At this year’s Itron Inspire, Itron leaders, customers and partners had the opportunity to sit down with Jennifer Runyon, senior content director at POWERGRID International, to share their perspectives on how cities and utilities can address the challenges of today while preparing for the opportunities of tomorrow. Check out the interviews, including:

• Alex Barr & Paige O’Brien, Microsoft: How does Itron ensure its edge devices are cybersecure?
• Tim Claes, Itron: How to make the use case for expanded grid investment
• Tom Deitrich, Itron: Utility of the future unveiled at Itron Inspire 2022
• Marina Donovan, Itron: How utilities can become a resource for their customers
• Deepak Garg, Smart Energy Water: Are you paying enough attention to customer experience?
• BJ Malone, Warren, Simpson, and Butler: What does an award-winning water district do best?
• Don Reeves, Itron and Bilal Khursheed, Microsoft: The benefits of edge computing as explained by Microsoft and Itron
• Ty Roberts, Itron: These utilities are using grid edge intelligence to solve pressing issues
• Stephan Zschiegner, Itron: Can the grid handle the influx of EVs?
• Justin Patrick, Itron: Which Itron device will have the biggest impact on the utility industry?

Here are the highlights on what they discussed. To jump to an interview, click on a link above.

How does Itron ensure its edge devices are cybersecure?
Alex Barr and Paige O’Brien, both directors at Microsoft, explain how Microsoft and Itron’s collaboration brings together the best of both companies. The collaboration leverages Microsoft’s technology platform coupled with Itron’s depth of industry knowledge to drive transformation in the energy industry. Both companies are aligned on their vision to drive actionable outcomes, ensure customer success and build solutions that ensure customers feel secure with the new and innovative products we’re bringing to the market. As a global security player, Microsoft enables Itron to bring end-to-end security architecture capabilities to our solutions and products.

Pictured above: Alex Barr and Paige O’Brien, Microsoft

How to make the use case for expanded grid investment
Itron’s head of market intelligence & business value analysis, Tim Claes, explains why the emission reduction capabilities of smart meters might not be on utilities’ radar when they should be. He also offers advice for utilities who want to get their AMI 2.0 plans approved by regulators. A few top-of-mind use cases for Tim include the ability to eliminate truck rolls, which provides a monetary payback of AMI and reduces utility greenhouse gas emissions. Tim also mentioned time-of-use as another use case for utilities to be aware of as it can help drive energy efficiency and reduce consumption overall. When asked what advice Tim would give utilities who are looking to expand smart grid capabilities, he advises utilities to include more customer-facing benefits and quantify the value of service.



Pictured above: Tim Claes, Itron

Utility of the future unveiled at Itron Inspire 2022
Itron’s CEO Tom Deitrich laid out his vision of the future of energy management during Itron Inspire 2022. Utilities are up against large challenges related to infrastructure, environmental pressures, consumer expectations and more that are converging on the utility space in a visceral way. To address these external pressures and increase grid resiliency and reliability, utilities need increased visibility of what’s happening inside the grid. In addition, it is critical for utilities to use this visibility in a way that provides actionable intelligence to inform decision-making.



Pictured above: Tom Deitrich, Itron

How utilities can become a resource for their customers
Itron’s vice President, global marketing and public affairs Marina Donovan explains some of the insights in the latest Itron Resourcefulness Report, which shows that customers are very interested in (and willing to pay more for) greater insights about their energy usage from their utility. The report surveyed 600 utility executives and 600 consumers from five countries and reinforced the need for more visibility into the grid and consumers’ energy usage. Now that large amounts of data are available, Itron can help customers get actionable insights to make the most of it.


Pictured above: Marina Donovan, Itron

Are you paying enough attention to customer experience?
In this interview, Deepak Garg, founder, chairman, CEO of Smart Energy Water (SEW), explains why utilities should be hyper focused on customers and the services they can offer them. Energy providers are realizing that consumers are the biggest part of the ecosystem because they create load and use the most energy and water resources. By leveraging distributed intelligence and AMI, utilities can ensure consumers are equipped with the insights they need to effectively reduce energy consumption.



Pictured above: Deepak Garg, Smart Energy Water

What does an award-winning water district do best?
Warren County Water District’s BJ Malone explains how the Warren, Simpson, and Butler (WSB) Water Accountability Program identified 1200 leaks and saved 76 million gallons of water. Water accountability has historically been important to WSB and their customers. To WSB, it means knowing where every drop of water in the system is going and how it is being used. In 2018, WSB partnered with Itron to improve metering operations and implement leak sensors to help focus efforts on tracking water and preventing loss. To date, WSB has reduced meter reading labor costs in Butler and Simpson counties by 68% which is equivalent to $94,000 annually in labor savings. At Itron Inspire 2022, WSB recognized as the recipient of the seventh annual Excellence in Resourcefulness Award for going above and beyond to minimize water waste.



Pictured above: BJ Malone, Warren, Simpson and Butler

The benefits of edge computing as explained by Microsoft and Itron
Don Reeves, senior vice president of outcomes, Itron and Bilal Khursheed, industry director, Power & Utilities, Americas at Microsoft explain how DER can be used for grid services more effectively with the help of edge computing. There are no shortages of challenges for the utility industry – grid resiliency and reliability, cybersecurity threats, revenue optimization and more. These challenges, in addition to the changing dynamics of the grid with DERs, EV and behind the meter generation require the way we manage and operate the grid to change. These factors are driving utilities to look at technology and edge computing capabilities to effectively manage this complex power system with real-time insights.



Pictured above: Don Reeves, Itron and Bilal Khursheed, Microsoft

These utilities are using grid edge intelligence to solve pressing issues
Itron’s Ty Roberts, vice president of networked solutions, explains the importance and role of edge computing capabilities. The original driver was automated meter reading and bringing in more data to drive solutions based on intelligence. Now, we’re seeing this adoption most often with water management and streetlights. Looking into the future, the electricity, gas, water and municipal service industries are most excited about intelligence at the grid edge as distributed energy resources and electric vehicles add load to the grid. Ty emphasizes that the ability to measure and have access to real-time insights is key for utilities and cities to continue effectively delivering energy and water resources as stressors on the grid increase.



Pictured above: Ty Roberts, Itron

Can the grid handle the influx of EVs?
Itron’s vice president of product management and outcomes, Stefan Zschiegner explains how distributed intelligence can help utilities manage an ever-growing number of EV’s pulling power from the grid. All of our customers are wrestling with this challenge. In the past year or two, utilities and cities worldwide viewed this as a problem of the future, but the adoption is happening much quicker than anticipated. This is where distributed intelligence comes into play. With intelligence at the grid edge, utilities can see where electric vehicles are showing up, where they are charging and at what rate, which is key a starting point for utilities to understand the problem they are trying to solve.



Pictured above: Stephan Zschiegner, Itron

Which Itron device will have the biggest impact on the utility industry?
Itron’s senior vice president of devices Justin Patrick explains why data is so important to utilities today. As the need for data granularity increases, Itron continues to develop the next generation of products to be able to give utilities the insights they need to respond to disruptions in their networks and infrastructure. In the electric metering space, for example, we continue to evolve our market-leading measurement technology that allows us to develop even more distributed intelligence outcomes and use cases to provide our customers with insights to maintain grid reliability and resiliency.



Pictured above: Justin Patrick, Itron