Next Generation MDM Unlocks Wealth Of Smart Meter Data

The new user experience, dashboard views, and the enhanced access controls on top of an easily extensible application for advanced smart grid applications, moves meter data into action with the third generation Ecologic MDM

Ecologic Analytics, a leading meter data management (MDM) provider for the smart grid serving electricity, natural gas and water utilities, announces that meter data management is being simplified by the third generation of its flagship product, the Ecologic MDM, making it easier for utilities to realize greater value more quickly from smart meter deployments.

The initial release of the third generation Ecologic MDM solution provides streamlined operational access and advanced analytics to a growing community of users throughout the utility. Built on a robust, proven solution, the next generation Ecologic MDM features a completely new user experience that provides greater visualization of meter data, improved automated workflow processes as well as architectural improvements to support growth in new markets. In addition, with this launch Ecologic Analytics extends its leadership in implementing critically important industry standards for interoperability and security. The third generation Ecologic MDM is set for general availability in fourth quarter, 2011.

Ecologic Analytics has been providing utilities the ability to capture, validate and make productive use of high volumes of metering data for more than a decade. Developed from the ground up specifically for this purpose, the Ecologic MDM incorporates the flexibility needed to support progressive utilities of varied sizes, serving electric, gas and water customers, and operating in a variety of jurisdictions and market models. Through configuration of an array of options developed in association with leading utilities, the solution is implemented efficiently on a common code base tuned to the detailed business requirements of each customer.

"The Ecologic MDM is proven to be an excellent fit for utility business requirements in demanding, real-world implementations. Expanding on this enterprise solution, the third generation Ecologic MDM brings a decade of operational experience with leading utilities into the product set, allowing our current and future customers to garner faster returns on their smart grid investments," said Craig Norman, president of Ecologic Analytics. "This next generation solution is about putting meter data into action, empowering use of the wealth of data in the MDM for a wide range of business requirements critical to achieving the objectives of the smart grid, all without requiring users to have deep metering experience or database credentials."

Capabilities of the Third Generation Ecologic MDM
The new features within the Ecologic MDM fundamentally change the way utility users and even consumers interact with smart meter data through a very visual and easily understood interface.

In close collaboration with customers, Ecologic Analytics defined and designed the intuitive layout behind the new user experience to support the daily tasks, processes and two-way communications required by MDM users within a utility. Using Web 2.0 functionality within the design, the Ecologic MDM user interface offers a flexible and secure platform. These advances, coupled with an efficient underlying MDM technology, turns an already powerful MDM solution into an exceptionally user-friendly MDM application capable of delivering the smart data required today, with the extensible properties needed to meet requirements yet to be understood by this still-evolving market.

Now, utility employees have the ability to view premise usage across several commodities, even compare multiple premises; drill into current and historic information about any meter, account and customer; and perform on-demand transactions for individual or groups of service delivery points directly from a single, intuitive user interface. The Ecologic MDM user experience also offers advanced search capabilities, dashboard views and statistical reports about the operation of the system and the automated business actions it has taken.

Guided by the Smart Grid Cyber Security standard (NISTIR 7628), the access control design of the Ecologic MDM provides a high degree of security from unwanted external access to smart grid assets through the MDM application. These access and security measures provide several added benefits for the utility. These fine grained access control functions give utility employees, such as customer service representatives, business analysts and IT operations personnel, access to meter data according to their responsibility within the organization, protecting the integrity of sensitive customer data.

In the third generation of the solution, Ecologic Analytics continues to embrace international and industry standards. Now, all of the data synchronization process between Ecologic MDM and adjacent back office systems are performed according to the IEC-CIM 61968 International standard, extending the leadership of Ecologic Analytics among MDM providers for implementing standards.

"Smart meters and the connected grid offer rich sets of data that have the potential to improve the customer experience and make utility operations more efficient," said Jill Feblowitz, vice president for IDC Energy Insights. "The key to capitalizing on what is being delivered is well architected meter data management solutions offering the kind of data analytics and visualization that enable utilities to make more informed decisions."

Third Generation MDM Features Applied: Extending Meter Data Analytics to the Consumer
Customer engagement is fundamentally defined as the ability to extend information about metering events to the consumer. Some of these events include:

• Critical Peak Pricing & Peak-Time Rebate Events
• Outage and Restoration
• Service and Equipment Changes
• Power Quality
• Temperature/Weather

For more than a decade, the Ecologic MDM has been capturing and processing the information associated with these events, while applying Meter Data Analytics (MDA) to determine the impact to the consumer's usage. These analytics provide the utility with accurate customer usage and trending data, alone or with embedded payment and billing capabilities. These fine grained access control capabilities of the system give utilities an exceptional opportunity to extend views of MDA data directly to the appropriate consumers, allowing them to view their usage directly from the MDM in "read-only" mode. The same data accessed by the utility customer service representatives or business analysts to make informed decisions about customer behavior is now available to the consumer.

"We are really proud of what we can now enable our customers to accomplish with the presentation features of our next-generation product," said Kristine Beck, co-founder and chief services officer for Ecologic Analytics. "As soon as the Ecologic MDM makes its consistent validated data available to a utility's CIS or billing system, that same version of the data can be presented to the end consumer."

Third Generation MDM Features Applied: Supporting Multiple Organizations
The security features of the third generation Ecologic MDM coupled with the new user interface structure also allows a utility to restrict access to areas of the MDM for which their personnel have authorization. These combined features form the foundation for multi-organization support. With these advances, generation and transmission utilities providing 'central office' capabilities for smaller member utilities can now do so with a single instance of the Ecologic MDM.

In addition, given the elegant design and linear scalability gained through application thread processing embedded within Ecologic MDM architecture, one organization is not dependant on any other organization for running MDM business operations or for processing reads and events. Core MDM processes, such as validation, exception, editing and exception management, are performed independently for each organization. The Ecologic MDM enables each member utility to independently integrate their smart grid applications with a single instance of the MDM.

Third Generation MDM Features Applied: Supporting MDUS Integration
The third generation Ecologic MDM system also supports the functional specifications for the SAP for Utilities EhP 5 integration standard. Utilizing MDUS integrations allows utilities to incorporate their smart metering investment into existing SAP business processes to reduce latency in process execution and further automate utility operations. Embracing SAP's integration standard provides utilities with the enterprise architecture needed to quickly and efficiently incorporate a meter data management solution with adjacent solutions offered worldwide by SAP.

Third Generation MDM Features Applied: International Support and Localization
The new user experience of the Ecologic MDM incorporates a design that enables rapid language conversion and full localization. This capability leverages properties within the underlying technology performing these functions without any changes to the software. Utilities have the ability to customize and create content that supports their culture and business practices. In countries where more than one language is spoken, this globalization feature supports multiple languages within the same user interface.

About Ecologic Analytics
Ecologic Analytics, LLC is the leading provider of meter data management (MDM) applications based on International standards serving electric, natural gas and water utilities. The Ecologic MDM continuously validates more than 550-million meter reads every day for Smart Grid leading utilities, transforming the data consumed from advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)/smart meter endpoints into accurate, timely and actionable information for decision making across the utility. The Ecologic MDM application is a flexible, configurable and highly scalable enterprise software solution that receives data from any AMI/AMR system and/or manual source, supporting the dynamic operational and business processes needed for Smart Grid initiatives. Founded in 2000, the company is headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota. For more information, visit www.ecologicanalytics.com.

SOURCE: Ecologic Analytics, LLC