CLEVELAND– April 1, 2009 – Central Florida Gas, the Florida division of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, has implemented the STAR® Network system to collect daily meter readings from its 16,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers. The utility will use the data to help its customers understand their usage patterns and make it easier for gas marketers to determine how much product to deliver. It plans to provide information to marketers and customers through a web site.
“Our customers purchase gas from marketers who sell to them directly. These marketers benefit from understanding customer usage patterns because it allows them to determine how much gas to schedule into the pipeline,” said Tom Geoffroy, vice president for Central Florida Gas. “Having access to information about how they use gas also helps our customers pick the right marketers and pricing plans.”
The Avanti Company, a provider of flow-metering technology and services to the Florida utility market, partnered with Aclara to implement the STAR Network system at Central Florida Gas. Avanti provided the STAR Network products, initial project planning and ongoing service and support to assure success of the Network
implementation.
“Superior technology from Aclara allowed us to provide Central Florida Gas with the sophisticated automated metering system the utility needed to handle its data requirements,” said Charles Devlin, President of Avanti Company. “Aclara offers gas utilities specific benefits including daily monitoring of user demand, volume trending, customer history, expandability, and alarm notification of system anomalies.”
The STAR Network system is a fixed-network, advanced-metering-infrastructure technology that communicates over dedicated, licensed radio frequencies. It provides secure, high-quality, high-resolution metering data to gas, water, and electric utilities world-wide, allowing them to make more informed decisions to improve service to their customers. The STAR network efficiently and automatically provides timely data, empowering utilities to maximize meter functionality and provide superior customer service.Additionally, the gas products have met the stringent safety requirements for use in hazardous locations in order to obtain FM Approval.
Contact:
Nancy E. Talley
Marketing Communications Manager
216-896-8657
About Aclara
The Aclara brand represents the industry's leading Intelligent Infrastructureâ„¢ technologies for providing device networking, data-value management, and customer communications to water, gas, and electric utilities globally. Over 500 utilities in nine countries rely on proven Aclara solutions to connect with their customers. Aclara is part of the Utility Solutions Group of ESCO Technologies Inc. (NYSE: ESE), St. Louis. Capturing data. Liberating knowledge.â„¢ www.Aclara.com.
