It’s hard to believe that 2021 is coming to an end. Despite all the challenges the year brought us, we continued to make solid progress on several fronts and did our best to connect with our customers – whether via virtual events or, in limited cases, in person. Together, we accomplished a lot this year. I am so looking forward to when we can all gather in person and hope to see many of you at DISTRIBUTECH in Dallas in January.

Upon reflecting on our achievements, here are a few that stood out to me.

Environmental Social Governance Progress

In June, we released our 2020 Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Report, highlighting Itron’s efforts to be more efficient and effective in working with partners and customers to lower greenhouse gas emissions and create a more resourceful world. The report expands on our 2019 framework, which we use to guide our decisions to increase the positive impact our business drives for our stakeholders and our planet.

Delivering Proven Results

We continued to collaborate with our customers to enable utilities and cities better manage energy and water for the people they serve. Versant Power, an electric transmission and distribution utility serving nearly 160,000 customers in northern and eastern Maine, will deploy Itron’s multi-purpose solution, including an IoT network and more than 160,000 distributed intelligence-enabled meters, to modernize its electricity grid. 

We successfully deployed a grid-interactive water heater program for Fort Collins Utilities, which provides electricity, water, wastewater and stormwater services to more than 75,000 customers in the City of Fort Collins, Colorado. The program enables new distributed energy resource technologies to connect electric resistive and heat-pump water heaters to operate during periods when excess renewable energy is available or to pre-heat water tanks, supporting Utilities’ energy savings goals.

Itron signed a contract with United Utilities to deploy Temetra, Itron’s next-generation cloud-based meter management solution, to optimize operations. With Temetra, the utility will be equipped to read 1.6 million meters to improve water delivery and management across its services in northwest England.

Itron and Con Edison achieved a utility network milestone with a total of 4 million smart gas modules and electricity meters deployed across Con Edison’s service territory in New York as a part of its Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project. The utility has also deployed 25,000 methane detectors developed through Itron’s ecosystem, which have successfully detected and mitigated over 300 valid gas events.

Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water announced they will deploy Temetra, Itron’s intelligent cloud-based mobile meter management solution, for to improve water data management and automate meter reading. With Itron’s solution, the utility will be equipped to efficiently read its 750,000 meters across the country of Wales in the United Kingdom.

Itron Inspire

For the first time, we brought our flagship event, Itron Utility Week (now called Itron Inspire), to smart city and utility leaders in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) as well as the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Each regionally focused event brought leaders together virtually for two days to share insights and solutions to address pressing challenges and create opportunity, together. It is exciting to see this event expand into new regions!

As our top priority continues to be the safety of our customers, partners and employees, we made the decision to host Itron Inspire virtually again this year. While we couldn’t gather in person, the event still brought together leaders from across energy, water, industrial IoT (IIoT) and smart communities to exchange ideas that help move our industry forward, especially around pressing matters such as better preparing for natural disasters, managing the influx of renewables and electric vehicles. At the event, we released the “Preparing for the Unexpected and the Inevitable: An Itron Resourcefulness Report.” It’s our eighth report based on commissioned independent research with the aim to gain insights into what utility executives and consumers think about timely issues. We hope you'll join us in-person for Itron Inspire 2022 in Marco Island, Florida!

Expanding Smart City Solutions

We recently reached an exciting milestone in our smart cities journey through our acquisition of Smart Efficient Lighting Control (SELC), a market leader in the smart lighting controls industry. The acquisition combines a leading Networked Lighting Controller (NLC) supplier with a world-leading provider of smart city and industrial IoT solutions. By adding SELC's products to our solution portfolio, Itron vertically integrates our smart city offerings, increasing Itron's leadership as an end-to-end smart city solution provider.

Under the SmartSA partnership, the City of San Antonio, CPS Energy and Itron are undertaking a smart streetlight and smart city application pilot. We completed the installation of smart streetlights and IoT sensors to support city applications in three Innovation Zones within the City of San Antonio: Brooks City Base, Downtown and Medical Center. When it comes to implementing a smart cities project—it really does take a village! Strong collaboration and partnership with various stakeholders has been the key ingredient to the successful liftoff of this project in San Antonio.

Awards and Recognition

2021 kicked off on a high note when we were named to Barron’s list of the 100 Most Sustainable Companies. It is an honor to be recognized for our efforts in sustainability. Itron was also selected as the winner of the “Public Safety Solution of the Year” award for the third consecutive year in the annual IoT Breakthrough Awards program. The award recognizes the cutting-edge IoT-based wastewater monitoring solution developed through a collaboration between Miami-Dade County Water & Sewer Department (WASD), Itron, Utility Systems Science & Software (US3) and the Avanti Company. This innovative solution enabled Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department to proactively identify and prevent sewer overflows, improve water quality, protect local ecosystems and ensure public safety. We were also named a Visionary in Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for Managed IoT Connectivity Services, Worldwide. According to Gartner, “The managed Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity service market enables connectivity, data collection, and analysis and additional decision services that are necessary for connected solutions.”

We also recognized our customers at the forefront of resourcefulness and innovation. CPS Energy was awarded the third annual Itron Innovator Award for its collaborative community leadership and smart city application pilot, which took advantage of multiple IoT sensors developed through Itron’s partner enablement program, including ambient noise, air quality, flood and parking sensors. Frost and Sullivan announced the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) as the recipients of the Excellence in Resourcefulness Awards for their steadfast efforts to improve the resourceful use of energy and water.

We at Itron are grateful for the opportunity to work with you to create more efficient and insightful utilities, smarter cities and a more resourceful world by delivering innovative technology and services. I am looking forward to expanding on this work in 2022. Happy New Year!