Leading meter manufacturer and network gear supplier Elster continues to plot a solid course as it maneuvers the competitive waters of the global smart grid market.  Headquartered in Essen, Germany, the company has deployed more than 80 instances of its EnergyAxis smart grid system, as well as 5 million AMI endpoints (across electricity, gas and water utilities), and has gained a reputation for industry-leading security.

During the company’s recent four-day conference in Pinehurst, North Carolina, Ed Myszka, newly-appointed president of Elster Solutions, emphasized the flexibility of the company’s technology, noting how its new REXUniversal meter platform has a software-upgradeable radio that allows for remotely changing the communication protocols, thus eliminating the need for a truck roll and helping avoid a situation of stranded assets. Myszka added that Elster fully embraces open standards for interoperability.

During breakout sessions, various customers highlighted their experiences with metering technologies: Jay Heaman of Woodstock Hydro in Ontario, Canada, noted in frustration that when his utility moved to smart meters it had to remove popular pre-pay meters because regulators said the meters lacked the necessary higher standards; Idaho Falls Power’s Mark Reed said his utility is on track to begin testing this fall of gear installed as part of the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project; and Pam Athon of Arizona Public Service said APS has embarked on the largest EnergyAxis deployment in the world. Among customers there was some grumbling, which is to be expected.  Most of the utility people I spoke with, though, are generally satisfied Elster customers.  And, refreshingly, at one point an Elster executive admitted to problems in the past (no specifics), which is a sign of a mature company.  What company doesn’t make mistakes?

One of the highlights for me was a factory tour in Raleigh, where Elster workers crank out up to 100,000 meters – both residential and commercial – per month.  I met a woman there named Dora Johnson, who will retire next year after 40 years.  The plant also was evidence that not all manufacturing jobs have moved to China or other offshore locations.

Elster has a clear vision of the smart grid, combining all of its skills in meters, network infrastructure and software solutions for electricity, gas and water.  But it faces challenges from meter rivals like Itron, GE and Sensus that likewise have solid competing products.  And while Elster leverages many of the best minds in the industry who congregate in the Raleigh-Durham region, so can these rival competitors.  Bottom line: A formidable player that has its act together, but must stay hungry.

The deployment of smart water meters remains a slow-moving segment of the smart grid market when compared to smart electric meters, but recent moves by various water utilities are somewhat encouraging.  In the last few weeks, the following announcements highlight coming activity for this often under-the-radar segment:

• Thames Water – Britain’s largest water and sewerage company – will extend its smart meter and smart grid trial from the town of Reading to the city of London.  Thames Water and SmartReach (a consortium comprising Arqiva, BT, BAE Systems Detica and Sensus) have been testing a long-range radio based network for communicating with water meters in Reading.  By extending the trial to London, Thames and SmartReach aim to assess how such a system works in a much larger city environment with different types of housing stock, where meters are often located in difficult-to-reach areas such as meter pits, cellars and basements.
• Kennebec Water District in Maine is moving to full deployment of smart meters for its residential customers. Over the next 10 years, Kennebec will deploy Sensus’s FlexNet advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) across its service territory, and replace bronze-body water meters with lead-free Sensus iPERL models in approximately 7,800 homes.
• The City of Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, Canada, and the public utilities commission have won a grant of $101,470 from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to test what effect smart water meters have on residential consumption patterns and attitudes toward conservation. The city will install approximately 500 smart meters in randomly-selected homes and then analyze data from those meters over the two-year trial timeline.

While all three of these programs should be seen as encouraging signs for the metering industry, the fact remains that smart water meters lag deployments for smart electric and gas meters.  Trials are still quite common, and deployments tend to come in smaller spurts.

Simply put, smart water meters lack some of the big drivers surrounding electricity and gas meters.  Pike Research’s most recent report on smart water meters, Smart Water Meters, explains why.  It notes that in the U.S. at least, stimulus money for projects has dried up, and many water utilities lack the capital to invest in the more expensive meters on their own.  So, they take a slower approach.  Also, many utilities lack the staff and skills to handle the increased volume of data that comes once smart water meters are installed. Moreover, regulators have been less aggressive in mandating smart water meters compared with electricity.

Clearly, smart water meters are the future as costs moderate over time and the know-how to implement them broadens and deepens.  But expect the rate for deployments to be more of a slow and steady trickle, not a fire hose.

Using a public cellular network for managing smart meters got a big boost last September when Michigan utility Consumers Energy chose SmartSynch to provide the new advanced system for its 1.8 million electric customers. The partners in this project were announced recently, and one of them is Grid Net – a San Francisco-based startup and a champion of cellular-based technology for utilities.

Grid Net has been hanging around this space for several years, but without a major U.S. win to build upon – until now.  As part of SmartSynch’s team, Grid Net’s software will be a key component of this deployment.

