Swedish energy company, Gothenburg Energy, is deploying 90,000 GE smart meters to meet a government mandate to have advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in place by June 1, 2009.
The smart meters will be installed by NURI Telecom by the end of the month.
Gothenburg Energy is implementing Europe’s first ZigBee-based communications infrastructure to support an AMI system for electricity. ZigBee is a low-cost, low power usage wireless mesh network.
In the near future, Gothenburg Energy plans to expand the AMI system to include district heating, gas and water meters.
“With the new AMI system in place, Gothenburg Energy will be able to provide accurate monthly bills, even down to daily consumption,” says Diarmaid Mulholland of GE Energy Services Europe. “This allows customers to be better informed about their actual consumption and then adapt their energy usage accordingly.”
Meanwhile, Google has announced the smart meter and utility partners that are joining its PowerMeter project. In the US, Google will be partnering with utilities San Diego Gas & Electric in California, TXU Energy in Texas, JEA in Florida, Wisconsin Public Service Corporation, White River Valley Electric Cooperative in Missouri and Glasgow EPB in Kentucky.
Elsewhere, Google has co-opted Toronto Hydro in Canada and Reliance Energy in India. Its smart meter manufacturing partner is Itron.
Google PowerMeter is only available to very few customers at the moment, but the company says it plans to expand the roll out later this year.
And finally, Cisco has unveiled plans to provide a range of smart grid solutions for the entire energy infrastructure from power generation to end use. Products will include solutions for grid management right through to home and business energy management systems.
