Westar Energy and Landis+Gyr Agree to Comprehensive Smart Grid Services Contract

ATLANTA, Oct. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Westar Energy, Inc. and Landis+Gyr have agreed to a comprehensive smart grid infrastructure and services contract to support the utility's grid modernization and consumer choice initiatives.

The initial phase of the agreement involves deployment of 217,000 Gridstream^®-enabled advanced meters with remote service switch capability and a five-year services contract that includes daily maintenance, cloud services for software and data, and integration support.

"This agreement is part of our commitment to deliver more options to customers for better understanding their energy use, while at the same time improving reliability and operational efficiency in how we deliver that energy," said Greg Greenwood, Senior Vice President, Strategy at Westar Energy. "System and grid infrastructure upgrades help us provide more services to customers and allow us to do that in the most cost effective and reliable way."

The technology deployment will support Westar's existing pre-payment and variable pricing programs, delivery of energy usage information to customers through the internet, and will also provide operational support with outage management and power quality. Remote meter connection capabilities will reduce miles driven by utility personnel, especially for servicing high-transient populations in university communities.

"We're excited to be working with Westar Energy on this project as it demonstrates the practical applications not only for our technology, but also for our support services. These services reduce implementation risk and reduce the operational burden on utility staff, allowing them to focus on extracting more value from smart grid technology," said Prasanna Venkatesan, Executive Vice President, Americas at Landis+Gyr.

Landis+Gyr is a global leader in delivering energy and resource management technologies to electric, water and gas utilities, and has successfully implemented some of the largest advanced metering and grid automation deployments in North America and around the world.

About Westar Energy
Westar Energy, Inc. (NYSE: WR) is Kansas' largest electric utility. For more than a century, we have provided Kansans the safe, reliable electricity needed to power their businesses and homes. Every day our team of professionals takes on projects to generate and deliver electricity, protect the environment and provide excellent service to our nearly 700,000 customers. Westar has 7,200 MW of electric generation capacity fueled by coal, uranium, natural gas, wind and landfill gas. We are also a leader in electric transmission in Kansas. For more information about Westar Energy, visit www.WestarEnergy.com.

About Landis+Gyr
Landis+Gyr is the leading global provider of integrated energy management products tailored to energy company needs and unique in its ability to deliver true end-to-end advanced metering solutions. Today, the Company offers the broadest portfolio of products and services in the electricity metering industry, and is paving the way for the next generation of smart grid. With annualized sales of more than US$1.5 billion, Landis+Gyr, an independent growth platform of the Toshiba Corporation (TKY:6502) and 40% owned by the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, operates in 30 countries across five continents, and employs 5,500 people with the sole mission of helping the world manage energy better. More information is available at landisgyr.com.

SOURCE Landis+Gyr