Electricity AMR Preparing for the Future, MDU Deploys ChoiceConnect™ for Meter Data Collection and Management Across the Great Plains Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. is looking to the future by installing Itron's flexible ChoiceConnect AMR system. click here for more information Partnering for Energy Conservation and Demand Management A new addition to Itron's ChoiceConnect AMR solution set, Aztech In-Home Displays are designed to save both consumers and utilities money. click here for more information Positive Outage Notification: When the Customer Calls, You're Already on it The recent maturation of outage detection and restoration notification capabilities in fixed network AMR and AMI systems provides utilities with a solid opportunity to not only strengthen the business case for investment in these advanced metering systems, but also provides an additional tool and source of critical data to address key challenges in system reliability, outage management and customer satisfaction. click here for more information Hosting Offers Utilities a Renewed Focus on Core Business Strategies In today's evolving business environment, companies rarely have the option to increase budgets and bodies in response to growth. See how hosting services can offer flexible system solutions, allowing for easy navigation of today's rapidly changing business climate. click here for more information New Probe Takes Guesswork out of Performance and Testing for Increased Efficiency Itron is partnering with Data Sourcing Technologies to make available the TruComm Optical Probe, the first optical probe to verify "send/receive" communications via LED. click here for more information

Preparing for the Future, MDU Deploys ChoiceConnect™ for Meter Data Collection and Management Across the Great Plains
		Montana-Dakota Utilities (MDU) Co. is looking to the future to serve its gas and electricity customers today by installing a flexible automated meter reading (AMR) system. The company distributes natural gas and generates, transmits and distributes electricity while providing related services in the northern Great Plains, providing both gas and electric service in some areas and gas-only in other areas. Looking to Itron for its AMR solution, the utility is deploying approximately 277,000 gas and electric meters in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. The meters will work in conjunction with the utility's purchase of ChoiceConnect, Itron's flexible suite of meter data collection solutions.
Also included in the contract are meter data management software solutions and project management and installation services. The total deployment is expected to be completed by August 2008. "We've been evaluating these types of programs for several years," said Frank Morehouse, vice president of operations for MDU. "We are driven by economics--we need to provide safe, reliable energy, but we need to do it as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. The time finally came when it all made business sense." Changing Meter Reading For years, the utility used mostly handheld meter reading technology and offsite meter reading systems, employing or contracting approximately 60 meter readers. Every year, it faced escalating labor, health insurance and maintenance costs. Since moving parts inside the meters can wear, there are costs associated with frequent testing of the electromechanical meters, in addition to maintaining the fleet of vehicles used for meter reading. As company officials looked at regional growth forecasts, they concluded that gas and electricity demand would only continue to climb and the utility needed to take progressive and aggressive measures to keep costs down, while providing increased services to the ever-growing customer base. "We have always believed in proactive customer service, not just preparing a utility bill," said Morehouse. "In order to work more efficiently, we needed more detailed consumption data. The more data our customers have, the more we think they will make choices to use less energy, especially during peak demand periods. Ultimately, through conservation and our AMR solutions, our intention is to keep our customer rates lower." The ChoiceConnect suite adds: ERT-equipped CENTRON meters and 100G gas ERTs. G5 and FC200 handheld computers. Mobile Collection System and Mobile Collector Lite. Fixed Network 2.0. PremierePlus 4 and Fixed Network Application Server software. Because the geography is so diverse throughout the four states, ChoiceConnect allows MDU to deploy the best-fit collection system to meet the unique needs of the territory. It also offers the flexibility to blend the collection methods to meet specific needs. In addition to the fixed network system, MDU is implementing meter data management software enterprise-wide to provide enhanced data analysis capability and to provide flexibility for future system changes. The utility uses Itron Fixed Network and mobile AMR systems to read those meters. Deploying fixed network technology will also provide outage management capabilities and off-cycle reads. Morehouse said there are many benefits to the ChoiceConnect installation. "With Itron's software, we will have theft detection, which will help us recover lost revenue, provide outage notification and data for distribution planning for our overall system," said Morehouse. "We will look at time-of-use rates since we think time-of-use rates may be very important in the near future." Going "Green" MDU also puts a premium on conservation. It created a new position--energy programs manager--and recently completed building of a wind farm near Baker, MT, The company also offers, in some states, incentives and rebates to customers for installing high-efficiency appliances and set-back thermostats. Carl Porter, director of Itron's gas product line, said the utility contracted for the most comprehensive solutions covering both gas and electricity. "I know that advanced metering infrastructure has all the buzz in the industry, but Montana-Dakota looked at it and realized that a comprehensive AMR project, complete with meter data management software, made more sense economically and operationally--for their customers and for the geography," Porter said. "They didn't want a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather chose to customize what they need for each service area." For example, in areas where the utility offers only gas service, the meters will be read by Itron's mobile AMR, "because it was a better fit in those areas," Porter said. Despite the fact that the population in the Great Plains is less dense than in many regions throughout the country, Montana-Dakota officials say they plan to stay on the leading edge of technology and continue to offer customers an opportunity to make a difference in the world through energy conservation.

