The City of Florence Electricity Department, which provides electricity to Lauderdale County in Alabama, has signed a contract with Landis+Gyr to deploy advanced metering and a mesh IP network across its service territory.

The utility will install Landis+Gyr’s Gridstream platform for advanced metering and grid edge intelligence to more than 43,000 residential and 6000 commercial customers. Gridstream’s flexible network design allows the utility to use Landis+Gyr’s omni-carrier cellular for data backhaul, while meters and other devices operate on an RF mesh IP network.

The utility is beginning the first phase of deployment this month, with project completion scheduled for August 2025.

“For us, grid modernisation is all about improving customer service,” said Mary McDuffa, general manager of the City of Florence Electricity Department. “Transitioning to advanced metering will allow us to provide customers with better visibility into their energy use, flexible payment and billing options, as well as improved outage and restoration alerts.”

The utility is also focusing on reliability improvements that will use voltage management, power quality metrics and OMS integration. Gridstream will also enable demand response and EV management programmes.

“Grid edge technology is the main driver for the energy transformation that’s underway,” said David Chris, senior director of distribution sales at Landis+Gyr. “Flexible management of loads and capacity is crucial to maintaining resiliency. We’re pleased to partner with the City of Florence to support critical utility business initiatives and future goals that help reduce costs and maintain reliability for their customers.”

The City of Florence Electricity Department (florenceal.org/utilities/florence_electricity_department) serves more than 51,000 customers in the City of Florence and Lauderdale County using 44 substations and over 5600km of power lines. The utility purchases over 1.3bn kilowatt hours of electricity annually from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which provides electricity for 153 local power companies.

Swiss company Landis+Gyr (www.landisgyr.com) provides integrated energy management. It measures and analyses energy use to generate analytics for smart grid and infrastructure management, helping utilities and consumers reduce energy consumption.