Trilliant set to implement BWPÂ’s smart network

Burbank Water and Power BWP is a community-owned utility that has served the business and residents of Burbank with water and power since 1913.

BWP, a recipient of an American Reinvestment and Recovery Act ARRA Grant, deployed approximately 1,000 commercial and residential meters during Phase I of its Smart Grid pilot program. As part of the initial deployment, all of BWPÂ’s customers using 250 kW and above were converted to time-of-use rates. BWP relied on TrilliantÂ’s SecureMesh communications infrastructure and UnitySuite head-end software to automate meter reading and deliver daily reports on late meters, outages, meter tampering, and more.

The next phase of BWP's Smart Grid program will deploy smart meters to all remaining business and residences in the utility area by year-end 2011 amounting to more than 50,000 meters. BWP will utilize TrilliantÂ’s solution to help manage service requests, customer inquiries, meter reading and service interruptions.

"One of our operational tenets is that you can't improve what you can't measure," according to Joanne Fletcher, BWP Assistant General Manager/Customer Service & Marketing. "Trilliant provided us with reliable and actionable data on both commercial and residential customers the kind of data we will now rely on for future Smart Grid applications as we expand our energy management initiatives."

Trilliant was selected as the prime contractor for communications infrastructure and head-end software and will be deploying GE smart meters throughout BWPÂ’s service area. Trilliant is joined in this full deployment by eMeter, whose eMeter EnergyIP software provides the meter data management platform, and by Siemens Energy, Inc., who provides installation, configuration and commissioning services for this project. Siemens Smart Grid Applications managed the integration between TrilliantÂ’s communication networks and BWPÂ’s utility enterprise systems to enable BWP to improve customer service and manage peak demand.

“BWP strikes me in many ways as the ideal ARRA Grant recipient. BWP used their award and spent a great deal of time and resources in 2009 and 2010 learning how to properly deploy a mature and reliable Smart Grid infrastructure,” said Andy White, President and CEO of Trilliant. “We were proud to play a role in their initial pilot and pleased to have been formally selected for the full Smart Grid deployment."