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. 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. May 29, 2009 – Industry Update from Chartwell’s Smart Grid Research Series.
PPL maintains most comprehensive online energy management program
“Chartwell believes PPL’s online program, like many other if its programs, is a best practice.” "PPL Electric Utilities is a pioneer among large, investor-owned utilities when it comes to smart metering. It was the first large utility (aside from Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority) to implement advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) on a scale exceeding 1 million endpoints. In fact, PPL has installed about 1.4 million residential and commercial endpoints, nearly all customers. For its project, PPL installed Aclara’s TWACS, a solution that utilizes power lines for communication."
"Starting in 2002, PPL began its 2.5-year installation project, which was completed on-time and on budget. Yet, while the utility was receiving hourly interval data, it had no way to use data for new business applications. In 2005, PPL embarked on a project to implement a meter data management system (MDMS) that would serve as a repository for its metering data; perform validating, editing and estimating; and use the data for various analytic business applications. As a result, PPL chose Aclara’s MDM, which included several analytical tools."
"Among the many applications and benefits PPL is obtaining through its metering data, PPL stands as the only large utility that is offering all customers - small residential to large commercial - access to their usage information online."
"Both customers and CSRs have access to the interval data, although CSRs also get access to the billing data."
Kim Williams didn’t really think she would be studying pie charts and graphs on a regular basis. But several times a month, that’s exactly what she does when she logs into her Pennsylvania Power & Light (PPL) Energy Analyzer account website.
“Since I’ve started checking the site, we have lowered our costs substantially...,” says Williams. “
Williams is just one of the 47,000 visitors to the site the utility company receives each week. Since PPL has equipped each of its 1.4 million customers with new “smart meters,” and then rolled out their interactive Energy Analyzer in the summer of 2007, the number of users has increased by a whopping 800 percent. Since PPL Electtric Utilities introduced Energy Analyzer, nearly 20 percent of their 1.4 million electricity customers have explored the application to learn more about their electricity use. Many then used the information they found to spur changes in their consumption. In fact, PPL's web-site experience offers proof that, indeed, knowledge saves power.
NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that the city had started installing an automated water meter system that is intended to make the quarterly water bill a thing of the past, and not something to fear.
Mayor Bloomberg, Department of Environmental Protection Acting Commissioner Lawitts and Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication Commissioner Cosgrave announced today that citywide installation of automated water meter reading technology has begun. The new wireless equipment will end the use of estimated water bills, giving homeowners and small businesses more accurate and timely records of usage - increasing their ability to identify how they can conserve water and reduce water bills. The college town of Ann Arbor, Mich., home to the University of Michigan and well known for Wolverine football, is also home to a state-of-the-art water system that offers its 114,000 residents cost-of-service rates that are supported by automated meter reading (AMR). Ann Arbor’s holistic approach considers how water, storm water and wastewater operations interact to affect the functioning of the system as a whole. This basic approach has resulted in leading-edge improvements that have benefited customers.
My husband and I still have an extremely antiquated utility meter at our home, which is hidden inside one of our basement closets. As a result, if we’re not home, our monthly bill is a matter of guesswork on the part of Public Service Enterprise Group (did you know that’s what PSEG stands for!), which makes for some pretty bizarre fluctuations. Ah, the joys of living in a small town where infrastructure improvements usually reach last. (Sigh.)
I thought about this when I received a couple of news releases over the past few weeks from software company Aclara, which has developed several applications that let residential and commercial customers monitor and manage their energy bills.
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