CenterPoint rolls out $640M smart meter project in Texas

Houston, Texas-based CenterPoint Energy (NYSE: CNP) today said it selected San Mateo, Calif.-based eMeter to supply software for a smart meter program expected to start rolling out next month for all its electric customers.

CenterPoint maintain wires, poles and electric infrastructure for the 5,000-square-mile Houston metropolitan area. The 2 million meters will be deployed through 2013 at a total program cost of about $640 million, including the meters, labor, and in-home devices for low-income customers. 

Liberty Lake, Wash.-based Itron plans to provide the meters and network, while Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM (NYSE: IBM) was tapped for integration and project management (see IBM rides third wave of cleantech).

The IT provided by Itron, IBM, eMeter and others accounts for roughly 5 percent of the overall cost, said Chris King, chief strategy officer for eMeter.

"We enable the utilities to take advantage of smart meter capabilities," he said. "The utilities have these older systems that they've had for years that aren't built for these capabilities. They're built to be reading the meters once a month, now we're talking about real-time data for 2 million meters. That's a huge shift."

King declined to reveal the value of the deal for eMeter but said the project is among the largest for the software startup, which has raised about $26.5 million in venture capital backing by investors including by Foundation Capital, DBL Investors and Siemens (see Two funds expand cleantech plans).

With today's deal, eMeter has contracts to provide software for 24.2 million smart meters through 2012. Among the biggest deals to-date, eMeter has signed on to provide software to 5.3 million Southern California Edison  (NYSE: EIX) smart meters (see $1.6B smart meter program starts in California) and 4.5 million meters for Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator.

The deal with CenterPoint follows a two-year trial of the eMeter and Itron technology for 10,000 customers.

EMeter's software was used to provide detailed interval usage data, remote meter-reading and connecting capabilities, and outages reports. The technology is billed as being able to save utilities money on operating costs, as well as allowing them to react more quickly to problems in the grid.

The new project adds the functionality to connect the data to a home area network, so that customers can get real-time usage information over the Internet, giving customers the opportunity to save money by reducing energy usage, King said. Alternately, consumers can buy devices to see real-time information on a display in the home.

A year-long study of smart grid technologies in the Pacific Northwest by IBM showed that customers reduced energy consumption by 15 percent and monthly electricity bills by 10 percent when presented with real-time data about usage.

King said that the technology can be linked in with HVAC systems to remotely control energy usage through demand reponse programs. The network is ready to be linked with other appliances to control energy usage once more devices are manufactured using chips based on the open-source system, he said.

EMeter, which has about 200 employees, is seeing much of the demand in the past six months coming from outside North America, a relatively new market, King said. Demand is especially strong in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Visibility of the smart grid sector has skyrocketed in the past few months, along with venture capital backing of startups in the space (see Cleantech investment breaks all-time record). The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed an $819 billion stimulus plan that includes billions of dollars for smart grid technology (see Smart grid could be early winner in U.S. stimulus package), and the Chinese government announced plans in November for $586 billion in stimulus spending that includes $58 billion for infrastructure and energy efficiency projects (see China's stimulus package boosts water desal, recycling).

King warned that smart grid innovations are going to take time to make significant improvements. 

"The biggest challenge right now is managing expectations because the stuff will revolutionize the industry, but it will takes years to get the devices installed and systems updated," he said. "What our system does it expedite that because you don’t have to replace every system."

Cleantech developments making news in the past 24 hours

• AES raises $1.58B with China Investment
• Patently unobvious

View the last week of cleantech developments here | Subscribe to full feed