The University of Florida, located in Gainesville, Florida, has selected Byram Laboratories to upgrade its existing electric metering system to an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system. The upgrade is scheduled to begin in September 2007 and will enable the university to collect detailed energy usage data over a true two-way wireless mesh network and analyze that data for more efficient usage. The contract, valued at over 1 million USD, was awarded to Byram Laboratories after the university evaluated multiple systems that were installed on a smaller scale as a pilot program.

Byram Laboratories Inc, an official meter data management agent (MDMA) for Elster Electricity, has selected Elster’s EnergyAxis® System for the project. The EnergyAxis System is an advanced metering system capable of gathering data on-demand and executing commands in the field from a remote server. The university plans to utilize the system’s load profiling capability to retrieve energy consumption data in 15-minute intervals, as well as its time-of-use feature for accessing energy usage data in predefined rate tiers. Select metering points will be hard-wired into the university’s SCADA system for retrieving near real-time data.

According to John Lawson of the university’s energy department, “The EnergyAxis System will give us the ability to track our building loads, schedule equipment efficiently, and allow us to see true savings with accurate benchmarking.”

Byram Laboratories, located in Branchburg, NJ, has been in the metering business since 1910. Today, it is an electrical distributor and a data collection service provider for commercial, industrial, and multifamily residential buildings.

“We are committed to providing new technologies to our customers,” said Byram Laboratories’ president, Monte Prince. “The ability to gather detailed data more frequently will enable the University of Florida to make better decisions when it comes to energy usage. Automatic meter reading with two-way capabilities is definitely the future of the industry.”

Now you can get a visual representation of how power consumption is distributed over a day. Byram Laboratories' AMR web interface now allows you to graph consumption in 5, 15, 30 or 60 minute intervals.

Elster Electricity, LLC, a leading provider of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solutions worldwide, announces an expansion of its EnergyAxis System—an AMI system for residential, commercial, and industrial (C&I) electric and water metering applications. The expansion includes a new set of solutions for C&I metering applications and the availability of remote two-way 900 MHz communications for A3 ALPHA® meter types A3R, A3K, and A3Q—in addition to the A3D and A3T meter types already available. These meter types measure and report up to two metered quantities and two channels of interval data. Utilities can now read these C&I meters remotely along with their residential accounts. Enhancements have been made to the A3 ALPHA meter collector and the internal LAN option board for the A3 ALPHA meter, as well as a new release of Elster’s Metering Automation Server (MAS), release 5.5.

“Utilities expect their AMI deployment to cover residential, commercial, and industrial accounts,” remarked Garry January, product manager for Elster Electricity. “The EnergyAxis System now addresses not only the residential segment—but also includes C&I segments where watthour, VARhour, demand, and power factor (PF) are required billing attributes. This is just another unique feature of the EnergyAxis System that helps us better serve the needs of our utility customers.”

C&I accounts that require either bi-directional or reactive metering can now be added to Elster’s 900 MHz controlled mesh network on the EnergyAxis System. The A3 ALPHA meters, acting as nodes in the EnergyAxis System, provide energy and demand computations for two selected metered quantities: energy and demand storage using a 4-tier, 4-season time-of-use (TOU) schedule, and interval recording of the two metered quantities. Bi-directional metering capabilities utilize delivered and received energy as the selected two metered quantities plus demand. The system supports kWh and kVARh, kWh and kVAh, or kWh and kQh energy, as well as real and reactive demands. Coincident power factor can be specified and returned in place of the reactive demand quantities.

The EnergyAxis System now provides two-way connectivity to the full range of electricity meters—from residential or network kWh meters, including units with an internal service control switch, up to polyphase C&I meters requiring watthour, VARhour or PF measurement. A single channel of load profile data is available from any REX® residential meter. Up to two channels of energy usage profiling can be obtained from A3 ALPHA commercial meters, if suitably configured.

The new MAS 5.5 release adds support for meter management, meter read scheduling, meter data collection, and reporting for the two metered quantities from the A3 ALPHA meters deployed as part of the EnergyAxis System. MAS 5.5 also supports load profile data collection from these A3 ALPHA meters.