Crompton Greaves wins smart meters contract in Portugal

Crompton Greaves (CG), an Avantha Group company, has won a contract to supply ZIV single phase smart meters to Energias de Portugal (EDP), one of the major European operators in the energy sector. This follows another major order awarded by EDP, selecting CG as the main supplier for data concentrators. ZIV’s single phase smart meter model is nowadays the reference smart meter in the Prime PLC market segment, after the deployment of over 3 million ZIV units worldwide.
 
A year ago, EDP began the deployment of Prime Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) in Portugal and CG has been selected as the major provider of the 150,000 single phase meters (known as EDP boxes in Portugal) to be deployed. EDP Distribuicao is an EDP Group company operating in the regulated distribution and supply businesses in Portugal, with more than 6 million clients and 220,000 km network. CG’s data concentrator units (DCU) have already been selected earlier this year within the scope of InovGrid, a project conceptualised by EDP to introduce AMI improvements in the network, benefitting its customers.
 
The deployment under Inovgrid started in 2014 aiming to address several challenges, including the need for increasing energy and operational efficiency, reducing costs, integrating large share of dispersed generation and electric vehicles. CG contributes to EDP’s goals with smart grid solutions that include ZIV Single Phase Meters offering advanced smart meter functionalities, such as real time readings on demand, load profiles, voltage monitoring and remote services and ZIV DCUs (called Distribution Transformer Controllers in Portugal) to be installed in every secondary substation, acting as data concentrators and local metering, monitoring and automation devices.
 
Crompton Greaves foresees a strong growth in the smart grid segment with ZIV solutions, especially after a successful year behind with key wins from some of the most relevant and innovative European Utilities such as Iberdrola and Gas Natural Fenosa in Spain, EDP in Portugal and ERDF in France, as well as a strategic win in Saudi Arabia that will open the door to a promising market growth in this financial year. CG offers ZIV meters, data concentrator units (DCU), distribution automation solutions (DAS) and Substation Automation Systems (SAS).