Echelon’s smart grid system passes two million meter mark

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK: Echelon Corp. has announced the shipment of its two millionth Networked Energy Services (NES) smart meter.

The meter will become part of the smart grid installation currently being deployed by Eltel Networks A/S for the Danish utility SEAS-NVE, in Denmark’s largest smart grid project with over 390,000 smart meters. The announcement was made today at the 2010 Smart Metering Scandinavia event in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Denmark is well-known for embracing technology to promote energy efficiency. Denmark is the world-leading producer of wind energy, and now we’re building a truly smart grid to better use and conserve energy and provide new services for our customers,” Peter Iversen, CTO at SEAS-NVE. “Our smart grid project utilizes the top technologies worldwide, including Echelon’s NES System, to serve today’s needs and Denmark’s future needs, from electric car charging, to automated demand response programs and time-of-use tariffs, all while improving customer service.”

“We’ve won multiple smart grid deployments in the Nordic region with Echelon's feature-rich NES software and smart meters, making Echelon’s NES system the smart grid solution of choice in the region. The NES system offers utilities a highly scalable, future-proof solution that increases customer service and energy conservation programs, and reduces overall operating costs. We are confident that we’re offering utilities the best solution available when we propose the NES system,” said Sonny Nielsen, Eltel's CEO for Denmark.

“We are excited about this significant milestone for SEAS-NVE and Denmark. We look forward to a new era of energy awareness and efficiency led by forward-thinking utilities like SEAS-NVE. Moreover, we’re excited by the potential growth in the smart grid market in the coming year,” said Michael Anderson, Echelon’s senior vice president, NES sales and market development. “We believe utilities will choose our NES solution because it is extremely accurate and reliable and they can be confident that they are making the best long-term decision about the core control networking infrastructure for their smart grid.”

Echelon’s NES system embeds intelligence in the existing grid to make it smarter and adaptable to future expansions, new demands and able to respond to new regulations. Because the NES system is a complete, advanced metering infrastructure, and not only communicating meters, it lays the foundation for extensions to the grid by the utility or other third parties. For example, Panasonic Europe recently announced a collaboration with SEAS-NVE to start pilots of a smart energy management system that will pave the way for the eco-homes of the future in Europe.

The NES smart metering infrastructure solution enables a highly scalable, feature-rich and integrated system of advanced electronic electricity meters accessed via a Web services based network operating system over an IP networking infrastructure. Echelon’s technology is used by utilities worldwide in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, and other countries.