Itron wins contract renewal from Florida Power & Light Company

Itron

Itron announced that Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) has signed a seven-year contract renewal for managed services and purchase of new Gen5 hardware and professional services from Itron.

Under the renewal contract, FPL, the third-largest electric utility in the United States, will deploy new Gen5 network hardware and access points to support higher Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) speeds that are up to 24 times faster than previous generations and will move to GPS-enabled Network Interface Cards (NICs) for streetlights.

FPL will also deploy 2,100 new automated feeder switches (AFS) to support FPL’s network reliability goals. Other upgrades include replacing 1,000 radios from legacy Distribution Automation systems with Gen5 bridges. Gen5 is 100 percent backwards-compatible with earlier-generation equipment, ensuring seamless integration and deployability.

FPL will also re-architect the Itron Distributed Automation system to provide end-to-end IP connectivity for greater security and higher network performance. Itron will provide managed services to FPL, ensuring reliable, predictable software delivery, operations and upgrades.

The renewal contract follows FPL’s contract award to Silver Spring Networks (before its acquisition by Itron) in 2007, which led to deployment of Silver Spring’s wireless IPv6 mesh networking technology as well as management and control software to connect and control FPL’s meters.

Since 2007, the network has been further expanded to manage and control more than 3,700 automated feeder switches, 20,000 intelligent line sensors and nearly 500,000 streetlight photocells.

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