US

US utility Southern California Edison (SCE) this week installed its one millionth smart meter at a customer’s home in Redondo Beach.

The company started its $1.6 billion SmartConnect installation programme in September 2009 and will continue until the end of 2012 when around five million smart meters will have been installed.

“Reaching the one million meter mark today is a milestone in the deployment of our smart meter program,” says Theodore F. Craver Jr., chair, president and CEO of Edison International. “We look forward to making available to all of our customers the valuable features smart meters provide.”

Craver adds that SCE carefully weighed up which technologies, systems and devices to invest in that offer the best range of benefits to customers before settling on Itron’s digital, two-way communicating OpenWay smart meters.

Later this year, SCE plan to roll out a service enabling customers to view the energy usage online, track consumption and see how much it costs.

In future, the company plans to activate other features of the smart meters allowing them to communicate with the next generation of smart thermostats, appliances and other devices.

SCE says its expects customers’ use of smart meters will reduce electricity demand by around 1000 MW – the size of an average power plant – and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 365,000 metric tons a year.

For further information:
www.sce.com/smartconnect
www.itron.com/

Related stories:
Smart meters not enough to cut domestic energy consumption (1-Jul)
US unveils $100 million smart grid training initiative (9-Apr)
Google calls for every home and business to have a smart meter (7-Apr)
California utility installs first of 5 million smart meters (16-Sept 2009)