Case study beyond billing: How SEAS-NVE is using Echelon Smart Meters to get power quality data from their low voltage grid
This is a case study about what SEAS-NVE is doing with the grid data they collect from smart meters that allows them to move beyond billing and into the business of solving power quality issues, responding more quickly to outages and better managing energy efficiency.
SEAS-NVE is the merger of two energy companies, SEAS and NVE, that were both established in the early 1900s. Brought together in 2004, SEAS-NVE is Denmark’s largest consumerowned energy company with over 375,000 co-operative owners. This energy company represents a wide range of products from energy and grid products to advanced consulting services on wind farm technology.
Four years after the merger, SEAS-NVE issued a bid with the intent to replace its aging meter infrastructure. In 2012, SEAS-NVE successfully deployed 380,000 Echelon smart meters through their service provider Eltel Networks who helped them achieve full deployment with a consumer complaint rate that was as low as 0.5% — ten times better than their expected target.
World-Class Deployment
Like many utilities, SEAS-NVE wanted to deploy smart meters to improve their billing system but had concerns about how to replace hundreds of thousands of meters. To aid deployment, the smart meters were provisioned at the factory to support SEAS-NVE demands and arrived ready for installation. Under the leadership of Eltel Networks, as
many as 2,000 meters could be installed on a peak day and those same meters were up and running, communicating with 99.7 – 99.9% reliability on the same day. 99% of residences were reached for their 15 minute scheduled appointment with a constant mapping of consumer satisfaction that showed excellent results. In as little as two and a half years, Eltel had the entire system up and running and SEASNVE was managing the grid as a data-driven entity.
How the Echelon Smart Metering
Solution Works at SEAS-NVE Echelon’s Energy Control Networking platform is a three-tiered grid management system consisting of smart meters at the device level, data concentrators or control nodes that collect meter and grid device
data, and NES System Software that seamlessly delivers all this data so it can be used by applications running at the utility head-end (e.g. MDM, OMS, DMS systems). The meter has advanced features for load profiling, power quality measurements, remote load control, remote disconnect, and maximum power limiting.