Itron has unveiled a new entry in its Grid Edge Intelligence (GEI) portfolio with Itron’s GEI Catalyst: Feeder Reliability solution.

Utilities are under pressure to improve reliability, modernize aging infrastructure, integrate distributed energy resources and prepare for AI-driven operations while keeping customer costs affordable.

GEI Catalyst: Feeder Reliability provides utilities with a targeted, lower-risk way to address those priorities by providing a practical path to deliver measurable reliability improvements without costly grid upgrades or lengthy projects to integrate multiple utility systems, data sources and technologies.

The solution builds on utilities' existing AMI, operational technology and grid-edge investments, helping them improve reliability without replacing the infrastructure they already have in place.

Itron conducted reliability assessments of the GEI Catalyst: Feeder Reliability solution with information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) teams at three North American utilities. The assessments indicated that improving fault location accuracy, fault prevention and outage restoration can reduce the time required to identify, patrol and restore fault-related issue, resulting in reliability improvements ranging from 6 to 12 minutes of SAIDI about 10%. Based on industry-accepted economic impact models, these improvements can translate into an estimated $40 million to $90 million in annual business value for a representative utility serving approximately 1 million customers.

The solution also helps utilities improve distribution-system visibility, focus field resources where they are needed most and maximize the value of existing infrastructure investments. These results have been validated through recent customer projects with multiple North American utilities. These engagements demonstrated how utilities can use existing AMI and grid-edge investments to improve fault location accuracy, accelerate restoration efforts and enhance distribution-system visibility without requiring major infrastructure replacement projects.

The solution works alongside existing utility systems, including SCADA, Outage Management Systems and Advanced Distribution Management Systems, providing greater visibility into grid conditions and helping operators make faster, more informed decisions. By turning smart meters and grid-edge devices into sources of operational insight across the distribution system, utilities gain near real-time visibility into abnormal conditions, probable fault locations and restoration priorities. This enables utilities to move from reactive operations to more proactive, evidence-based decision-making, accelerating response and reducing the need to manually correlate information across multiple systems.

Rather than requiring utilities to build and integrate a custom solution, the GEI Catalyst: Feeder Reliability solution provides a proven framework that helps utilities achieve measurable reliability improvements quickly and scale over time.