Echelon — Grid Modernization use case
Echelon Smart Grid Technology Helps Utilities Worldwide to Modernize
Utilities everywhere face growing energy demands, ever-tightening regulatory
mandates, and the need to integrate renewable energy sources. Echelon’s open,
multi-application smart grid technology improves today’s grid and provides a
seamless pathway to a smarter future.
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“We believe that basing our smart meter on the industry-standard Open Smart Grid
Protocol (OSGP) and our system solution based on Echelon technology enables us to
uniquely deliver improved quality of service, reduce peak demand and operational
costs, and protect revenue for our customers.”
— Marcos Rizzo, Vice President of Business Development of ELO Sistemas Eletrônicos,
an Echelon VAR partner in Brazil
The Challenge
Modernizing the electrical grid is a complex undertaking, with each country and region
facing its own distinctive challenges. Smart metering technology at the edge of the grid
is key to utilities’ ability to deliver more energy more efficiently.
Smart grid technology means more than just making electricity meters more accurate or
easier to read. Utilities also need to be able to collect real-time grid statistics important
for determining grid health; collect billing data more accurately; and be confident that
their metering technology will operate reliably even in tough environments.
The Echelon Solution
Echelon offers a three-tier Networked Energy Services (NES) grid modernization
solution:
 Device tier: Smart meters and other smart grid devices based on the Open Smart
Grid Protocol (OSGP) standard feature consistently reliable, accurate operation
using bidirectional power line or wireless (RF) communications.
 Control node tier: Data concentrators/Distributed Control Nodes located at the
medium-voltage/low-voltage transformer manage the OSGP devices and connect
to the enterprise via an IP network, and they collect multiple channels of
accurate load-profile data with 100% reliability.
 Enterprise tier: System software located at the head end supplies everything a
utility needs to deploy, provision, configure, audit, diagnose, and retrieve data
from any OSGP-compatible device operating within the Echelon NES system.
The Results
By enabling the building and management of a smarter grid, Echelon grid modernization
solutions help utilities to:
 Pinpoint and restore outages and identify voltage quality issues automatically,
without calling customers or driving to confirm that power has been restored
 Predict line failures before they occur
 Avoid damage from power surges
 Better manage energy efficiency on the low-voltage grid
 Cost-effectively schedule preventive maintenance, rather than responding to
outages after hours
 Improve billing procedures
 Provide customers with greater insight into and control over their energy
consumption and costs
 Reduce non-technical power losses, such as from theft
 Maximize the life of grid assets
 Better protect consumer safety
 Leverage additional smart grid applications
Real-World Examples
Russian Railways confronted all the normal challenges involved in modernizing an
electricity grid—but amplified when applied to the largest country in the world, where
deployment had to span tall mountain ranges and regions where temperatures can dip
to -55 °C (-67 °F). Using Echelon smart grid technology, Russian systems integrator
EnergoAuditControl (EAC) successfully achieved a single, unified smart meter rollout
across the country’s 17 million km2 of land, nine time zones, and varied geography.
Echelon technology’s unquestioned reliability; ability to provide vital grid health data
and pinpoint problems; and completely software-driven operation eliminates the
expense and inconvenience of visiting meters in person.
In Denmark, leading utility SEAS-NVE has replaced its aging meter infrastructure with
Echelon NES-based smart meters, Data Concentrators, and System Software, deployed
by Echelon VAR partner Eltel Networks A/S. The Echelon-based smart grid technology
has not only fulfilled SEAS-NVE’s primary goal—to improve its billing system—but also
enables the utility to know about voltage quality issues even before consumers
experience equipment malfunctions or failures; recover quickly from outages; and avoid
damages from surges.
Nearby in Sweden, two Echelon-based projects have achieved notable success:
 Deployment of Echelon’s NES system by Vattenfall—one of Europe’s largest
electricity generators—expanded from a simple meter-reading automation
project to one of the most extensive smart grid projects to date. The Echelon
system allows Vattenfall to use outage information and power-quality data to
manage its distribution network and identify issues or problems; better manage
customers and their associated contract size restrictions; and provide a more
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cost-effective solution than a dedicated meter. And with a daily success rate well
above 99%, the availability of the system has exceeded expectations.
E.ON Sverige, Sweden’s largest utility, wanted to do more than just comply with
Swedish laws mandating that electricity utilities provide customers with monthly
meter readings, as well as provide meter data to all retailers and customers.
Using Echelon’s NES system—with its open, bidirectional, and extensible
infrastructure—E.ON has exceeded its anticipated cost-benefit return, improved
customer service, experienced a significant reduction in customer service calls,
reduced systems losses, and increased customer loyalty.
Echelon smart meters operated by Kapsch Smart Energy are being deployed in Austria
and Central Europe, achieving grid modernization goals of helping individual users lower
their energy costs and opening up new possibilities for energy suppliers, such as
improved pricing structures.
In a pilot project with important implications for smart grid projects everywhere, Cemig,
Brazil’s largest power company, has launched a Cities of the Future project based on
Echelon NES technology delivered by Echelon partner ELO Sistemas Eletrônicos. The
Cities of the Future project is demonstrating how countries like Brazil can reduce their
rates of non-technical power loss (at 10% to 30%, Brazil’s is one of the highest in the
world), increase their use of distributed generation, enjoy immediate savings, and use
the multi-application Echelon smart grid infrastructure to leverage other smart grid
applications, including renewables and home energy management.
California-based CyboEnergy is using Echelon technology in its industry-first on-grid and
off-grid mini-inverters for solar power. Combining the merits of both central inverters
and micro-inverters, the CyboEnergy innovation eliminates the problem of partial
shading of solar panels and enables maximized power production from solar arrays.