Networked Energy Services Participates in Tauron’s 2019 Smart City Wroclaw Project Expansion

San Jose, CA, January 08, 2020: Networked Energy Services Corporation (NES), a global smart grid solution provider with the industry’s leading Patagonia Energy Applications Platform (EAP^TM), is pleased to participate in Tauron’s 2019 smart metering expansion project in the city of Wroclaw. This on-going project, with the Polish utility industry leader Tauron Dystrybucja S.A., further expands upon the successful Tauron Smart City project in Wroclaw, where Tauron had already installed about 400,000 Open Smart Grid Protocol (OSGP) compliant smart meters for their distribution customers.

The Wroclaw Smart City 2019 Expansion Project included a new installation of OSGP compliant smart meters from NES for Tauron, the largest utility in Poland with over 5 million residential customers. Key contributions during 2019 include:

• Award of contract to Griffin Group Energy for the introduction of an additional 69K OSGP meters from NES and Apator, leveraging the “plug and play” integration achieved through the OSGP standard.
• Deployment of a further 200 DCNs to support increased communication of valuable end-point and consumer-side power quality information.
• Introduction of NES grid operations software solution, providing fault, configuration, performance, security, fraud management for the multi-vendor OSGP meter infrastructure of over 400,000 devices.
• Extended hardening of smart meters against fraud and theft.

Tauron Dystrybucja was a recent recipient of the OSGP 2019 EUW Award for Outstanding Smart Meter Project, in conjunction with Griffin Group Energy. Tauron won the award for its AMIplus Smart City Wroclaw project. They were the first energy company in Poland to release smart meters with functionality that allows remote activation of the wireless communication interface. As a result of this functionality, Tauron’s customers were the first to be able to observe the energy consumption of individual devices in homes or offices in real time.

Tauron selected NES along with its Polish partner, Griffin Group Energy, who will serve as the prime vendor for this extension project. This 2019 expansion project increased Tauron’s use of the NES System, which serves as the core infrastructure for the Wroclaw project and provides extensive security capabilities including AES 128 encryption. This infrastructure is composed of NES’ 3 tier platform solution of OSGP compliant smart devices, control nodes and software application. The deployment now includes more than 400,000 OSGP compliant and interoperable smart meters from NES, Apator and Mitsubishi Electric. The 2019 expansion project leveraged the existing interoperable infrastructure confirming Tauron’s selection of OSGP as a robust and secure foundational layer for sophisticated smart grid solutions. The Smart City Wroclaw Project uses a single NES Patagonia Head End System, which supports both OSGP PLC based meters and DLMS GPRS based meters, all operating at greater than 99.8% communications performance with end-to-end AES 128 security.

Tauron’s extension project incorporates the same high levels of functionality and industry leading service-level agreements included in its Wroclaw Smart City implementation. Tauron is continuing with its strategy to provide reliable services and safe-guarding customer information through its selection of OSGP meters, which are designed, from inception, to provide best-of-class security features as standard. The project also offers many innovative services for Tauron’s customers including providing smart meters with wireless M-Bus local communications for in-home access to information on their energy consumption and the opportunity to integrate with other utility meters. The project leverages the existing NES system software along with the NES Patagonia Energy Applications Platform, which allows Tauron to efficiently manage increasing meter volumes without step-increases in staffing or training needs, as well as benefit from distributed intelligence embedded in the functionally rich smart devices.

“It is a great opportunity to have participated, along with NES, and contribute to Tauron’s Smart City project in Wroclaw,” said Dariusz Wawrzynów, Griffin Group Energy Vice President. “Tauron is a leader within the utility industry and we look forward to continuing to provide our services and expertise to their extension project and enhance the already proven success of using the OSGP technology to fulfill Tauron’s smart city objectives.”

“We are honored by Tauron’s decision to continue working with NES on the award winning Wroclaw Smart City Project,” said David Thomson, NES President and CEO. “We are proud to have been participating in Tauron’s project, since 2015, where the NES EAP™ enables a variety of smart grid applications through the use of the NES System. We are committed to the Polish market and look forward to continue to assist Tauron, as well as other Polish utilities, meet the requirements of Poland’s Energy Law and National smart metering program that benefits Poland and its citizens.”

About Networked Energy Services Corporation (NES)

Networked Energy Services Corporation is a global smart energy leader in the worldwide transformation of the electricity grid into an energy control network, enabling utilities to provide their customers with a more efficient and reliable service, to protect their systems from current and emerging cybersecurity threats, and to offer innovative new services that enable active, intelligent use of energy. NES was formed as a result of the spinoff of Echelon Corporation’s Grid Modernization Division in October 2014. NES is headquartered in the US with R&D centers located in Silicon Valley, North Dakota and Poland, and sales offices throughout the world. NES’ smart grid technology is used in nearly 40 million smart meters and other smart end devices around the world. NES is a member of the OSGP Alliance, a global association of utilities and smart grid companies, which promotes the Open Smart Grid Protocol and cooperates to provide utilities greater value by enabling true, independently-certified, multi-vendor interoperability based upon open international specifications and standards.  You can find out more information about NES, its Patagonia Energy Applications Platform^TM (including grid management software, distributed control nodes, and smart meters) and services at: www.networkedenergy.com.

About Griffin Group Energy

Griffin Group Energy, which is part of Griffin Group SA, is active in the energy sector in both the public and commercial segments. It specializes in comprehensive project management in the field of analysis, feasibility study, installation, configuration and maintenance. The company's offers includes: smart grids and meters, energy storage, energy efficiency optimization, intelligent buildings, photovoltaic panels and alternative power sources. Griffin Group Energy is a partner of the world's leading suppliers in the energy sector on the Polish market. The history of the Griffin Group dates back to 1991, when IMS-Griffin was founded in Szczecin, and in 2017 it was transformed into Griffin Group SA with over 200 employees.  You can find more information about the Griffin Group at: www.griffin-energy.pl.