Consumers Energy Selects OSIsoft MDUS for AMI Pilo
After nearly 10 months of extensive testing, Consumers Energy has chosen OSIsoft as the meter data unification and synchronization (MDUS) system vendor for its Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) pilot.
San Leandro, Calif.- (May 12, 2009) Consumers Energy has selected OSIsoft's PI System -- the industry standard in utility enterprise infrastructure for management of time series data and events -- as the MDUS system for its AMI pilot, which will begin this summer.
Consumers Energy, a Jackson, Mich.-based electric and natural gas utility, performed thorough testing at its AMI Smart Services Learning Center before choosing the OSIsoft MDUS to collect, archive and export meter reads and events for a planned 6,000-meter AMI pilot.
"OSIsoft is excited to be part of Consumers Energy's AMI pilot, which is a bellwether for the utility industry. We intend to continue working with the SAP AMI Lighthouse Council and plan to best supply to Consumers Energy a final MDUS solution prior to mass meter deployment," said John O'Shea, senior vice president of sales and business development for OSIsoft.
"Managing large amounts of data in a near real-time environment requires a very different type of infrastructure than what's been available in the past."
Before starting mass deployment, Consumers Energy will conduct a pilot to test the performance of several AMI communications and meter vendor products. In addition to gathering meter data, the utility also will collect information from customers participating in the pilot for a demand response program.
At Consumers Energy, OSIsoft's MDUS includes bi-directional interfaces to Silver Spring Networks and GridNet AMI systems. These PI AMI interfaces automatically will discover meters, configure data points, collect meter and event data, and broker commands, such as on-demand reads, pings, connects and disconnects.
"OSIsoft demonstrates capabilities instead of just telling us what they can do," said Jerry Gray, an enterprise architect at Consumers Energy. "We're pleased that we can start analyzing data as soon as the interfaces are installed. The OSIsoft PI System's flexibility and powerful capabilities enable us to quickly investigate ideas and adjust to changes."
OSIsoft's MDUS solution leverages the PI System's scalable architecture and flexible data management capabilities to reconcile and aggregate meter data for an informative view of the grid and for presentation to application-solutions, such as SAP for Utilities.
"We are looking forward to using OSIsoft's MDUS in our pilot," said Wayne Longcore, director of enterprise architecture and standards for Consumers Energy. "The PI System features high-availability, endpoint-level security and an ability to monitor IT assets, meter data and SCADA systems to help us design a more secure and reliable system."
About OSIsoft
OSIsoft (www.osisoft.com) delivers the PI System, the industry standard in enterprise infrastructure, for management of time series data and events. A global customer base of more than 14,000 installations across manufacturing, energy, utilities, life sciences, data centers and process industries relies upon the OSIsoft PI System to safeguard data and deliver enterprise-wide visibility into operational and business data to manage assets, mitigate risks, improve processes, drive innovation, make business decisions in real time, as well as identify competitive business and market opportunities.
Founded in 1980, OSIsoft, Inc. is headquartered in San Leandro, Calif., with operations worldwide and is privately held. Learn more about OSIsoft and the PI System at www.osisoft.com.
Consumers Energy
Consumers Energy, the principal subsidiary of CMS Energy, provides natural gas and electricity to nearly 6.5 million of Michigan's 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties. For more information about Consumers Energy, visit www.consumersenergy.com.
