Washington-based technology and services company Itron will modernize the grid of Brazilian electric utility Eletrobras under an agreement.
OpenWay Riva Solution, which is the latest technology from Itron, will be implemented at six subsidiary distribution companies of Electrobras.
The technology and distributed computing power support new smart grid applications on Cisco’s IPv6 network, according to a statement.
“Itron’s solution will address issues with losses and theft to improve operations and recover lost revenue. It will also give us a pathway for future smart grid applications,” Paulo Lucena, corporate manager for the AMI Project at Eletrobras, said.
Two communications technologies — radio frequency (RF) and power line carrier (PLC) — work in concert in OpenWay Riva.
Depending on the network operating conditions the solution chooses the optimal communications path, data attributes and application requirements, the statement said.
The unified, device-level software platform of OpenWay Riva supports high-performance communications and distributed computing power on lower-voltage networks.
The accuracy and timeliness of outage detection and analysis, transformer load management and energy diversion detection are improved by the technology.
“The solution will be provided as a part of a consortium that includes Itron, Siemens, Telefonica, and Telemont, a Cisco partner,” the statement said.
Emerson Souza, the managing director of Itron Latin America, Electricity, said: “OpenWay Riva reduces network planning, design and implementation time and helps companies such as Eletrobras accelerate their time to value for smart grid applications.
“The solution will contribute to the efforts of Electrobras to address energy theft, which is a major issue for electric utilities in Brazil.”
Ajith Kumar S
editor@greentechlead.com