Aclara Vice-President of Business Development Andy Zetlan discusses with other industry experts the revolutionary developments that are driving consumer engagement strategies at utilities. “If you build it, they will come” has proven a risky strategy for some smart grid projects. One of California’s largest investor-owned utilities faced the opposite challenge—customers whose behaviors necessitated a smarter grid. Customer involvement in and support for smart grid plans is a major reason SDG&E’s smart grid efforts continue to garner accolades, including the 2012 POWER Smart Grid Award. Dave Steidtmann explains how Aclara’s fixed network AMI solution saves water, saves money, and improves customer service.
June 6, 2012 – Waterefficiency.net
21st Century Technology
Innovation Transforms Leak DetectionAclara's STAR(r) ZoneScan leak detection system is featured in this article, with Product Manager Dean Slejko getting the lead-off quote.
Consumer engagement meets leak detection in this article about how Aclara can help water utilities get the most value out of AMI.
June 1, 2012 – Metering International
A Tale of Two Utilities
The cities of Ann Arbor, Michigan and Washington D.C. couldn’t be more different in terms of location, population and ambiance.The cities of Ann Arbor, Michigan and Washington D.C. couldn’t be more different in terms of location, population
and ambiance, but have improved billing and customer service with the STAR Network AMI system.
The STAR® Network provides the data New York City needs to track how much water every customer uses – and inform them when the numbers spike from a possible leak. United Illuminating's online system helps customers understand energy use and make informed usage decisions. The utility implemented specialized software from Aclara to help customers understand energy use, lower their electric bills, accommodate time-of-day rates and reduce call-center volume. After three years, Kansas City is nearing completion a massive project to install automatic water meters, equipped with STAR Network MTUs, to about 165,000 customers.
The new meter program will allow a move from 60-day billing to 30-day billing next month and should enable customers to track their daily water use and leaks.
April 1, 2010 – Strategies AESP Newsletter (Association of Energy Services Professionals)
Empowering customers with AMI data can drive energy efficiency
How we present the data makes a difference.Karen Flathers, General Manager of Aclara Software Inc., is featured in the April 2010 AESP monthly newsletter, "Strategies." The article, "Empowering customers with AMI data can drive energy efficiency," marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day with a look at how AMI is delivering better information to both customers and utilities to improve customer service and utility operations. Wi-Fi for the home energy network? So far, the world of the energy-sensing and controlling home area network (HAN) has been dominated by ZigBee, the low-power wireless technology that is being included in many of the smart meters now being deployed in North America. But there’s a growing number of home energy devices looking to good old Wi-Fi to get the networking job done, and smart meter maker Aclara joined that group this week.
The division of Esco Technologies said it was working with Intwine Connect to deliver a Wi-Fi home area network to utilities. The Wi-Fi Alliance said last week that it would work with the ZigBee Alliance on a new version of its smart energy profile, indicating a path for Wi-Fi networks to mash up with evolving smart grid standards.
Florida Power and Light’s voluntary load-management program, On-Call®, which allows the utility to turn residential customers' appliances off when needed to reduce load in exchange for a bill credit, employs Aclara’s TWACS technology demand-response solution. July/August 2009 – Water Utility Infrastructure Management
Advanced Metering
Accurate Meter Reads are Just One of Many MeritsAvant Marketing Group in Olivette secured $25.2 million in stimulus funds for two of its clients and and ESCO Technology’s Aclara unit expects to indirectly benefit from some of its clients sharing the funding.
Whether handled by legacy systems or third-party products,
data collection and access capability has been a staple of the
utility industry for years. Modern-day meter data management
systems, however, have crossed into territory that has reshaped how utilities are able to assemble, dissect and act upon gigantic volumes of information.
November/December 2009 – Water Efficiency Magazine
Measuring and Managing
Making Sense of Implementing New Metering TechnologyUtility managers representing diverse customers such
as investor-owned utilities PPL Electric Utilities and APS, and large rural utility Umatilla Electric Cooperative, are meeting this week at the headquarters of Aclara Software Inc. in Wellesley to kick off the Aclara MDMS Working Group. July/August 2009 – Water Efficiency
Metering and More
How Leesburg, VA, Slashed Water LossesThe Leesburg Department of Utilities learned first-hand that modern versions of automatic meter reading (AMR) lead to greater efficiency and conservation. Its wireless, fixed-network metering system helped cut unaccounted-for water from approximately 15% to 7%.
Fixed-network metering was part of a larger, multi-dimensional campaign that helped Leesburg reduce unaccounted-for water from a high of 23% to 3%. It was a smart conservation move that made the utility more accountable to our citizens, our customers, and our town leaders.
Aclara announced its strategic alliance with Firetide Inc., a provider of wireless infrastructure mesh networks. Aclara is developing a revolutionary wide-area network (WAN) for utilities based in part on Firetide's technology.
What is described as a revolutionary, mesh-based wide area network (WAN) for utilities has been introduced by intelligent infrastructure solution provider, Aclara.
The Aclara Smart Communications Network, which is designed for use by gas, water, or electric utilities, is a high bandwidth, standards-based, broadband solution that will bring together existing utility assets and applications into a single network.
August 7, 2009 – Metering International E-News 11 August 2009
Pepco Holdings to deploy energy management software for customers
Software applications present real, actionable information to customersPepco Holdings Inc. is to deploy Aclara’s load and rates analysis and carbon footprint calculator modules to help customers understand how they are using energy as well as how their usage affects the environment. |