Itron and Schneider Electric announce grid edge integration

Itron and Schneider Electric have announced a collaboration, integrating their intelligent grid and distributed energy resource (DER) management solutions to digitalise the demand and supply of electricity.

The integration of Itron’s grid edge intelligence solutions to Schneider’s digital grid solutions aims to enable grid edge data analysis to optimise grid planning and operations to increase grid capacity while deferring infrastructure investments.

According to the companies, the integration is aimed to improve energy and grid management for utilities as homeowners and businesses increasingly adopt DERs, such as rooftop solar, battery energy storage, electric vehicles and microgrids at the grid edge.

In a joint release announcing the integration, the companies state that with more DERs coming online and more data being generated at the grid edge, the opportunity is provided to harness, aggregate and analyse that data to produce actionable insights for grid management.

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“We began collaborating with Schneider Electric to simplify grid management and enable a new generation of applications for utilities that recognise the dramatic changes and escalating demand that await all of us,” says Don Reeves, senior vice president of Outcomes at Itron.

“This collaboration will help us realise Itron’s vision for the grid edge – one where meters, transformers and feeders negotiate amongst themselves to achieve localised distribution outcomes, dynamically adapting and configuring sections of the distribution grid while enabling consumers to participate and benefit from these transactions.”

Ruben Llanes, NAM Power & Grid Segment president for Schneider Electric adds: “Utilities today need an interoperable, fully connected foundation for intelligent grid operations.”

Itron and Schneider Electric are also working on numerous integrated use cases that will deliver value across asset management, grid planning and operations and DER management and will work with utilities to integrate their solutions.

The partners cite Bloomberg NEF projections that 167 million homes and 23 million businesses will be solar users by 2050.

With the collaboration, they add, utilities can extend energy orchestration to behind-the-meter assets, enabling proactive management of grid constraints when and where needed.