Navajo Tribal Utility Authority Deploys Elster EnergyAxis® Smart Grid Solution Across Electric, Gas and Water Services

RALEIGH, N.C., Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Elster announced today that the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA), a non-profit enterprise that supplies water, natural gas, wastewater and solar power services to the Navajo Nation and neighboring communities, will utilize its United States Department of Energy Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) award and NTUA funding to deploy Elster's EnergyAxis® advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) Smart Grid solution.  

NTUA will be Elster's second deployment in the U.S. to utilize a single AMI head-end system and Smart Meters across electric, gas and water services. All SGIG funds are being utilized by NTUA for the electric AMI deployment.  

Through this Smart Grid project, NTUA will use the Elster EnergyAxis solution to bring improved customer service and reliability and more accurate billing to the 26,000 square-mile Navajo Nation, which spans northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah. NTUA serves more than 50,000 electric customers, 34,000 water customers, 13,000 wastewater customers and 7,800 natural gas customers – the majority of whom will be receiving Elster EnergyAxis Smart Meters as part of this deployment.

Elster's two-way EnergyAxis communication system will enable NTUA to conduct remote data collection and connect/disconnect with substantially reduced personnel field visits and vehicle emissions, and will offer broad improvements to its outage response and management process. With EnergyAxis, NTUA also will gain more accurate and efficient billing, allowing it to eliminate its current billing method.

Elster's EnergyAxis solution offers a multi-technology architecture able to meet the needs of any region's utility services. For NTUA, advanced router radios operating in a private 900MHz spectrum are being used with hardened routers for gatekeeper communication and data gathering across the extremely rural and widespread service territory. In addition, OSIsoft, LLC has been selected to provide its OSIsoft MDUS product for meter data capture and historical repository storage sent from the EnergyAxis head-end. OSIsoft will also perform meter data integration to SAP for Utilities, extending back-office billing processes and operational efficiencies.

"We believe that EnergyAxis is perfect for a project of this nature that spans electricity, gas and water, and that requires a multi-technology approach to meet the needs of this rural population, many of whom will see needed improvements to their existing, basic infrastructure as a result of this project," said Mark L. Munday, president and CEO, Elster Solutions, North America.

"We are proud to partner with NTUA on this pivotal deployment to improve distribution, customer service and reliability of resources to the Navajo Nation," Munday added.

With EnergyAxis in place, NTUA will also be able to perform effective load research to design new billing services such as flexible due dates and time-of-use dynamic pricing, quickly implement demand response programs, develop load forecasts and help enable energy conservation programs in the future. EnergyAxis also provides the capability to actively participate in load management and load aggregation programs, and to later enact voltage control capabilities.

EnergyAxis, a field-proven Smart Grid solution with more than 3.5 million endpoints deployed with utilities across North America, enables utilities to:

• Realize operational efficiencies;
• Conserve environmental and economic resources by reducing the losses in electricity, gas and water grids;
• Reduce outages and improve outage response and repair time;
• Improve customer service and consumer choice;
• Implement demand response programs that can conserve resources and reduce costs, especially during periods of peak demand;
• Provide real-time information to end consumers to allow them to better manage their energy consumption; and
• Detect and reduce non-technical losses.

About Elster

Elster is one of the world's largest electricity, gas and water measurement and control providers. Our offerings include distribution monitoring and control, advanced smart metering, demand response, networking and software solutions, and numerous related communications and services – key components for enabling consumer choice, operational efficiency and conservation. Our products and solutions are widely used by utilities in the traditional and emerging Smart Grid markets.  

Elster has one of the most extensive installed revenue measurement bases in the world, with more than 200 million metering devices deployed over the course of the last 10 years. It sells its products and services in more than 130 countries across electricity, gas, water and multi-utility applications for residential, commercial and industrial, and transmission and distribution applications.

Elster was acquired by funds advised by CVC Capital Partners in September 2005.

For more information about Elster, please visit www.elster.com.

SOURCE Elster