Southern Company Moves into Production Billing with Meter Data Management

Feb. 8, 2006
Atlanta-based Southern Company is using the Itron Enterprise Edition Meter Data Management system to support automatic meter reading billing of approximately 60,000 residential and commercial customers in two of its four-state service areas -- Georgia and Alabama.

Atlanta-based Southern Company is using the Itron Enterprise Edition Meter Data Management (MDM) system to support automatic meter reading (AMR) billing of approximately 60,000 residential and commercial customers in two of its four-state service areas -- Georgia and Alabama.

This is one of the nation's larger scale meter data management programs for residential customers. Southern Company is planning to use Itron Enterprise Edition to manage interval data for all of its commercial and industrial customers this year.

The Itron Enterprise Edition platform is a comprehensive meter data management solution that greatly improves the collection, management and application of metering-based data. Meter data management helps utilities control costs, improve operations and simplify IT infrastructure by reducing the time to gather, manipulate and reconcile information from multiple collection systems. Managing that data in a single repository also makes it easily accessible to multiple users within the utility and beyond.

Itron designed flexibility and adaptability into its meter data management system, providing Southern Company with the capability to expand as its needs change. Itron Enterprise Edition will scale to support Southern Company should the utility continue to move toward AMR technology for all its 4 million customers.

"By using Itron Enterprise Edition Meter Data Management, we've eliminated the patching and manipulation of data in different systems and streamlined our data collection from multiple AMR sources," said Kevin McDonald, project manager for Southern Company. "This allows us to work more efficiently in the billing process. Beyond billing, meter data management positions us to maximize the value of our information by applying it to all segments of our operation more easily than ever before."

Philip Mezey, senior vice president for Itron software solutions, said Southern Company is pioneering the way for utilities to fully capitalize on the enterprise value of metering-based data by breaking down the "data silos" that accompany multiple collection systems serving multiple customer segments.

"This is a significant milestone in our work with Southern Company, paving the way for enterprise meter data management to become the standard approach to doing business in the utility industry," Mezey said. "We are looking forward to a continued partnership with Southern Company and applaud the efforts of project teams from both companies to make this system fully operational."

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