The Canadian utility is recognized for investing in grid modernization and customer experience

As the energy landscape continues to evolve, leveraging Itron’s partner ecosystem to improve grid reliability and enhance consumer engagement has become an indispensable show of true partnership.

On October 7 at Itron Inspire 2024, we presented Hydro One, Ontario’s largest electricity provider, with this year’s Innovator Award. Hydro One was selected as the recipient of the 2024 Innovator Award for a technology initiative that leverages Itron’s Distributed Intelligence (DI) applications available through the Itron Enterprise Application Center and Distribution Automation (DA) solutions to assist with its grid modernization initiatives.

“Hydro One is proud to be recognized with the Itron Innovator Award,” said Martin Huang, Vice President, Strategic Projects and Initiatives, Hydro One. “Having a reliable supply of electricity and solutions that help us safely manage the grid is even more critical as we support the energy transition. We thank Itron for their recognition and are excited to continue working together in the future." 

The Itron Innovator Award goes to a customer who has demonstrated their use of ecosystem tools and services such as development kits and innovation challenges or the customer’s selection of a partner that has done so. 

Past winners include Tampa Electric Company in 2023, City of London in 2022 and CPS Energy in 2021.

Hydro One is specifically being recognized for its:

1. First-of-its-kind DI project: Hydro One’s program integrates several DI applications into lab and field meters. This initiative prioritizes grid reliability and enhances the customer experience by providing them with visibility into their energy usage.
2. Goal-driven collaboration: The project is enabling the utility to stay ahead of the curve to support acceleration in transportation electrification, DER adoption and grid modernization needs. Each stakeholder on the project, including Hydro One, Itron and several Itron third-party technology partners, collaborated to achieve a shared goal.
3. Enhanced customer experience: In the future, the utility looks to further empower customers to make energy efficient choices by leveraging Itron’s DI Consumer Energy Stream Agent, which provides customers with a near real time view of their current power consumption at any given time.
4. Visionary leadership in grid modernization: Hydro One is recognized for its agility and its ability to adapt to the ever-changing dynamics of the energy ecosystem and for embracing new technology.

“Hydro One continues to put its customers first by investing in an intelligent distribution grid that enables electrification, customer choice and improved reliability. We are proud to present the Itron Innovator Award to Hydro One for the utility’s continued dedication to creating a safer, more sustainable and interactive energy experience for its customer across Ontario, Canada,” said Ben Huggins, senior vice president of Customer and Market Experience at Itron. “Hydro One is a testament to the exceptional outcomes that become possible with Itron’s extensive partner ecosystem.” 

The utility is also evaluating several DI applications, including Itron technology partner NET2GRID’s EnergyAI application, which analyzes Itron’s DI high-fidelity data to provide accurate residential load disaggregation, usage insights and demand predictions. The application provides visibility into how a customer is using energy and once enabled, will recommend ways to potentially save money by adjusting specific appliance usage. The Load Disaggregation application on the smart meter feeds data to consumer engagement applications that enable customers to use energy more resourcefully. 

To empower customers to make energy efficient choices, Hydro One’s technology initiative is expected to leverage Itron’s DataHub which delivers near real-time data from the Consumer Energy Stream Application, an Itron streaming agent. This DI application streams consumption data at one-second intervals over Wi-Fi. If implemented, Hydro One and NET2GRID will use this data to provide insights and alerts to its customers, such as high usage during peak periods, as well as to improve the accuracy of load disaggregation information from appliances such as HVAC, hot water heaters, refrigerators, solar panels, electric vehicles and more. 

In addition to helping customers better manage their consumption, save money and reduce their carbon impact, the data helps utilities track and optimize grid performance more accurately through better planning.