Partnering for Energy Conservation and Demand Management
		As part of Itron's ChoiceConnect™ automated meter reading (AMR) solution suite, Aztech In-Home Displays are designed to save money and reduce the carbon footprint for consumers. They also provide the added benefit to utilities of improving customer relations by offering a helpful tool targeted for the home owner. Itron's high-power CENTRON® meter wirelessly communicates usage information to the Aztech display, allowing utility customers to
conserve energy and reduce or contain costs. The display supports utility conservation efforts by allowing customers to see their usage in near real-time rather than at the end of the month when they receive their bill. Consumption information is translated to dollars allowing the home owner to keep track of monthly energy costs. They can graphically view their usage over a 24-hour period, as well as over a 30-day period and the display also shows how much energy is currently being used. An arched bar has a tracking light at the top of the display that indicates speed of consumption at a glance. Many utilities and their customers have already benefited from using In-Home Displays. The amount of savings achievable varies from 7 to 15 percent or more depending on location, rates and variables within the home. Aztech began production of its In-Home Displays in December 2007 and volume ordering in January 2008. Please call your Itron sales representative for more information or visit www.aztechinc.com.

Positive Outage Notification: When the Customer Calls, You're Already on it
		December's widespread power outages in Oklahoma, as well as last month's outage in Florida, provided timely reminders of the outage management challenges utilities face due to weather, equipment failures, and a grid that is operated increasingly close to the red line. Beyond these large-scale outages, there are, of course, innumerable smaller-scale "nested outages" or single-service calls that irritate customers and tax utility resources from the call center to the field workforce.
The alarming reality is that when it comes to detecting and locating outages below the SCADA level, most utilities are still largely in the dark, relying on a mélange of customer calls and expensive truck rolls to determine exact location and extent of outages. The economic impact of power outages is huge as well. A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that power outages and interruptions cost the nation and economy at least $80 billion annually. But there are new tools in the toolbox. The broader deployment fixed network AMR and AMI systems bring a significant opportunity to make outage detection, response and restoration verification a more exact science, enabling the utility to reduce its closely-watched System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) and make customers and regulators happier in the process. Itron offers positive outage detection and restoration notification capability from every meter in both its ERT-based ChoiceConnect™ Fixed Network AMR system as well as its new-generation OpenWay® AMI system. This means near-immediate outage detection and restoration notification from every meter under these networks. This article will focus on how Itron's ERT-based ChoiceConnect Fixed Network system delivers outage detection capability, and the innovations we've implemented to ensure that these systems deliver strong value from an overall outage management perspective. System Overview The ChoiceConnect Fixed Network PON system is based on the Itron Fixed Network using the R300 High Power CENTRON meter, cell control unit (CCU), and Itron Fixed Network Application Software. The system may also involve multichannel repeaters, which serve as low-cost network components that forward data to CCUs, and are deployed to optimize network costs and performance in certain RF environments. When an outage occurs, the R300 CENTRON meter applies a very short debounce period to filter out momentary outages (flickers) and then sends three PON messages to the Fixed Network's CCU collectors. By design, the PON messages are heard at multiple, spatially-diverse CCUs and repeaters to improve reception reliability. These messages are time-stamped in the collectors and alarms are generated by the CCUs and sent with high priority over the network backhaul to the outage message processor within Itron Fixed Network Application Software. Here the alarms are processed in an in-memory database and a further debounce is applied and redundant messages from multiple collectors are eliminated. Alarms are then batched into frequent, low-latency exports to the utility's outage management system (OMS). As a result, distribution system operators receive detailed, premise-level data to aid in detection, analysis and restoration efforts. Likewise, upon restoration the R300 CENTRON sends three positive restoration notification (PRN) messages to the fixed network, and also sets the restoration flag in the network's interval data message. The CCU looks for both the PRN and restoration flags, and generates time-stamped alarms to the fixed network. This combination of PRN messages and restoration flags has been implemented to provide the highest possible read reliability of restoration in order to support utility crews working on restoration in a particular area. This approach also provides better reliability in extensive and prolonged outages where the FN collectors are affected by the outage. In addition to the alarm exports to the OMS, batch reports are generated and sent to a utility system or Itron Enterprise Edition™ Meter Data Management system for regulatory reporting purposes. Avalanche Control - Managing Alarm Volume During Large-Scale Outages Since a widespread outage, such as those in Florida or Oklahoma, can generate large volumes of PON and PRN messages in a short period of time, the Itron ChoiceConnect FN outage solution has mechanisms at several levels in the system to successfully manage the flow of significant alarm volumes. At the CCU, when the initial PON or PRN messages are received, they are immediately sent over the backhaul network to provide the lowest latency delivery at the first indication of outage. While this first backhaul is taking place, the CCU begins to buffer and batch delivery of the next set of PON/PRN alarms that will be sent when the first group is complete. This approach provides efficient packaging and transmission of large volumes of alarms. In the repeater, a similar "buffer and batch" approach is used to capture the PON/PRN messages, buffer them briefly, and then transmit them as a group to the CCUs. With this approach in a large outage, the repeated PON/PRN messages are delivered immediately after the CCU has received and processed the PON/PRN messages it received directly from the R300 meters. This provides an orderly staging of delivery of messages to and through the CCU and backhaul. At the FN head end, PON/PRN messages are again buffered and batched for orderly delivery to the utility OMS and mechanisms are available to allow the OMS to control the flow outage notifications from the FN collection engine. Also, the matching of PON and PRN messages to filter out momentary outages is used to scale down unnecessary traffic to the OMS. User Interface The ChoiceConnect Fixed Network user interface has a parameter that enables utilities to define the time period an endpoint needs to be without power before it is reported as a persistent outage versus a flicker. This setting determines how outages are defined for system reports and when the event should be reported to the OMS as a true outage. Itron Fixed Network Application Software also provides outage duration and momentary outage reports that give detailed information to system users following outage events. The Outage Duration report lists endpoints that have transmitted outage and restoration notifications, as well as the duration of the outage per endpoint. If the system indicates the outage is ongoing at the time the report is run, those endpoints still without power will be listed in a separate grouping on the report. The Momentary Outage report lists endpoints that have experienced blinks and the number of blinks that occurred per endpoint. An On-Demand Read or Power Verification transaction is available to help troubleshoot outage situations for customers and utility personnel. This functionality can be used to determine if power has been restored to avoid unnecessary truck rolls or to keep a truck from leaving an area where power is not back to 100 percent of customers in the area. This transaction can also be of great help in non-outage situations when a fresh reading from the endpoint will assist the customer service representative in discussions with the customer. The mapping components of the FN user interface also include an icon that indicates where a positive outage notification has been received. The interface also lists the endpoint's outage state and also has fields available for storing customer account, meter, premise and transformer numbers, which makes troubleshooting more expedient. Summary The recent maturation of outage detection and restoration notification capabilities in fixed network AMR and AMI systems provides utilities with a solid opportunity to not only strengthen the business case for investment in these advanced metering systems, but also provides an additional tool and source of critical data to address key challenges in system reliability, outage management and customer satisfaction.

