Hawaii’s Public Utilities Commission has approved Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative participating in a national smart grid demonstration project that will bring advanced meter technology to every Kaua‘I household.
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s demonstration project is designed to assist rural utilities like KIUC implement technologies that make the electricity grid more efficient and reliable. KIUC will be replacing about 33,000 electric meters with smart meters, along with an enhanced communications infrastructure that will allow two-way communications.
The new infrastructure enables KIUC to conduct remote meter readings, detect outages at the household level, as well as demonstrate the effectiveness of load control and demand response systems and allow the utility to evaluate alternate rate designs. Deployment is scheduled to begin early in 2012 and take five years to complete. The first phase, expected to take two years will be the installation of new meters at members’ homes and the second, three-year phase will include data gathering and analysis.
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