The other partners in this project besides Grid Net include:

• GE Energy – which will provide the meters themselves
• Qualcomm – which will provide the broadband chipsets that enable cellular connectivity in the meters
• Verizon Wireless – which will provide the communications network

Soon after the partners were announced, I spoke with Scott Truitt, Grid Net’s marketing director, who told me why he thinks his company’s machine-to-machine network operating system is superior to mesh-based systems:

• Flexibility that allows for either gradual deployments of devices and applications or full rollouts, depending on a utility’s needs
• More robust communications over cellular networks than mesh can provide
• Greater intelligence on every device in the system, not just at the head-end
• Higher value applications for advanced metering (AMI), demand response load control (DRLC), distribution monitoring and control (DM&C) and premise area networking (PAN)
• Comprehensive security throughout the system that is government-grade and not a partial solution

Truitt also mentioned this won’t be the first big rollout for Grid Net.  The company is already part of a similarly large AMI deployment in Australia by Ausgrid, which is rolling out 1.6 million meters and using a 3G-4G cellular network.  Grid Net has also been involved in a separate utility deployment in Australia with SP AusNet, and is taking part in two other trials in that country.  But clearly, the Consumers Energy deal is a defining achievement for Grid Net in the U.S. market.  The first meters are scheduled for installment in August 2012, with a phased approach through 2019.

As a side note to this project, there is a reasonable chance another meter manufacturer could enter the picture in addition to GE Energy, given two factors: one, the length of deployment over seven years, which is plenty of time for Consumers to warm up to a different vendor (or two) later on, and the fact that SmartSynch itself has been acquired recently by meter-maker Itron.  Just speculation at this point, of course, but it should surprise no one if Itron meters are eventually involved.

The bigger question is how this deployment proceeds for Grid Net and its partners.  Competitors will be tuned in to see if a large-scale residential deployment over public cellular can muscle in on the traditional mesh turf.  My hunch is this will succeed.  Consumers is a smart utility and has no doubt done its homework.  Partners Qualcomm and Verizon are solid as well.  All will have to execute to prove their worth in the smart grid market.

What do you think?  Submit a comment below to let me know your thoughts on how viable cellular networks are (or are not) for major residential smart grid deployments.

Cable giant Comcast has a new deal to collaborate with cloud-based solution provider EcoFactor in a bid to move further into home energy management (HEM) and disrupt the role utilities have been trying to play in this space.  The two companies will roll out a new service, integrated with Comcast’s existing Xfinity Home offering, aimed at helping customers reduce energy use and save money.

The core technology from EcoFactor uses data from a home’s “programmable communicating thermostat” (PCT) and learns the heating and cooling patterns of the home’s residents over time.   Once patterns are established, the system makes automatic and incremental adjustments to the thermostat based on real-time weather data, thermal attributes of the house and the residents’ temperature choices.  Once the system gets familiar with user preferences it works to optimize energy use and save money while still keeping the house comfortable.  At any time, the homeowner can override the thermostat.

EcoFactor CEO Roy Johnson says his company’s whole approach is to lower a customer’s energy bill with no impact on comfort.  While not guaranteeing a specific savings amount, the expectation is that a homeowner might save 10% to 15% on energy consumption.

The partnership with Comcast will enable the company to penetrate the home service market even further with its PCT offering and data analytics capability.  Comcast will also benefit from this partnership, by taking advantage of EcoFactor’s impressive data management capability.  Today, the company processes over 4.4 trillion points of data every month for every 1 million PCTs, making 15 billion adjustments to them (including load shifting for demand response events).  It collects ten data points every 60 seconds about the internal home environment, such as current temperature, HVAC condition and status, and more.  Similarly, it acquires ten data points about the external conditions, such as temperature, wind speed, humidity level, cloud cover, etc. from the National Weather Service.  Another plus is that since EcoFactor’s technology is agnostic, a home service provider like Comcast can install any brand of PCT of its own preference.

Clearly, Comcast sees an opportunity to forge a stronger bond with its broadband customers by offering the EcoFactor system along with other Xfinity Home services for security and home control.  Like other multiple system operators (MSOs), such as Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, and Cox Communications), Comcast wants to seize the opportunity to bundle home energy management with its cable and networking solutions, thus doing an end-run around utilities, many of which have been doing HEM system trials but have had little success in moving to large-scale deployments.

Details on when the new EcoFactor service becomes available and pricing won’t be announced until later this year.

The EcoFactor solution nicely complements what Comcast is already offering, but we don’t see a huge uptake by consumers any time soon.  It will take time for Comcast and EcoFactor to get their offering to market, and for the number of customers to scale.  But this partnership should help move HEM out of its doldrums.