Cobb Electric Membership Corp. (Cobb EMC), a not-for-profit electric membership cooperative serving approximately 196,000 residential and commercial customers, has selected a meter data management system and smart grid gateway to support its smart grid initiatives. Cobb EMC will be working with Red Clay, a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), on the implementation.

As a recipient of federal funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Cobb EMC chose Oracle solutions to help manage the vast quantity of customer energy consumption data that it will gather from a deployment of 196,000 smart electric meters. The Oracle solutions will help the utility comply with various integration standards including Multispeak, which regulates interfaces of software applications and the exchange of data among software applications, as well as International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Common Information Model (CIM), which enables application software to exchange information about the configuration and status of an electrical network.

Cobb EMC plans to use Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to verify, store, process and format smart meter data, providing every department, application and business process with the metering information it needs. The utility will also use the energy usage data collected through smart meters for time-of-use rate design.

Further, as part of a pilot program, Cobb EMC will leverage Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management and its existing Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing application to connect advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) usage data and 3,800 in-home displays. The pilot program will assist Cobb EMC in understanding what information will best help customers to effectively monitor and manage their energy use. Finally, Cobb EMC selected Oracle Utilities Smart Grid Gateway to provide a single point of connection between all existing and future smart grid devices and applications. The utility plans to use the solution to handle common AMI processes, including remote connect/disconnect and meter status.