Itron, Inc., which is innovating the way utilities and cities manage energy and water, is expanding its collaboration with Smart Energy Water (SEW), a cloud platform provider that helps utilities deliver superior digital customer and workforce experiences. Together, the companies are transforming the utility-consumer relationship, enabling utilities to become a trusted advisor to consumers in managing the energy transition and integrating distributed energy resources (DERs). As part of the collaboration, the companies are accelerating the value realised from Itron’s distributed intelligence (DI) ecosystem and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) data through more effective data sharing and consumer empowerment. By creating an easy, secure and standardised mechanism to share data with consumers and authorised third parties, they are helping utilities and consumers realise the expanded benefits of next generation AMI.
The collaboration will help utilities, third parties and consumers take advantage of the new data streams being created by Itron’s growing ecosystem of DI applications, like load disaggregation. To ensure data is secure and that privacy is protected, utilities can take advantage of Itron’s innovative DataHub a secure, scalable, cloud-based platform that will make these new data streams easily available to any third party with proper authorisations coupled with SEW’s end-to-end pre-integrated consumer experience platform to enable consumers to opt in to making the most of their AMI and DI data. The DataHub is a new way for third parties to engage with and become a part of Itron’s expanding DI ecosystem.
With this approach to data sharing, utilities, third parties and consumers can collaborate to provide new services and revenue streams to one another. This is essential to streamlining and optimising the integration of DERs, such as electric vehicles, onto the grid. Sharing real-time information about how energy is being produced and consumed enables DER vendors to provide improved consumer energy services, such as customised offers from solar and storage providers and automated measurement and verification of energy arbitrage (storing and shifting energy usage for grid benefit). Sharing real-time energy data also enables smart home companies to provide entirely new customer experiences.
SEW provides end-customer experience platform that will help customers understand the new types of data being created by their meters and other in-home devices and how sharing data with trusted third parties can benefit them through added services. SEW platform will provide mechanism for consumers to opt in to sharing data with third parties, which DataHub will use to authorise third party use of those data. Itron’s DataHub provides a single, consistent, user-friendly mechanism for utilities and third parties to enable the sharing of metering data, distributed intelligence application data, DER data and low voltage network data. The DataHub, powered by Microsoft Azure, eliminates need for utilities and third parties to create expensive custom integrations and manual data requests by providing third-party authorisation and authentication services and simple API data access. The Itron DataHub is a great example of how Itron and Microsoft are collaborating to develop solutions that deliver new insights and benefits for utilities.
“With Itron’s DataHub and expanded collaboration with SEW, we are changing the game for consumer engagement and creating more value from AMI and distributed intelligence, out of the gate,” says Don Reeves, senior vice president of Outcomes at Itron. “Itron’s distributed intelligence platform is creating new data streams, at scale, that have never been available in the industry before, such as real-time streaming data over Wi-Fi, disaggregated load profile data, meter-to-transformer connectivity mapping and more. This data will create new opportunities to engage consumers and provide them with innovative and valuable services. This is made possible through the Itron DataHub and our expanded collaboration with SEW.”
“As more distributed energy resources are brought onto the grid, engaging consumers and providing them with choice, control and convenience will be key. Together with Itron, we are helping utilities build a new type of relationship with consumers,” says Deepak Garg, CEO and founder of SEW. “As a global leader in utility customer experience, SEW will help consumers understand what data they might share, with who, and what services they will receive in return. We are excited about this opportunity to enable innovation and provide new services to the end customer and the grid.”
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