SAIC Provides Florida Utility With Complete Smart Grid Program Management Solution

Overview

SAIC is providing the complete program management solution for the Lakeland Electric Smart Grid Initiative, which is expected to ultimately reduce the utility's annual carbon footprint by 14,000 tons while installing a smart grid infrastructure to facilitate future demand response and distributed automation capabilities. Funded in part by a U.S. Department of Energy grant award, the Lakeland project will also participate in a consumer behavior study to gauge the impact of rate options, improved metering operations, and enhanced outage management.

"SAIC isn't just an expert in one area; they showed expertise in a full spectrum of services and integrated that into a package that was very desirable for us."
- Randy Dotson, Lakeland Electric

The program will improve operational efficiency, optimize capital investments to minimize energy prices, and facilitate time-of-use pricing to give consumers near real-time information and allow them more control over their energy usage. Lakeland Electric serves more than 128,000 customers within their 258-square-mile service territory. Approximately 6,000 of these customers are commercial and industrial. The electric meters, equipped with point-to-point advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) communication devices and 3,000 home area network (HAN) devices will be deployed. These improvements will create an enhanced power grid with higher reliability and more dependable energy delivery than the utility's current system.