Smart Meters, Our First Step Towards a Smarter Grid

Glendale Water & Power (GWP) has replaced all electric and water meters in Glendale with new Smart Meters. The installation of Smart Meters will greatly enhance efforts by GWP and its customers to conserve water and energy use. For more information read below, check out our Frequently Asked Questions and watch the short video on this project. Glendale Water & Power has not started billing most customers from the Smart Meter System yet. Our meter readers are currently conducting parallel reads and reading each meter manually to assure that the Smart Meter System is registering and working accurately. We will start billing from the Smart Meter System early next year.

Thanks to your new Smart Meter, coming soon you can view your usage online. Click here to see what it will look like.

Smart Meters Benefit the Customers and the Community - An Op-Ed Piece for the Glendale News Press.

GWP’s Move into the Smart Grid Era…

What is the Smart Grid?

The Smart Grid is a set of technologies that will:

• Provide the tools necessary to transform our customers into informed, involved, and active consumers. These tools include access to in-home displays, web portals, demand response, and distributed energy resource options.
• Integrate new sources of electrical generation.
• Improve power quality, and provide a variety of price options.
• Support a new mature, well-integrated wholesale market as the market grows to meet customer demand.
• Greatly expand data acquisition and data sharing across business units with an eye toward improving load factors, lowering system losses, preventing energy theft, and dramatically reducing outage durations.
• Improve asset management and reduce maintenance and capital costs.
• Incorporate the latest in cyber security standards to make the system resilient to attack and provide for rapid restoration capabilities.

Why install a Smart Grid?

The Smart Grid will provide the tools to reduce energy consumption and lower customer’s bills. It allows for the incorporation of more renewable resources in our power mix, reduce our reliance on foreign oil, reduce the need to build more fossil fuel consuming power plants, and reduce greenhouse emissions contributing to climate change.

About Our Smart Meters:

Smart Meters are the first step toward the Smart Grid. We are installing the Itron OpenWay and SaveSource Smart Meters for electric and water. These meters work in combination with fiber optic and Tropos Wi-Fi system to bring the data back to GWP securely and safely, while protecting the privacy of your usage data. This is the same system being used by many utilities, including Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Modernizing the electrical system grid and moving GWP into the Smart Grid era will take up to ten years. The first step is the installation of the Smart Meters.

Our Installation Schedule:

Our Smart Meters will completely be installed by the summer of 2011. Customers will be notified of installations via letter and postcard.

How do customers participate in the benefits?

The Smart Grid system will provide customers with the tools they need to control energy and water bills. A recent study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy found that when customers have near real time access to energy usage information they can save 12% or more on their bills. With this in mind, GWP will be rolling out a number of programs over the next year that will give our customers access to usage data through a variety of media, including mailed reports, web access, in home displays, smart phones and other technologies. Customers will be able to view their usage data online, or with mobile devices, playing a more active role in managing their energy and water consumption and costs.

How does GWP benefit?

The Smart Grid will provide GWP with the tools to better detect outages and water leaks. The Smart Grid provides us with automatic meter reading capabilities and will instantly notify us of meter tampering. The collection of usage data will help identify problems, if any, during high-demand periods, so we can reduce outage durations. And the move into the Smart Grid will help GWP provide better rate plans for customers to better fit their lifestyles and can help lower their energy bills.