Fallstudie
At a glance:
- Salt River Project (SRP) is one of the largest public power utilities in the US, providing electricity and water services to over 900,000 customers in Pheonix, Arizona.
- With over 130,000 REX® meters installed to date SRP can collect time-of-use (TOU) data from all of them on a daily basis.
- The EnergyAxis® system has saved SRP 85,000 miles in vehicle expenses and in the last 12 months SRP has completed over 9,000 remote connects and disconnects.
The challenge:
One of the United States’ largest public power utilities, SRP focuses on enabling their customers to conserve energy and lower their energy bills.
To create significant cost savings, reduce operational expenses and offer new customer services, SRP turned to Elster Electricity for help.
After testing the Elster solution they decided to move into a full scale deployment since they found that the system virtually pays for itself as they install more meters.
The solution:
Elster Electricity’s EnergyAxis® System uses a powerful two-way radio frequency (RF) communications system to retrieve metering information directly from meters. The communication network uses a spread spectrum, frequency-hopping technology with self-registration, to provide secure, reliable communications between meters and data collectors. This technology enables individual meters to act as repeaters, creating a dynamic communication path that optimises the RF and the reliability of the communication link.
SRP expects to have 175,000 REX® meters installed by May 2007, of which some 45,000 will have a remote connect/disconnect capability, so that SRP can take maximum advantage of the benefits of the EnergyAxis® technology solution. SRP can collect data from all the REX® meters in the system on a daily basis and, since deploying the EnergyAxis® System, SRP has seen savings of 85,000 miles in vehicles expenses and has remotely completed over 85,000 field orders. In the past 12 months alone SRP has completed over 9,000 remote connects and disconnects.
Every REX® meter in the SRP system is programmed to collect time-of-use (TOU) data. This allows SRP to offer TOU rates to customers who would not normally have this option available because of access restrictions. For customers who select TOU rates the switch is done almost immediately without the need for a field visit.
This solution has brought SRP a number of real business benefits.
"The savings we have seen from our automated daily reads and being able to remotely handle service calls from the office makes the system virtually pay for itself. Our operational expenses keep going lower as we expand the number of meters in the field," said John Soethe, manager of revenue cycle services for SRP.