The city of Leesburg, Florida, is modernizing the city’s electric grid with advanced technologies designed to power 21st century economic growth, increase energy efficiency, improve power reliability and empower its consumers. GE’s "Grid IQ: Solutions as a Service" offering, an integrated grid modernization solution specifically designed for small to mid-sized utilities, will enable the city to expand its current capabilities to deliver an array of energy services to better meet residents’ energy needs.

These expanded capabilities offer new services and benefits for the residents of Leesburg:

• Access to more energy usage information
• Pre-payment options to better understand and control energy usage
• Online portal access to an array of information, including home energy usage, patterns and billing
• Faster response to power outages
• Automated meter reading

For the city of Leesburg, GE’s offering will include an advanced metering infrastructure network, which will allow the city to wirelessly transmit metering data from residents’ homes to the utility; a meter data management system, which will store the vast amounts of data that will now be available through the metering infrastructure; and a demand response optimization system, which will allow the city to better manage its electricity loads, especially during peak times in Leesburg (3-6 p.m.). As the technology provider, GE will be responsible for managing and maintaining the applications for the city of Leesburg at its data center. However, Leesburg will continue to own the data and manage its operations.

The city will begin deploying the first phase of technology during the spring of 2012, with Leesburg’s 24,000 customers expected to begin receiving some of the new services in the latter part of 2012. The entire project is expected to be completed in the spring of 2013.

Last month, the city of Norcross, Electric Cities of Georgia (ECG) and GE announced the first Grid IQ: Solutions as a Service project. GE’s Grid IQ: Solutions as a Service offering features three different delivery models: implemented solutions, GE-hosted data service and service-based offerings, all of which can include advanced metering infrastructure, meter data management systems, demand response management system, geospatial information services and outage management system. The solution also will integrate with existing utility systems, such as customer information systems, integrated voice response and customer billing.