Nedap Secures Traffic Flow in Nashville


Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation (MTE) is the largest electric cooperative organisation of the state Tennessee and the sixth largest in the United States. Entry and exit lanes at its facility in Murfreesboro are equipped with Transit Standard long-range RFID readers from Nedap to offer fast, convenient and secure vehicle access control to their facility.



MTE distributes electricity to about 200,000 residential and business members in a four-county area directly south of metropolitan Nashville. MTEMC's customers are members because the organisation is a not-for-profit cooperative, meaning each customer has part ownership.



The Transit system at the entrance of the MTE facility in Murfreesboro was installed through the local security integrator Guardian Systems. “MTE was looking to improve vehicle access control to their facility as well as improve their tracking of high value assets. But they required this to be done in a way that would not impede productivity. That is where the Nedap long range solutions came in,” said Josh McCollem of installing integrator Guardian Systems.



The facility access system now takes advantage of Nedap Identification Systems’ solutions for automatic vehicle identification (AVI) based on Nedap Transit products: Transit Standard readers and Heavy Duty Tags. The Transit Standard is a powerful radio frequency identification (RFID) reader (2.45 GHz band) with a reading distance of up to 10 metres. The Heavy Duty Tag is a durable transponder for long-range vehicle identification. This tag is ATEX certified and ideal for tamperproof mounting on the exterior of vehicles and other equipment.



The readers were installed at the entry and exit lanes of the facility, taking advantage of the Transit Standard’s directional read characteristics that eliminate crossover reads and let MTE track when vehicles either enter or exit the facility. Heavy duty tags were fitted to fleet vehicle and then each associated tag and vehicle was enrolled in MTE’s access control system.



"The hardware installation was simple to execute and is providing results exceeding product promise. So our client is getting the results they need without having to encumber busy employees with cumbersome security and tracking procedures. It improved the operation both from a security and control perspective and also from a throughput perspective. Not a lot of products can do all three,” McCollem said.



And with the Heavy Duty tag’s 10 year estimated battery life, those benefits will continue to be felt for years to come. Nedap is helping to keep the power on and securing the traffic flow.

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