Echelon, ELO Partner to Deploy Smart Metering Solutions in Brazil

Echelon Corporation reportedly announced that it has entered into a technology licensing agreement with ELO Sistemas Electronicos or ELO.

 

The agreement said that ELO will develop and market smart electricity meters which are based on Echelon’s Networked Energy Services smart grid infrastructure solution, according to company sources.

 

ELO and Echelon plan to focus mainly on the Brazilian and some Latin American smart meter markets which amount to more than 100 million electricity meters. ELO supplies digital electricity meters in Brazil and holds a market share of 40 percent.

 

Brazil’s energy regulator Aneel announced plans to install smart metering solutions across the country by replacing 63 million electricity meters by 2021.

 

“Today’s announcement is important for many reasons, and it represents a critical step forward in a large, emerging market with a market-leading partner,” said Michael Anderson (News - Alert), Echelon’s senior vice president, NES sales and market development.

 

“With nearly 30 years of local experience and the largest meter market share in the county, ELO is an ideal partner for establishing the NES system as a market-leader in Brazil and throughout Latin America,” added Anderson.

 

Anderson also said that this opens the large Latin American market for Echelon. The NES system is an open, standards-based platform for the smart grid which is open to application developers through web services; open to operate with any Internet protocol based network; open to expansion to in-home and other devices through the meter’s secure expansion interface and is also open for use with meters developed and sold by other manufacturers.

 

Marcos Rizzo, ELO’s vice president of business development described the Brazilian market to be on the verge of a very exciting transformation. 2010 is expected to be an important year for development and plans are afoot to have meters approved and in production to support the large-scale rollouts which will start in 2011.

 

Rizzo added that ELO will leverage its experience of deploying utility-grade solutions to the leading energy suppliers in Latin America. Basing the smart grid product line on the NES system will serve the needs of customers, he pointed out.

 

Echelon’s NES smart metering infrastructure solution provides a highly scalable, feature-rich and integrated system of advanced electronic electricity meters which can be accessed through a Web services based network operating system over an IP networking infrastructure. NES technology is commonly used in countries like Austria, Denmark, Italy, Russia, Sweden and many others.