Utilizing multiple communications technologies, intelligent connectivity paves the way for distributed intelligence capabilities. It enables devices, applications and end users to generate insight from IoT data and take action at the right place at the right time – whether that's at the edge of the network, the back office or elsewhere in the distribution network. Itron’s distributed intelligence applications provide deeper system visibility, pinpoint accuracy, enable faster notification and deliver more value through outcomes such as outage and theft detection, residential neutral fault detection and high impedance detection.

Itron’s distributed intelligence applications, which are part of the Itron® EyvaTM outcomes portfolio, offer significant value to utilities, including the ability to:

• Manage rapidly changing conditions in real-time
• Enable an increasingly diverse ecosystem of smart meters, grid devices and distributed energy resources that communicate and collaborate
• Establish measured improvements in grid efficiency, including location awareness, safety and reliability, and outage detection and restoration
• Transform customer service by optimizing the effectiveness of load control, demand response and dynamic pricing programs
• Maintain distribution network stability and operation by monitoring and managing operations in real-time

Distributed intelligence uses applications that run in the meter and utilize analytics to provide near real-time situational awareness. This insight provides additional value over the operational benefits gained from an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) network.

Itron recently announced plans to collaborate with Xcel Energy to improve customer experience and utility operations using the distributed intelligence capabilities of Itron’s IoT solution. Xcel Energy provides electricity and natural gas service to millions of customers in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico.

Xcel Energy plans to deploy distributed intelligence-enabled smart meters across its territory over the next five years to improve reliability, efficiency and security for its customers. Together, Itron and Xcel Energy will engage and empower the utility’s customers with a new generation of efficiency and services for years to come by utilizing innovative distributed intelligence applications running on meters.

For more information about Itron’s distributed intelligence applications, visit the Distributed Intelligence solution page and come see us at DISTRIBUTECH 2020, Jan. 28 – 30, in booth 2609.

To learn all that we have going on at DISTRIBUTECH, be sure to go to www.itron.com/dtech.