EPB should be ready before year’s end to buy the control system for a meter system that would allow people to do such tasks as control their power use while they’re away from home, an official said.
Vancouver, Canada-based Tantalus Systems Corp. will supply software and communications equipment to operate EPB’s planned smart meter system, said David Wade, senior vice president of EPB’s electric system.
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EPB will sign a contract before year’s end to buy the control system for smart meters. The meters will be purchased and installation will begin this spring at homes that sign up to test EPB’s cable television service.
“They’ll provide the software, which we can use with different meters, so we’re not stuck with only one meter (brand),” he said.
The hardware and software will cost about $900,000, said Danna Bailey Cannon, EPB vice president of marketing.
EPB will sign the contract within the next few weeks, Mr. Wade said. EPB has not yet selected a meter manufacturer, he said. Hardware and software costs per meter should be about $117.
The meters will interact with the smart grid fiber-optic system the utility is installing in its service area. The meters will allow power customers to use a computer to monitor and adjust their power use while they’re away by controlling such items as the thermostat.
The meters will communicate with EPB every 15 minutes to update the utility on power use and report any outages. The meters will be used for billing, and EPB also will know if anyone is tampering with the meters, which should reduce theft of electric service.
Installation will start this spring at houses participating in a test of EPB’s cable television, telephone and Internet service, Mr. Wade said. Eventually, all homes and businesses will receive the meters, even if they don’t subscribe to telecom service, EPB officials have said. Customers will not be charged for the meters, officials have said.
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While EPB is desiring to go "High Tech" and enable things like time of use tiered billing and automatic remote disconnects, they are are doing it in a clunky way. They intend to "sweep" read approximately 150k meters at 15 minute intervals, which is communications intensive, and required a lot of data center computing power to interpolate and store the data properly. True smart meters such as Echelon (http://www.echelon.com) units calculate and store tiered information in the meter, providing pre-processed pre-calculated raw data to the utilities systems with exact timestamped readings as well as many other features such as integrated disconnects (not add-on collars).
Regionally, Tantalus (a Canadian company) has been having large scale equipment failures and has been replacing thousands of units at several utilities.
The good news is EPB has proven to be flexible and this learning experiment will teach them a lot. As true smart metering/smart home technologies mature, so will their understanding and implementation of them.
Mike, from Utiliflex.com a local Chattanooga smart metering software/systems development company.