Lafayette Utilities System Selects Elster for Smart Grid Electric and Water Project

RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Elster (NYSE: ELT) announced today that Lafayette Utilities System (LUS) has chosen EnergyAxis ® as its multi-utility Smart Grid solution.  Partially funded by a United States Department of Energy Smart Grid Investment Grant, the $11.6 million deployment will provide energy-saving benefits to LUS customers.

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The turnkey project is anticipated to be installed on a 12-month deployment schedule with completion in 2013.    

LUS serves approximately 66,000 combined electric and water customers in Lafayette, Louisiana, most of whom have combined electric and water service. Elster's EnergyAxis will power an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) project for LUS customers, delivering operational improvements and providing consumers with more flexibility in electricity and water usage. The increased visibility into energy and water consumption will enable LUS customers to manage, control and monitor their costs of usage.  

"Providing our customers with greater flexibility, improved customer service and increased energy efficiency is important to LUS," said Andrew Duhon, customer and support services manager for LUS.

"We chose Elster's field-proven Smart Grid solution because of its expertise in electric and water metering and its potential to increase operational efficiency and cut energy costs," Duhon added.

EnergyAxis will deliver a comprehensive multi-utility system capable of improving customer service through usage monitoring. Communication between Smart Meters and the system head-end will enable LUS to reduce operational costs and minimize outage management response time.

"Elster's selection as the provider for the multi-utility LUS Smart Grid Investment Grant project is a demonstration of the power and functionality the EnergyAxis solution provides," said Mark Munday, CEO and president of Elster Solutions.  

"We look forward to helping LUS improve operational processes that will result in increased efficiency and energy savings," Munday added.

Elster's EnergyAxis, a field-proven Smart Grid solution with more than 90 active deployments and five million endpoints across the globe, enables utilities to:

• Realize operational efficiencies;
• Conserve environmental and economic resources by reducing the losses in electricity, gas and water infrastructures;
• Improve customer service and consumer choice;
• Implement demand response programs that can conserve resources and reduce costs, especially during periods of peak demand;
• Provide real-time information to end consumers to allow them to better manage their energy consumption; and
• Detect and reduce non-technical grid losses.

About Elster

Elster (NYSE: ELT) is one of the world's largest electricity, gas and water measurement and control providers. Its offerings include distribution monitoring and control, advanced smart metering, demand response, networking and software solutions, and numerous related communications and services – key components for enabling consumer choice, operational efficiency and conservation. Its products and solutions are widely used by utilities in the traditional and emerging Smart Grid markets.  

Elster has one of the most extensive installed revenue measurement bases in the world, with more than 200 million metering devices deployed over the course of the last 10 years. It sells its products and services in more than 130 countries across electricity, gas, water and multi-utility applications for residential, commercial and industrial, and transmission and distribution applications.

For more information about Elster, please visit www.elster.com.

SOURCE Elster

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