ST. LOUIS, NOV 19, 2018 – Aclara, a leading supplier of smart infrastructure solutions (SIS) to electric, gas and water utilities around the world, has won a pilot deployment project by the City of Dothan, Alabama for an electricity and water advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) program.
Upon successful completion of the pilot, the city of Dothan plans to first roll out its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) project to include 31,000 Aclara I-210+ and kV2c electric meters. It will then expand the AMI system to include as many as 35,000 water meters. The project, which will utilize the Aclara RF point-to-multipoint network, will provide several key benefits to the utility and its customers.
"Aclara's RF point-to-multipoint network offers us significant advantages over mesh networks that we had been considering, including enhanced speed and accuracy of outage notifications plus redundancy to ensure reliability," said Billy Mayes, Utility Director for the City of Dothan. "Aclara's RF AMI solution will enable us to get automatic notifications of power outages, speeding response time with the integration of outage management, as well as the ability to optimize our operations."
The Aclara RF network provides optimum performance and reliable two-way communications. It employs licensed 450-470-MHz radio frequencies for better propagation of all inbound and outbound communications between data collectors and endpoints.
Mayes added, "The system will also allow us to expand our AMI network to include smart sensors and enable smart city upgrades in the future."
"Aclara has enjoyed a long and valued relationship with the City of Dothan, and we are very pleased that they chose Aclara for this important project," said Allan Connolly, president of Aclara and divisional vice president of Hubbell Power Systems. "Our ability to meet all their requirements in terms of providing an all-in-one solution, and our capability to scale and expand the program as needed, addressed some of their important selection criteria. In addition, the ability to integrate our AclaraONE® unified headend software into the system will offer many other advantages such as automatically reading their water meters in addition to the electric meters on the same RF network.
"The fact that we can integrate water, gas and electric meters into a combo solution operating under a single headend software provides advantages including lower total cost of ownership over other technology and service providers once the whole network is installed," Connolly added.
Located approximately two hours south of Montgomery, Ala., Dothan is home to more than 68,000 residents. The city is the main transportation and commercial hub for much of southeastern Alabama, southwest Georgia, and nearby portions of the Florida Panhandle.
About Aclara
Aclara, now part of the Hubbell Power Systems family of brands, is a world-class supplier of smart infrastructure solutions (SIS) and services to more than 800 water, gas, and electric utilities globally. Aclara SIS offerings include smart meters and other field devices, advanced metering infrastructure and software and services that enable utilities to predict and respond to conditions, leverage their distribution networks effectively, and engage with their customers. Visit Aclara.com for more information.
