(Source: Business Wire)
Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ:ELON) announced today that Fortum, the largest utility in Finland and a leading energy company in the Nordic countries, has awarded an advanced metering infrastructure project to Telvent (NASDAQ:TLVT) using Echelon's Networked Energy Services (NES) system integrated with Telvent's Smart Metering Titanium for 550,000 customers in Finland. Telvent is a value-added reseller of Echelon's NES system. This project is the largest advanced metering deployment in Finland to date, where there are approximately 3.1 million electricity customers.
Revenue to Echelon over the life of the project is expected to be approximately $50 to $60 million, depending upon the configuration selected. Volume deployments are scheduled to begin in 2011 and are expected to be complete by 2014.
Echelon's NES system was selected by Fortum in order to meet Fortum's key objectives of offering energy saving and home automation programs for homeowners, as well as for the ability to provide hourly measurement of energy use to retail customers and bi-directional net energy measurement for customer-owned alternative energy generation.
"With the new smart meters invoicing will be based on real electricity consumption," says Timo Karttinen, Fortum's Senior Vice President for Corporate Development. "Better knowledge in turn improves energy efficiency and makes it easier to operate and manage network capacity when actual customer electricity consumption is known. In addition, the smart meters will be used for faster power failure resolution and as a platform for future services within electricity solutions."
"We are pleased to be chosen by Fortum for this project. Finnish regulators have specified a rich set of high-level requirements that the smart grid infrastructure must meet, a trend we see growing throughout the world. Utilities and regulators are looking to leverage their investments to build a truly smart grid, and together with Echelon, we are confident that we will help Fortum to achieve that goal. Echelon has been a great partner, and I am sure that we will continue our successful relationship for many years," said Manuel Sánchez Ortega, Telvent's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
"This win demonstrates the vast capability of the NES system. We believe it provides the most advanced, flexible, and cost-effective smart grid infrastructure solution available. This win also demonstrates the strength and experience that our partner, Telvent, has in building powerful solutions that meet the growing needs of electric utilities worldwide," said Ken Oshman, Echelon's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
