Southern California Edison (SCE), a utility company based in Rosemead, CA, serving more than 5 million electric customers in the Southern California region, started its Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) program for the Smart Grid Installation, called the ‘SmartConnect’ program in 2009 [1, 2]. The utility has signed a contract to purchase smart meters and communication equipments from Itron, a Liberty Lake, WA based technology provider [1, 3]. These meters use the Zigbee wireless communication technology [3]. SCE’s SmartConnect program allows real time pricing information to be available to customers that can help them efficiently plan and control their electric usage and hence result in energy and cost savings [4, 5].
As of June 2010 [6], there are 815,000+ smart meters installed in SCE service areas. SCE plans to replace approximately 5 million electric meters for residential and small-business customers by 2012. The installation is based on on a community-by-community basis throughout the SCE's 50,000 square mile service area.
