Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (ENEE) in Honduras is installing Elster’s EnergyAxis System beginning in December 2006. ENEE expects to complete the deployment of 35,000 smart meters for residential, commercial and industrial applications in approximately six months. The first and largest part of the deployment will be in the urban area of San Pedro Sula in northwest Honduras. Smaller sites will be deployed in the urban areas of Tegucigalpa in the south and La Ceiba in the Atlantic region.
In their search for a smart metering system, ENEE found the EnergyAxis System best suited to meet their needs in reducing non-technical losses and dealing with delinquent accounts. ENEE also plans to use the system to perform energy audits and network balancing of the entire distribution system by using load profile and voltage information provided by the EnergyAxis System.
ENEE selected the EnergyAxis System because residential REX meters, commercial A3 ALPHA® meters, and A3 ALPHA meter collectors have robust two-way communications built into the meter. Residential REX meters are equipped with an optional service control switch integrated inside the meter that allows ENEE to remotely connect and disconnect service. There are no external switches or antennas that potentially can be tampered with. The ability to make off-cycle meter reads directly from meters rather than using an external pulse collection device was another feature of the system that ENEE found desirable.
