Itron has unveiled its Grid Edge Essentials solution, which simplifies and streamlines the adoption of new technologies and provides distribution grid visibility all the way to the grid edge.
Electric utilities are faced with challenges ranging from ageing infrastructure and extreme weather events to load growth demand from transportation electrification and data centres and increased grid complexity from distributed energy resources (DERs).
Itron’s Grid Edge Essentials addresses the needs of advanced grid operations and customer service teams with a distributed intelligence (DI) solution that is easy to deploy, integrate and operate. It is the first end-to-end solution in the market that provides high-resolution data from the edge of a utility’s distribution network at every endpoint.
Itron said that the solution can enhance grid capacity by as much as 20 per cent through the optimisation of existing grid assets.
Solution benefits
Itron’s Grid Edge Essentials solution provides a broad set of benefits, including:
- Renewables integration – real-time, autonomous visibility and local, standardised control (e.g., IEEE 2030.5) of DER and their impact on the low voltage grid infrastructure.
- Resiliency and reliability – highly accurate, measured location awareness via meter-to-phase, transformer and feeder mapping.
- Consumer access and engagement – more accurate load disaggregation together with more actionable, near real-time insights.
- Carbon reduction – greater renewable integration while deferring expensive grid upgrades, reducing need for expensive peak power, and maintaining optimised voltage levels (CVR).
- Reduced operating costs – predictable low voltage operation with accurate insights into metering and network operations streamline operations and enhance preventive maintenance.
- Data access – via DataHub, which provides secure, consistent API access to curated data products and lifecycle data management, enabling utilities to leverage more real-time, high-fidelity data across the utility enterprise. DataHub also enables utilities and their customers to share data with authorised third parties.
- Open ecosystem – enablement of third-party application development leveraging the DI developer program or curated APIs via the DataHub product accelerates innovation with a vibrant ecosystem.
Itron Senior Vice President of Outcomes, Don Reeves, said, “Building on our Grid Edge Intelligence portfolio launch earlier this year, Grid Edge Essentials streamlines the path to grid transformation for utilities, providing all of the necessary components to realise operational value now and forms the foundation for future services and use cases.
“Grid Edge Essentials is the first step in a utility’s journey to building an advanced, flexible and resilient grid that meets the needs of utility distribution grid operations and provides the utility’s customers with reliable energy.”
Grid Edge Essentials is a bundled, comprehensive solution that pre-integrates multiple products, including DI Quick Start, Operations Optimier (OO) Essentials, Consumer Engagement, Grid Edge Optimiser solution delivering DI applications, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Hosting, Delivery Services, and Intelligent Grid Edge Operation System.
The solution leverages Itron’s DI technology, advanced metering, Intelligent Connectivity and is built on Itron’s real-time, high-fidelity Intelligent Edge Operating System.
Itron’s Intelligent Edge Operating System
Itron’s newly launched Intelligent Edge Operating System serves as the foundation for Itron’s Grid Edge Intelligence portfolio. It is designed to provide real-time, large-scale, high-performance and secure data management for electricity, gas and water devices.
The operating system aims to reduce implementation and operational costs by simplifying customer integrations through standard interfaces and by processing device data through a highly scalable common data processing layer.
Utilities’ systems seamlessly integrate with the Itron Intelligent Edge Operating System, and business applications utilize the operating system’s common data model and modular components to enable their use cases leveraging previous investments.
Additionally, utility or third-party applications can access all data through the common API patterns in Itron’s DataHub. This significantly accelerates utilities’ ability to operationalise data and provides a reliable source of data for next generation machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The adaptable platform is pre-integrated with Itron’s UtilityIQ, SensorIQ, OpenWay Collection Manager and Temetra headend software systems. Its modular and open architecture also allows it to be “headend agnostic” through standards such as CIM (Common Information Model), ensuring compatibility with a wide range of systems.
To learn more, visit the Grid Edge Essentials product page and read the brochure.
Image credit: yaalan/shutterstock.com.
