Silkeborg, Denmark --- (METERING.COM) --- April 11, 2008 – The Danish utility EnergiMidt has awarded a contract to Eltel Networks A/S, a value-added reseller of Echelon Corporation’s Networked Energy Services (NES) advanced metering infrastructure, to deploy the NES system to all of its 170,000 residential customers. One of the five largest electricity distribution companies in Denmark, EnergiMidt, a cooperative owned by its customers, is focused on providing innovative and high-quality service.

NES value-added reseller Görlitz AG is also participating in the project, providing their EDW3000 software, a full-featured meter data management system (MDMS) and integration platform which runs on top of the NES system software to provide a rich set of utility applications. Volume shipments are targeted to begin in the fourth quarter of 2008 and to continue into 2010.

“As a large, customer-owned utility it was important to us to provide our customers with a system that is world-class, not only in terms of its reliability and functionality, but also in its ability to allow us to offer new and innovative services over time,” said Holger Blok, CEO, at EnergiMidt. “With Eltel’s NES based solution, we have achieved just that. It is a proven system with a market-leading set of functions, and we are building an infrastructure that will enable us to offer new services to better serve customer needs, including the potential for in-home products to use information from the meter to implement automated demand response, energy management, and other programs.”

The NES advanced metering infrastructure consists of a family of highly integrated, advanced electronic electricity meters accessed via a web services based network operating system over an IP networking infrastructure. Multiple NES meters can share a single IP connection through the use of Echelon's standards-based power line networking technology. This drives down the per-point connection cost and enables the system to easily and cost-effectively incorporate new wide area networking technologies over the life of the system.

“Utilities like EnergiMidt and partners like Eltel and Görlitz are at the forefront of moving to the next generation of utility infrastructure,” said Mark Ossel, Echelon’s vice-president of utility sales, Northwest Europe. “Their focus on building a smart grid that connects the utility and its customers, rather than just an advanced metering infrastructure, lays the foundation for future services that can help customers lower their energy costs, reduce their carbon footprint, and increase the reliability of the electricity grid.”