Telecommunications

[September 04, 2012]

City of Medicine Hat, Alberta Chooses Sensus Technology for Electric, Water and Gas Utility Automation

Sensus, a leading provider of smart grid infrastructure technologies for electric, gas and water utilities, has been selected by the City of Medicine Hat (CMH), Alberta, Canada, to automate metering for all three of the municipality's utility services.

CMH is currently commissioning the Sensus FlexNet system for a trial phase with residential and commercial accounts. The Industry Canada-licensed, full two-way FlexNet system includes seven collector base stations networked with Sensus iCon™ electric and iPERL™ water meters, as well as Sensus SmartPoint™ gas transceivers. Pending the city council approval, CMH would move forward with the project's second phase of replacing legacy analog equipment with automated meters at each of the 30,000 customer accounts covering an area of 43 square miles (111 km²) in the southeastern part of the province.

Medicine Hat, which sits on large deposits of natural gas, is rare among North American municipalities in that the city owns and operates all power generating and transmission and distribution assets. The city's Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project manager, Dean Stepanic, said the project represents the first implementation in Canada of electric, water and gas measurement, monitoring and control over a single network. He added that the choice of implementing Sensus technology was driven by an effort to manage costs and provide better service to the city's 61,000 residents.

"Medicine Hat provides very competitive utility rates for customers but we needed to build a modern system for more efficient monitoring, accurate billing and greater conservation," stated Stepanic. "The FlexNet licensed spectrum allows us to automate meter reading and collect critical infrastructure data more securely than with a system based on public spectrum."

Stepanic also said that the system's point-to-multipoint topology requires less equipment than mesh networks and seamlessly interfaces with the city's existing fiber optic network for backhaul. "FlexNet will allow us to expand and introduce more services and capabilities such as distribution automation at some point in the future."

In addition to electric meter installations, advanced meters for water and gas is a growing trend as utilities replace on-premise meter reading and introduce more options for customers to monitor usage and billing. Advanced water and gas metering has the additional benefits of leak detection and public safety. Initially, CMH will perform automated billing and remote monitoring with the new system and may offer voluntary pricing options after full deployment.

About Sensus

Sensus is a leading utility infrastructure company offering smart meters, communication systems, software and services for the electric, gas, and water industries. Sensus technology helps utilities drive operational efficiency and customer engagement with applications that include advanced meter reading, data acquisition, demand response, distribution automation, home area networking and outdoor lighting control. Customers worldwide trust the innovation, quality and reliability of Sensus solutions for the intelligent use and conservation of energy and water. Learn more at www.sensus.com. To follow Twitter (News - Alert) updates from Sensus, please visit http://twitter.com/sensussmartgrid.

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