Companies join the ZigBee alliance for access to the best intellectual property for their products. The ZigBee Alliance is five years old and has 250 member companies.

The Alliance and its members continue to deliver energy management and efficiency solutions. In November, the alliance released its ZigBee Home Automation public application profile. Completion of ZigBee Home Automation paved the way for a rapid completion of a planned profile for advanced metering and energy management. Last month, an array of vendors gathered in San Diego to test the interoperability of their devices running this new profile, to be known as the ZigBee Smart Energy profile.

Posted in Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), ZigBee, metering | Print | No Comments »

04/06/2009 by David Slade.

AMI solution and utility dashboard released

SAP’s advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solution, AMI Integration for Utilities software, and a packaged dashboard developed in cooperation with enterprise document presentment solution provider StreamServe that displays cost-to-serve modeling and related carbon emissions impact, are now generally available, the company has announced.

AMI Integration for Utilities links sales, service and billing processes within SAP’s Customer Relationship and Billing for Utilities package to the capabilities of AMI technology.

With the availability of AMI Integration for Utilities, SAP also announced significant progress in the business integration of smart meters in the core processes of utility companies. The solution enables the efficient acquisition of metering data through meter data unification and synchronization systems and the management of bi-directional communication processes between smart devices and SAP® Business Suite software.

The packaged dashboard provides utilities with the ability to monitor their costs to service their customers, modeling how to reduce these costs and the related environmental impact with reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.

“The plan to revolutionize the nation’s electric grid will demand a serious commitment to upgrading the way utilities and consumers interact with one another,” said David Laker, senior vice president and general manager, Utilities Practice of SAP America, Inc. “These developments reflect our commitment to that goal as well as helping the nation’s utilities find ways to run leaner and more efficiently.”

“Based on established benchmarks, these solutions enable utilities and their customers to improve cost efficiencies and become far less reliant on the earth’s resources,” added Dennis Ladd, president and CEO of StreamServe.

Posted in Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), metering | Print | No Comments »