A study of the hourly load of 800,000 utility customers at 200 of the largest utilities in the United States shows potential smart grid savings of 115,145 MW with avoided costs of more than $120 billion and net savings after smart grid costs of $48 billion.

Phil Bentley, Managing Director, British Gas

British Gas plans to create 2,600 skilled new jobs by 2012 to lead the rollout of smart meter technology across Britain.

Peter Mainz, CEO & President, Sensus

Sensus has announced that it has acquired the assets and business of smart grid cellular communication solution provider Telemetric Corporation.

Supporting three-phase electricity metering applications, the new ultra-low power MSP430F471xx microcontroller (MCU) series has been introduced by Texas Instruments Incorporated.

An agreement has been reached between KEMA and the European gas infrastructure company Gasunie under which KEMA will integrate Gasunie’s engineering and technology division (GET), which consists of approximately 90 people, into its existing gas activities.

• U.K. electrical retailer launches free electric vehicle charging pilot
• NERC to begin cyber risk preparedness assessment
• Duke Energy tests solar panels and smart grid technology in Charlotte
• Draft U.S. smart grid interoperability standards roadmap released

Salt River Project in Arizona is no stranger to smart meter technology, having been deploying smart metering for over a decade. In this interview Carrie Young, who leads SRP’s Revenue Cycle Services organization, talks about some of the company’s activities in this area, and its move towards a smart grid.

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The push for more consumer involvement in smart grid initiatives is slowly becoming more evident as companies and utilities attempt to grasp the overall impact of government mandated deployments of the smart meter. Understanding what the consumer needs and wants is quickly rising in importance with the goals and objectives of the energy industry.

The Province of Ontario, Canada has gained a reputation as a leader among North American jurisdictions for its commitment to shutting down its coal fired plants, building renewable and clean sources of energy, putting into place aggressive conservation and energy efficiency measures, implementing smart meters, and adopting Time-of-Use tiered pricing – an initial step towards realizing the benefits of employing smart grid technologies.

David Collie has been appointed as the new president and CEO of Canada’s Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) with effect from June 30, 2009.

Perspectives and retrospectives are clichéd at this time of year, but there are real reasons to assess the state and direction of ZigBee in the coming year. We believe 2009 will be the year of ZigBee. Maybe Time will name ZigBee “Person of the Year” and feature a big, round and red Z on its cover.