Australia’s energy industry has acknowledged Horizon Power’s advanced metering infrastructure project (AMI), which was completed in October, with a national innovation award for best customer value.
Horizon Power’s AMI project was given the “Best Value AMI” award at the Australian Utility Week conference in Sydney on Tuesday.
Australian Utility Week, which is attended by the best minds in the energy industry each year, showcased the awards. There were eight judges on the selection panel, representing energy companies, product developers and universities, who selected Horizon Power’s project as the winner.
The Horizon Power submission outlined the success of the project which involved the roll out of 47,000 advanced meters across a massive 2.3 million square kilometres of arid terrain, which is Horizon Power’s service footprint. The project was delivered on time and on budget.
Managing Director Frank Tudor said the award was an acknowledgement of two years of intensive work by Horizon Power for its customers.
“We can now provide our customers with the latest in metering technology to improve their billing experience and reduce our operating costs and thereby cut our subsidy from government,” Mr Tudor said.
“We also learnt from past projects and ensured that our customers were well engaged during the roll out to limit any inconvenience, including making specific appointments with business owners to change over their meter,” he said.
“The meters provide a myriad of potential opportunities and an exciting platform from which we can achieve our vision of a microgrid future with much higher levels of renewable energy incorporated than currently exists,” Mr Tudor said.
The State Government provided Horizon Power with $34 million to replace aging electricity meters across regional and remote Western Australia with new advanced meters which provide more timely and accurate bills and also reduce business costs by more than $7 million a year.
These meters provide large amounts of data which will help provide customers with more tailored energy efficiency advice, alternative ways of paying for electricity, and enable energy trading as well as improved network security and safety.
Horizon Power is now the only vertically integrated utility in Australia that has advanced meters across its entire network area.
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