EnerNex Corporation has been awarded a contract from Southern California Edison (SCE) to provide consulting and systems engineering services related to its Advanced Integrated Meter (AIM) development initiative.

EnerNex will be responsible for defining the product requirements, guiding design options, providing technical oversight and assisting in the management of the product development process through selection of a meter manufacturing supplier. EnerNex will be working alongside IBM and KEMA on this effort for SCE.

EnerNex will assist SCE staff in the development of relevant use cases necessary to ensure a requirements-driven design based on best industry systems engineering practices.

The company will also provide consulting services to the core meter design team, communications network technology assessment assistance, and meter design reviews; and will facilitate coordination with the OpenAMI, Intelligrid and GridWise organizations. EnerNex is heavily involved in the activities of these organizations and can efficiently facilitate bidirectional technology transfer between all parties.

According to Erich Gunther, EnerNex’s chief technology officer, this project represents a seminal step forward for EnerNex in the area of advanced metering infrastructure: "This project will result in a state-of-the-art, next-generation, low-cost advanced integrated meter that leverages the extensive background, experience and participation of our personnel in the development of communication and measurement protocols and standards."

An Advanced Integrated Meter is an electricity meter that has the capability to measure and record interval (at least hourly) data, and communicates it to a remote location such as a utility facility. The utility then uses the advanced metering system, which has the capability to accept data from one or more advanced meters, and processes the data into information on energy use. This can be used to support important activities such as demand response, emergency load control, outage notification and other applications to improve the reliability and usability of electric power infrastructure.