Discovering and mitigating potential safety concerns on your low-voltage distribution network is paramount. Having visibility into issues associated with outages and fires, energy theft and hot sockets can prevent catastrophic situations. Through the Safety Bundle, distributed intelligence applications such as High Impedance Detection, Meter Bypass Detection and Advanced Temperature Monitoring detect and locate poor electrical connections, discover meter tampering and energy diversion, and use high-resolution temperature readings to detect meter socket problems, respectively—all before they create a safety hazard or interrupt service. Learn how utilities are decreasing customer outage minutes, minimizing repair costs and field visits, ensuring customer safety and satisfaction, and positively impacting overall business processes with distributed intelligence applications.

Wildfire threats, intense storms, changing load profiles, an aging population and the increased reliance on electricity due to EVs, AI and natural gas moratoriums are key business drivers to ensure that outages are minimized and quickly mitigated. By combining grid edge intelligence use cases such as high-performance ping, location awareness, advanced transformer load monitoring, outage identification analysis and services, advanced outage awareness can be realized. Learn how utilities are enhancing their outage management programs through best practices that are ultimately leading to key benefits including SAIDI/CAIDI reduction, accurate customer notifications, reduced patrol time and staging points for storm preparations, faster outage identification/restoration, predictable O&M requirements and higher customer satisfaction.

ComEd will highlight innovative engineering solutions incorporating Itron technology and utility know-how. The SMART (Solar Mobile AMI Reliability Trailer) is a nomadic communications center powered by renewable energy that is easily deployable throughout the service territory and is capable of both facilitating and monitoring the AMI network. This greatly increases ComEd's ability to access and understand the impact of both existing and/or new devices on to the AMI mesh network, ultimately resulting in a more reliable and resilient grid. Aside from the SMART trailer, ComEd is also re-engineering streetlight nodes so that they can service multiple purposes for radio frequency (RF) remediation, specifically as they relate to strengthening the mesh, and offer an economical solution for areas with RF shadows. This presentation will be co-presented by two engineers from ComEd and will emphasize the role of the utility to continuously innovate in order to maintain a resilient, reliable, and industry leading AMI mesh network, which serves as the foundation for smart electric meters, smart gas and water meters, and more, all of which are necessary for the modern smart city.

Utilities are now integrating high-bandwidth grid edge intelligence (from the substation to behind-the-meter) with Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) (from the transmission grid to the substation). This integration means that utilities have visibility into and control of distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS), virtual power plants (VPPs) and other applications. This session will provide the following takeaways:

•Hear about the key challenges that utilities face today due to lack of visibility

•Learn how ADMS plus grid edge intelligence enables grid operators to gain greater situational awareness and real-time insights with key measurements and notifications

•Understand how this integration delivers value to customers across multiple business units, including infrastructure investment, grid planning, operations and asset management

The Itron Riva meter is a foundational component of the Grid Edge Intelligence solution enabling both Distributed Intelligence as well as maintaining existing business processes to support key AMI1.0/Meter-to-cash applications.  In this session, you will hear from a utility who has gone through the process of qualifying, approving, and deploying this new class of device.  Gainsville Regional Utility  will share their lessons learned and challenged encountered as well as provide insight into their deployment strategy.  The Itron team will also share views of the most common hurdles that utilities experience during this process and key recommendations and strategies to overcome these barriers.

Are you considering taking benefit of new technologies like DI-enabled meters? Do you have questions on the challenges, but also the benefits, of migrating from an Itron legacy RF mesh technology to a GEN5 Riva solution? Join this panel for strategic & tactical tips and tricks that Itron network customers that are planning for this technology transition have learned along the way. Utility presenters will share insights and anecdotes from their journey through strategizing and planning for this technology transition. Gain actionable strategies and best practices that could enable you to successfully execute the transition process.

In order to improve operational efficiency, enhance network awareness and create infrastructure for future solutions, many utilities are taking advantage of existing grid edge data and utilizing analytic solutions to generate actionable intelligence, drive innovation and unlock new business value. Using Operations Optimizer (OO), you can manage the large volume of data coming from your AMI system, increase both back office and field efficiencies, zero in on anomalous conditions, automate tasks, streamline processes, and proactively act on issues that will affect the ability to deliver value back to you and your customers. Utilities will discuss how they are using real-time information to generate work orders, and analyze and determine the best path to customer restoration and cost savings. In addition, learn how utilities are utilizing a secure, flexible platform and services to enhance value by detecting, investigating and resolving lost revenue, managing AMI operations to monitor faulty metering conditions, predicting pending equipment failures, and taking a proactive approach to meter and device maintenance and performance.

Since the pandemic supply chains have been under much more scrutiny, with a view to building resilience and multi sourcing. Coupled with the energy transition and a wide-spread skills shortages in the utility sector, interoperability and the standardization of meter to cash use cases has never been more important.  While on the surface an easy concept, real interoperability is difficult to achieve without established and battle-hardened standards and specifications. This presentation explores the value and the practicality of the DLMS/COSEM Electricity Smart Meter GCP as adopted for the North American market as well as a glimpse into the wider world of International Standards adjacent to the smart meter being established to help the energy transition.

As utilities look to deploy AMI, integrating distributed intelligence (DI) in parallel presents a unique opportunity to unlock transformative benefits. However, this concurrent approach comes with challenges, including balancing operational priorities, managing data complexities and mitigating deployment risks. In this session, we will share our experience navigating the integration of DI during our AMI deployment. We’ll discuss the strategies employed, ensuring interoperability while minimizing disruptions to field operations. Additionally, this session will cover the significant benefits realized and the unlocked value from the modern AMI solution.

Accurate wildfire prevention, detection and immediate response within the utility landscape is crucial due to a critical challenge in reducing the ignition gap and minimizing the risk of wildfires. By integrating with existing monitoring and response systems, a solution exists that not only alerts relevant personnel in real-time but also facilitates seamless coordination and response, minimizes false alarms through comprehensive validation methods, directs resources towards real threats and optimizes response efficiency. Understand tips, tricks, best practices and lessons learned from utilities based in areas prone to wildfire risk and how distributed intelligence and sensing technologies are being used to mitigate these issues. Learn how utilities are focusing on real-time monitoring, advanced AI technology, and seamless integration to take proactive measures in preventing ignition events, safeguarding infrastructure and protecting customers.