Norwegian utility to roll out 100,000 smart meters

A Nordic energy company plans to deploy smart electricity meters to 100,000 customers in Norway.

Fortum Norway will roll out a smart metering system from Echelon with the help of Telvent, a smart-grid partner of Echelon. The project is part of Norway’s new push to install smart meters for the country’s 2.6 million electricity customers by the end of 2016.

The Fortum deployment of Echelon’s Networked Energy Services (NES) smart-grid infrastructure system is scheduled to begin in August 2013 and be completed in 2015.

Norway’s energy regulator recently mandated that all 130 of the country’s utilities deploy smart metering systems with highly specific features and attributes, including daily data collection at 15-minute interval readings, integration of gas and water meters, remote connect/disconnect capabilities, secure/encrypted communication, measurement of micro-grid generation and interfaces for reliable communication with in-home displays.

Fortum, Norway’s seventh largest utility, has 1.6 million customers across the Nordic countries, Russia and the Baltic region.

Telvent is already working to roll out Echelon’s metering system to 550,000 of Fortum’s customers in Finland.