From Fiber to Flexibility- How AVECC Is Building the Smart Grid Rural America

Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative is executing a bold, fiber-enabled grid modernization strategy - one that converges AMI, edge intelligence, CVR, SCADA automation, and wildfire mitigation across rural Arkansas. With DOE GRIP support and Itron's Gen5 Riva platform, AVECC is transforming 6,000 miles of service territory into a smarter, more resilient system that reduces outage time, cuts maintenance costs and eliminates waste oil. The majority of upgrades are being deployed in historically underserved communities, delivering tangible reliability and safety benefits while building a local workforce trained for the future of utility operations.

Learning Objectives:

• Learning best practices from Deploying AMI and SmartGrid solutions to take advantage of your broadband infrastructure.
• How we worked with our cooperative partner NRTC and solution provider Itron to develop and expand our Fiber deployment by using Itron's fiber miniAP access point.
• How to expand SmartGrid solutions and deploying by managing infrastructure versus backhaul costs.

Date: Monday, 3/9/2026

Time: 10:00:00 AM to 11:00:00 AM

Speaker(s):

• • Chris Howe, AVECC
  • Chad Dose, NRTC
  • Mark Bruss, Itron