Australia's Integral Energy Selects Advanced Meter Infrastructure

SAN JOSE, Calif. & SYDNEY, Australia /BUSINESS WIRE/ -- Echelon Corp. a global networking company providing technology and solutions for controls, smart metering, and energy and environment management, announced that Echelon's Networked Energy Services (NES) System has been selected for an advanced metering project in the Australian market by Integral Energy, one of the largest utilities in New South Wales. The project, which will initially serve 3000 residential customers in Sydney, with a possible option to extend to 7000, marks an important step in the Australian marketplace, where various governmental agencies at the state and national level are considering regulations mandating some level of advanced electricity metering infrastructure. The project is expected to result in approximately $300,000 to $800,000 of revenue to Echelon.

Demand for electricity in Integral Energy's area is expected to grow 45% over the next decade, with Integral Energy's customer base anticipated to increase 29% in the same period. In response to these trends, Integral Energy is taking a leading role in Australia to find ways to apply advanced technologies to its operations. The NES System provides Integral Energy with an advanced metering solution that allows them to offer their customers better service and the ability to reduce energy consumption—without a negative impact on the quality of services or consumer habits.

Karen Waldman, Integral Energy's general manager for regulatory and corporate affairs, said, "We are taking the initiative to get ahead of increasing energy demands in the Australian market by investing in advanced metering solutions such as the NES System. This is the first large scale project in Australia of this technology, which transmits data about customers' energy usage and power quality two ways along existing power lines. This technology provides significant benefits at a much lower cost than traditional means of remote meter reading, lowering the potential costs of a full roll out."

Waldman added, "The meters can assist customers to better manage their energy usage by providing more information on their energy consumption and providing the technology to support more innovative prices. The meters also provide additional functionality designed to allow Integral Energy to improve its service to customers, such as remote reconnection and disconnection, increased information about the quality of the power supplied, and real-time notification of outages."

"Integral Energy's project is very significant for us in many ways," said Ken Oshman, Echelon's CEO and chairman. "Not only is it our first NES win outside of Europe, it was a win in a highly competitive tender, in a marketplace that is actively moving toward more advanced metering systems. Integral Energy is making a bold statement about the NES system and the Australian market's need to adopt advanced metering systems that are truly flexible, valuable, and long-lived. We believe that the NES business and the move toward next-generation smart metering has reached a tipping point in the last six months, with Vattenfall and E.ON in Sweden, Nuon in The Netherlands, and now Integral Energy in Australia all selecting the NES system."

Echelon's NES system provides an open, bidirectional, and extensible infrastructure that enables a comprehensive range of utility applications that can bring benefits to every aspect of a utility's operation, from metering to customer services to distribution operations to value-added services. The system enables a comprehensive set of energy services, including two-way automated meter reading, multitiered billing, time-of-use and real-time pricing, prepaid metering, remote electrical disconnect and reconnect, distribution system asset optimization, electricity outage detection and restoration management, blackout and brownout elimination, comprehensive revenue protection, real-time direct load control, power-quality measurement; and extensive tamper-detection features.

About Integral Energy
Integral Energy is the second largest state-owned energy corporation in New South Wales, Australia, incorporated under the Energy Services Corporations Act 1995. Integral Energy currently holds licenses to retail electricity in the contestable markets covered by the National Electricity Market. Integral Energy also distributes and retails electricity and value added services to 822,000 customers, or 2.1 million people, in households and businesses across a network franchise spanning 24,500 square kilometers in Greater Western Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Illawarra, and the Southern Highlands. These regional communities form the third largest economy in Australia.

Further information regarding Integral Energy can be found at the company's Web site.

About Echelon Corp.
Echelon Corp. is a pioneer and world leader in control networking—networks that connect machines and other electronic devices—for the purpose of sensing, monitoring, and controlling the world around us. Echelon's LonWorks platform for control networking was released in 1990 and has become a worldwide standard in the building, industrial, transportation, and home automation markets. Launched in 2003, Echelon's Networked Energy Services System is an open, extensible, advanced metering infrastructure that can bring benefits to every aspect of a utility's operation, from metering and customer services to distribution operations and value-added business. In 2005, Echelon released the world's first embedded control network infrastructure, the Pyxos platform. The Pyxos platform extends the benefits of networking inside machines to the sensors and actuators that make them function and expands the reach and power of LonWorks control networks.

Echelon has been a leader in the advanced metering infrastructure market, providing the underlying network technology for the world's largest advanced meter management project in Italy, with over 27 million connected electricity meters and more recently, winning tenders to provide the NES System to 700 thousand to 1.1 million customers for utilities in Sweden, The Netherlands, and Australia.

Echelon is based in San Jose, Calif., with international offices in China, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Further information regarding Echelon can be found at the company's Web site.

Echelon, LonWorks, NES Powered by Echelon and the Echelon logo are registered trademarks of Echelon Corp. registered in the U.S. and other countries. Networked Energy Services Powered by Echelon and Pyxos are trademarks of Echelon Corp. in the U.S. and other countries. Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.