“The IESO was fortunate to receive a number of very credible responses to its Request for Proposals and undertook a multiple step evaluation process… This will work for the benefit of Local Distribution Companies, Retailers and electricity customers in Ontario’s electricity market.”
IESO manages Ontario’s electricity system and operates the wholesale electricity market. It forecasts the demand for electricity and ensures that there are available supplies to meet that demand. IESO services 412,582 sq miles – 2X size of Texas, including 4.5M electric meters across 93 Local Distribution Companies (LDC). In December 2006, the IESO entered into a contract with IBM Global Services Canada for the supply, implementation and operation of a Meter Data Management and Repository (MDM/R) for the province of Ontario. IBM Global Services specified eMeter as the subcontractor, providing software, software implementation services and remote application administration services.
The MDM/R, powered by eMeter’s EnergyIP, is an independent central meter data repository that receives and process the hourly consumer consumption data transmitted daily by each of Ontario ‘s 93 local distribution companies (LDC). The MDM/R is a unique solution that tests the bounds of complexity and is the perfect customer to highlight the performance characteristics of Energy IP in scale, VEE, and flexibility to meet an evolving market. EnergyIP is taking in raw meter data from AMI systems operated by the 93 utilities, processing hourly data for all residential and small commercial customers and 15-minute data for large commercial (above 50 kW), performing VEE, reporting billing quantities, performing preliminary settlement calculations, and providing a variety of analytical and reporting functions. This implementation includes integration with the CIS systems for all 93 utilities. Today, EnergyIP is processing VEE and billing determinants for all 4.5M customers with 9 LDCs in production, interfacing with five different AMI systems, seven CIS systems, and multiple LDCs.
At this time, Ontario has hourly pricing rates and time-of-use (TOU) billing, and will roll-out critical peak pricing (CPP) in the future. As advanced meters are deployed, Ontario customers will be placed on TOU rates as the default option, with the choice of moving to a competitive retail supplier. The Smart Metering Initiative (SMI) in Ontario is designed to create a conservation culture and a toolset for demand management based upon the province-wide deployment of smart meters. The IESO provides a delivery framework to facilitate these objectives.