Ampla, Light and Águas Guariroba win Metering International América Latina Excellence Awards

The Brazilian utilities Ampla, Light and Águas Guariroba have been awarded the Metering International's Excellence Awards for Latin America for 2011. The companies received the awards on Tuesday, during the first day of the annual Metering Latin America conference and expo which is taking place in Sao Paulo this week.

Now in its ninth year, the annual Metering Latin America conference and exhibition has been at the forefront of the discussions, sharing of experiences and exchange of information of the smart metering and smart grids industry in the region. The awards were judged by a panel of regional industry experts and are sponsored by the host publication, Metering International América Latina.

Ampla is the winner in the Smart Metering category, for its Ampla Chip technology, which was developed to reduce the high levels of theft this Rio de Janeiro utility was facing. Says Jonathan Spencer Jones, editor of Metering International: "the Ampla Chip is an advanced metering system comprising meters and concentrators that are installed on the LV distribution network, where they are inaccessible to tampering. To date Ampla has invested more R$768 million (US$432 million) and installed the technology for more than 540,000 customers, and the losses have come down by more than 5% to their lowest in the company's history below 20%."

Light is the winner in the Smart Grid category, for its ongoing smart grid project. According to Metering International's Jonathan Spencer Jones, the three-year, R$35 million (US$20 million) R&D project is aimed at developing a comprehensive model smart grid, which will be piloted initially at around 1,000 homes in Rio de Janeiro. He continues: "to date the project has developed a specifically designed smart meter and in-home display and web portal, customer surveys and benchmarking have been undertaken, and a good relationship established with the media, with the next step the rollout of the metering and other services."

The Water Metering category was awarded to Águas Guariroba, for its application of ultrasonic metering technology to the billing and collection of sanitation services for customers that have their own water supply and would not otherwise pay. Says Jonathan Spencer Jones of Metering International: "the Campo Grande water utility sought to investigate this in the case of a single large customer, the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), and since deploying the technology in early 2010 has gained additional income of almost R$2 million (US$1.1 million), with a one-month ROI on the technology."

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This release was published on openPR.