At CS Week 2018 in Tampa, Florida, Itron hit the show floor and showcased our expanded portfolio, bringing to the forefront the best of our smart grid and smart networks capabilities with advanced analytics and applications.

Buzz at this year’s event focused around customer engagement portals and value-added solutions—such as analytics—that help customers get the most out of their data. The Itron team came prepared with the Itron Mobile solution, meter data management, and analytics front and center—in addition to the OpenWay Operations Center and our customer engagement portal—helping showcase how we’re working to help utility operations make the most of what they have while reinventing the experience for end customers.

One exciting aspect at this year’s show was customer Otter Tail Power Company (OTPCo) receiving the Expanding Excellence Award for best analytics project. This award is for their work with Itron to monitor for service interruptions and improve outage detection. Utilizing Itron’s smart grid technology, analytics and managed services, OTPCo is improving outage response—and the company received this recognition for improving grid reliability and restoration efforts for its more than 130,000 customers.

In addition, Las Vegas Valley Water District’s (LVVWD) Chad Moore presented on “Improving Accuracy and Reducing Costs with Drive-by Data”. In his talk, he specifically mentioned Itron’s water analytics. LVVWD is using the Customer Service Representative portal to identify water usage and help identify leaks, as well as utilizing generated reports to assist with customer questions. In addition, hourly consumption data from the meters helps LVVWD during meter maintenance, and the utility can use hourly data to identify trends at the meter level.

Overall, the team was able to interact and meet with key customers while continuing to showcase our now expanded portfolio—and reinforce our resolve to transform the customer experience while providing solutions that are easy to implement.