Lake Saint Louis, Mo., May 9, 2012 National Information Solutions Cooperative, an IT and software solution provider to more than 650 community-owned utilities and telephone organizations, has been selected by Great River Energy, a generation and transmission (G&T) co-op based in Maple Grove, Minn., to provide meter data management (MDM) and demand response (DR) management solutions to a smart grid demonstration project.
The effort is part of a $34 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, coordinated by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s (NRECA) Cooperative Research Network.
“NISC has been providing meter data management services to our distribution system members and customers for almost two years,” said Vern Dosch, NISC’s CEO. “We are pleased to be working with a G&T, Great River Energy, to provide MDM services to its smart grid demonstration project.”
“We’re also glad to be bringing our Demand Response partner, Lockheed Martin, into the project,” Dosch added. “NISC’s MDM is fully integrated with the Lockheed Martin solution and together we look forward to contributing to the success of GRE and its member cooperatives’ efforts.” The two distribution systems taking part in the project, Lake Region Electric Cooperative, Pelican Rapids, Minn., and Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative, Jordan, Minn. are also members of NISC and use its MDM system.
”There is a tremendous amount of data delivered to electric cooperatives by smart meters and managing that information can be challenging,” said Gary Connett, director of demand side management and member services at Great River Energy. “This demonstration project will help to determine the best method to manage that data and turn it into usable information that will help make our cooperatives – and our members – more knowledgeable about energy usage and ultimately more efficient.
According to Dosch, NISC has developed its MDM technology as an affordable and scalable solution for utilities. “NISC’s advantage is our ability to integrate with any AMI system for data collection,” he said. “We can provide one centralized and affordable MDM solution for any G&T, even though their distribution members use different brands of smart metering systems.” He added that NISC’s MDM will also work with billing and engineering solutions provided by other vendors.