Hosting Services Offer Utilities a Renewed Focus on Core Business Strategies
		Do more with less; intensify workload, while drawing from a smaller budget; ramp-up productivity with the same limited resources—by now we all know the drill. In today's evolving business place, companies rarely have the option to increase funds and bodies in response to growth rate. Utilities, like a lot of other businesses, are subject to the same ideologies, especially when it comes to IT infrastructure. Hosting services, for enterprise-wide systems or spot hosting for strategic business objectives, offer electric, water and gas
providers flexible system solutions, allowing for easy navigation of today's rapidly changing business climate. In recent years, the terminology used to describe hosting solutions in utility settings has changed several times. What was once called ASP, or application service provider, morphed into hosted solutions and managed services. A concept that originated from pure software solutions has migrated to solutions that involve hardware and software including procurement of server and hardware, installation and configuration of the solution, and ongoing system monitoring and maintenance. Simultaneously, the market witnessed a significant trend favoring meter automation. The Scott Report indicates that automated meter reading (AMR) shipments in North America were up 27.5 percent in 2006. Shipments to water utilities were up 15.5 percent the same year. With so many benefits derived from automation, it is only natural utilities would put precedent on accelerating AMR implementations. Hosting allows a utility to focus solely on the hardware side of an implementation, while software installation and security costs, and associated personnel, can be minimized. In this way, hosting allows a utility to put greater focus on the operations aspect of implementing AMR rather than IT infrastructure. In terms of value, hosting costs are predictable and controllable, which means they are easier to budget and plan for. Cost savings come in the form of freeing up IT staff in relation to basic system administration which can include additional system monitoring, database and server maintenance, backups, and application support responsibility. Hosting offers utilities an opportunity to outsource work that falls outside their expertise, enabling a renewed focus on their core business strategies. When a utility can focus on their key business assets, it leads to better risk management, control and flexibility throughout operational practices.

New Probe Takes Guesswork out of Performance and Testing
		Itron is now partnering with Data Sourcing Technologies to make available the TruComm Optical Probe. The TruComm Optical Probe for electricity meters is the first optical probe to verify "send/receive" communications via bright, easily read light emitting diodes (LEDs). This visual confirmation eliminates the expense of probe testing devices and assists in troubleshooting communications problems. There is a red LED to confirm the sending of data and a green LED to confirm receipt of data between the meter and probe. The TruComm Optical Probe works with and is powered by all versions of the FC200 and G5 handheld computers, eliminating the need for a separate power
supply. The probe can be used with the following Itron software: Premierplus4, Integrator, FCS and MV-RS®. It is fully compatible with all electricity meters with ANSI Type ll and OPTOCOM optical ports, to readily support your meter population. Communication speeds are 56K for the ANSI standard and 19.2K for the OPTOCOM standard for fast data transfers. It has a rugged design to ensure continued performance in even the harshest environments, with a temperature range of -20° F to 140° F. If you would like additional information about the TruComm Optical Probe please contact your Itron account executive.