Landis+Gyr is a Swiss company that does what Itron does, except in Europe: it develops and sells advanced utility meters.

It's another company that is busy figuring out how to develop “grid” devices that can make the distribution and consumption of energy smarter and more efficient.

L+G is already a very large competitor in Europe to Itron, Spokane's own major producer of smart metering devices and other utility products and services.

A Wall Street Journal commentator noted that Toshiba has spent $2.3 billion to acquire the Swiss meter (maid?) company.  The story noted global power use will grow 60 percent by 2030. The utility industry has to make major investments to keep up with that demand, and that's why you hear so much about smart grid.

Only 10 percent of European Union households have smart electricity meters. Clearly, Toshiba sees great potential by acquiring L+G, and this poses a direct threat to Itron's role in taking a share of the future market.

The WSJ story also notes Toshiba paid a premium for the company, by spending 11 times historic earnings for L+G. The other main Euro electricity meter competitor is Germany's Elster Group.

The commentary noted Toshiba, with yearly revenue of $77 billion, sees this purchase as its way to catch up Elster and Itron.

Russ Vanos, who is Itron's vp for marketing, said Itron's reaction is a positive take-away.

“The bottom line is Toshiba is a large, deep-pocketed strategic investor who paid top dollar for L+G which should give some indication of the level of strategic interest in this space,” Vanos said.

Liberty Lake-based Itron Inc. said this week that they’ve just helped install their millionth OpenWay smart meter at Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the nation’s largest electric utilities.

What is striking is that the media folks at Itron went out and even found who the lucky customer is.

And it is …. drumroll … an unidentified customer who lives in Redondo Beach. Several dignitaries were on hand to commemorate the event, including U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), 36th Congressional District; Theodore F. Craver Jr., president, chairman and CEO of Edison International; Lynda Ziegler, senior vice president of customer service for SCE; and Malcolm Unsworth, president and CEO of Itron. The photo above, with two dignitaries and an unindentified technician, came by way of Earthtimes.com.

Does it seem odd that we get the full list of the honchos who showed up, but not the name of the customer? (We have a feeling he or he is not running for office.)

Now you will want to ask, what is an OpenWay meter? One way to think of it is, it’s like an HTC Droid Incredible or iPhone 3GS meter compared with your grandma’s cell phone. The OpenWay is Itron’s answer for utilities needing lots of ways to deliver data down the grid to the homes and businesses and customers, and to eventually allow demand-response control of a customer’s energy use.

Installation of the one millionth meter took place July 12. Southern California Edison”s crews began installing the first bunch of OpenWay meters in September 2009, and installations will continue
through 2012.
 

This goes into the Smart Grid file, in the subfolder on home monitors that track residential power consumption.

Cisco has unveiled a new home device. It’s the Cisco Home Energy Management Solution. Like other devices coming to the market, it provides a network hub to manage and track one’s home energy system and tracks consumption. The emphasis, over time, as more “smart” systems go into the home, will be on MANAGING energy, not just tracking use.

Cisco is such a giant that once it focuses on a business niche, it usually makes its presence known. 

The device pictured is supposed to become available this summer, and the official list price is $900 per home. List price, we hope, is way different from what it will cost consumers.

It’s unlikely anyone within 300 miles of Spokane or Coeur d’Alene will be able to use it.

Aside from Wi-Fi, the controller can communicate with smart meters and appliances via Zigbee and also via a proprietary protocol (Encoder Receiver Technology, or ERT) used by well-established home-automation player Itron, based in Liberty Lake.

It will also interact with so-called smart plugs — peripherals that you can plug your existing appliances into that will send data to the Home Energy Management device.

Did it make any difference when Itron Inc. CEO and President Malcolm Unsworth met with President Barack Obama in a Rose Garden ceremony last week?

The Itron stock symbol seems to tell the story.On Friday morning, April 30, Itron shares opened at $80.45. That morning Unsworth, with two Itron manufacturing workers, met Obama and listened as the president praised efforts by U.S. firms like Itron in helping meet the pressing needs of a more efficient electric grid.

At 11:40 a.m., shortly after the White House event, shares of Itron hit their recent high point, at $81.75. That’s the high price point over the past two years.

Since then the Itron share price has slid southward. As of today, it’s trading at $75 and change. To see the earlier Office Hours blog entry on the Rose Garden event, it’s here.

Deloris Duquette, who is vice president for sales development and operations at Liberty Lake-based Itron, said the real reason for the spike was the April 28 Q1 financial results.

“We released earnings after the market closed on the 28th and beat expectations by quite a bit and saw a (roughly) $5 uptick in the price on the 29th on very heavy volume.”

Right after the earnings report, the Thursday and Friday total volumes of shares traded also soared to more than one million shares, Duquette pointed out.

Itron CEO Malcolm Unsworth, along with other representatives of U.S. energy companies, met with President Barack Obama today (April 30) at the White House. (Associated Press photo found on www.whitehouse.gov)

Unsworth, who became CEO last year of metering-system powerhouse Itron last year, stands to the left of the president in this shot from a meeting in the Rose Garden. With Unsworth were two Itron manufacturing workers at the event, James Morris and Carla Reysack (far left).

The event saluted companies using federal stimulus money to help improve the country’s energy infrastructure.  A transcript of the proceedings is here.

Seattle-based McKinstry, a major company in the design, build and management of energy efficient facilities, said it’s purchased the Enterprise Energy Management Suite of software services from Spokane’s Itron Inc.

The goal is using the technology to help integrate smart-grid planning into the other services McKinstry offers, the company CEO, Dean Allen, said in a release.

The Web-based EEM Suite is described as an integrating software platform that collects utility-related data (billing, energy use, times of highest consumption) so that owners and managers can better plan water and energy use. No sales price was disclosed.

McKinstry has an office in Spokane.

Washington State University will get $2.5 million to teach students about green engineering and smart grid technology, Sen. Maria Cantwell announced on Thursday.

WSU along with two other state groups will share more than $11 million going to smart-grid related training, Cantwell’s office said in a media release.

The $11 million is part of $100 million in grid funding announced by the Department of Energy, for 54 projects nationwide. The federal money is to be combined with $95 million provided by the institutions and partnering companies and manufacturers.

Centralia College will get $5 million for training utility workers in the Pacific Northwest.

And Incremental Systems Corp., in Issaquah, will get $3.6 million to train operators, engineers and military veterans.

California communications company Tropos Networks has signed a $1.7 million contract to provide wireless services for Avista Utilities’ smart grid energy network.

A press release today said Avista selected Tropos’ “GridCom” mesh network system for full, two-way communications from substations to “smart” devices being installed across the Spokane electrical system grid.

Spokesman Hugh Imhof said the contract with Tropos allows Avista to install the network equipment and has Tropos providing ongoing support. The same network, not included in this contract, will be used in the Avista pilot Smart Grid project for Pullman.

Avista made the selection after reviewing a range of other industry options, the press release said.

The Spokane area upgrade to the smart grid system will run about $42 million. Of that, $20 million will come from federal stimulus money, said Imhof.

So, what’s in it for Avista’s roughly 365,000 power customers?