Avista installs first smart electric meter for Smarter Together project

Avista installed Wednesday a smart electric meter, the first of its Smarter Together project, at a home on the National Register of Historic Places in the Millwood community near Spokane, Wash.

“This home – and its owners – are stepping into the future,” Avista Vice President of Energy Delivery Heather Rosentrater said. “This iconic landmark has been part of the Millwood community since it was built in 1923, and today we’re excited to bring this historic home into the 21st century by installing the first smart electric meter and smart natural gas module. It’s a major step toward modernizing our grid to meet the energy demands of today and tomorrow.”

Avista will begin major deployments of smart meters next week. Over the next 20 months, Avista will replace nearly all of its existing electric meters with smart meters. It will also add a new smart gas module to existing natural gas meters.

The smart meters will measure customers’ energy usage and securely transmit the information to Avista. Avista will use the data to generate energy bills and share usage information with customers online. Avista is installing Itron’s OpenWay Riva solution.

“This technology is a real game-changer,” Rosentrater said. “It allows customers to go online any time and track their energy usage to date — similar to the way cell phone data usage is tracked and lets you know where you are in your plan. Instead of waiting to receive their monthly bill, customers can see their projected bill amount based on their current usage trend, which eliminates surprises when their bill arrives. We’ll also have more visibility into the grid than ever before. Because the smart meters will let us know when power is out, we’ll be able to detect and isolate problems and restore power more quickly for customers.”

More than 76 million smart meters are already deployed across the the United States. By 2020, that number is expected to increase to 90 million.