Australian Utility Visits Burlington Hydro for Latest on Smart Meter Deployments and Automation

Integral Energy, one of Australia’s largest utilities, visited Burlington Hydro on June 1 to gain first-hand insight on Ontario’s smart metering innovation and new engineering that will drive more automation, reliability and intelligence onto the power grid.

Drawn to Ontario due to the province’s leadership in time-of-use data collection, Integral Energy’s interest in Burlington Hydro was to learn about the utility’s GridSmartCity initiative focusing on existing and planned deployments of automation.

GridSmartCity was also in the spotlight last month, as Ontario’s Deputy Premier and Minister and Energy and Infrastructure, George Smitherman visited Burlington for the program’s official partner kick-off. GridSmartCity partners will collaborate on smart grid projects to illustrate new technologies. These projects will help to fuel the growth of innovative green industries. Smart grid technologies, combined with advanced communications and computer analytics, will aid greater use of renewable ‘Green Energy’ sources from the sun, wind and devices such as electric vehicles.

The visit by Integral Energy visit was sponsored by Elster Canada, the world’s largest smart metering company, and a founding partner of GridSmartCity.

On June 1, Burlington Hydro initiated its city-wide deployment of Smart Meters, in response to the province’s mandate that all homes and businesses in Ontario have Smart Meters by the end of 2010. Eventually, Smart Meters will enable electricity to be measured on an hourly basis. Time of use rates and conservation opportunities related to Smart Meters in Burlington will roll out sometime in 2011.