Industry Insights

Partnering with Utilities for a Resilient Energy Future

June 13, 2023

As the climate crisis grows more urgent by the day, the call for a rapid and robust transition to clean, sustainable energy sources is louder than ever. Supporting utilities and cities in this energy transition isn’t just a step in the right direction – it’s a necessity. In an interview with Public Utilities Fortnightly, Itron president and CEO, Tom Deitrich shares what’s top of mind for Itron moving forward as we continue to innovate, provide guidance and remove barriers to transforming the traditional power grid. Read the full interview with Tom Deitrich in Public Utilities Fortnightly or check it out below.

PUF: What most excites you about what Itron is doing with industry partners?

We have a rich ecosystem of partners that help us change the way utilities and cities deploy technology. With today’s rapidly changing energy landscape, utilities need agile and resilient infrastructure and the deployment of Distributed Intelligence (DI). Similar to a smartphone concept, DI is the idea of having downloadable applications into an endpoint at the edge of a utility’s distribution grid. With the latest generation of endpoints, utilities can download an application for a variety of use cases ranging from safety issues, meter bypasses, electricity theft, etc. Utilities can also trigger demand-response events through applications or understand location awareness. A lot of good happens when utilities can begin to map and understand in real time what’s happening across the distribution grid. It enables them to better cope with volatile weather, changing usage patterns, integration of renewables and more. I’m excited to continue supporting our customers as the way they interact with technology evolves, and ultimately enables them to provide a better quality of service in a volatile world.

PUF: If you look at five, six years ago to today, and then three years down the line, how is Itron providing more value to companies and all the players?

Looking ahead, there are some parts of our value proposition that I don’t want to change. What brought us here is a critical part of continuing to be a trusted partner. What we develop today and in the future must help customers holistically, whether it’s operational efficiency, consumer engagement or improving the use of natural resource management to create more sustainability. That is what Itron has been about for forty years and is what we carry forward.

What does change though, is making sure our offerings embody agility. The way we work with our customers requires longer-term relationships and adding incremental capability to a deployed system. We have six million endpoints capable of distributed intelligence in the field today, and that’s growing rapidly. There are tens of millions more in the backlog yet to come.

PUF: With the IRA and IIJA, there’s a lot of dollars coming. How does that impact what your technology and services can do for the transformation?

First, we asked our customers to understand the needs of utility executives, and the result of that research is available. We interviewed utility executives all around the country to understand their priorities, concerns and most urgent needs. What we find most often is that our customers want to gain access to the money that’s being allocated but are not quite sure how to line everything up. Now, our role is to play matchmaker between customer needs, IIJA dollars and Itron solutions and to work with government officials to try to simplify the process.

Read our latest blog about Itron’s work with utilities and cities to make the most of IIJA funding.

PUF: The grid transformation is going to be tough. What are the biggest challenges people should apply their greatest energies to?

Every utility has a different set of challenges depending on where existing infrastructure is and what their territory looks like. You’ve got to do it one step at a time. It’s easy to get focused on one part of a total solution. For example, “we need to get focused on interstate transmission to get renewables into city centers.” That’s a real problem and needs to be addressed, but if you do that without also working on how the distribution system can get power to the edge of the city, you still don’t have the power precisely where you need it. It requires a whole-system approach.

PUF: What do you want the energy and utilities community to think about Itron?

Number one: we are a trusted partner and always have our customers’ best interests in mind. We measure our success through the success of our customers. Second, I want every young engineer who has a sustainable future in mind, to think the best place to work is Itron, because they are truly contributing to the longer-term success of society at large and developing amazing technology.

That is how I want people to think about us. We have the most proven solutions in our space, including smart networks, software, services, meters and sensors for gas, water and electricity. We look forward to continuing our work with customers, ecosystem partners and regulators to help accelerate deployment of our solutions, and in turn, create a more resourceful world.