Landis+Gyr, a global leader in integrated energy management solutions, recently combined forces with Utilidata, an industry leader in energy management solutions. Their goal: provide groundbreaking grid management through the deployment of edge applications on Landis+Gyr advanced meters, planned for the North American market. Utilidata's embedded software will provide utilities the opportunity to gather, analyze, and synthesize data from an increased number of grid endpoints.

"Smart grid technologies are changing how utilities manage the distribution system. Utilities traditionally monitor distribution circuits from the substation to the grid edge but are missing critical visibility required for optimizing system performance," said Tim Weidenbach, Senior Vice President of Sales and Customer Operations at Landis+Gyr.

"These new edge applications leverage the distributed computing and sensing capabilities of our meters to monitor assets and grid activity at the edge." As global spending on smart cities is set to reach $189.5 billion by 2023, and with the Internet of Things (IoT) industry moving processing power onto the cloud and turning edge devices into I/O centers, experts in the smart grid industry are looking at how edge computing can distribute IoT connectivity across a city.

This cooperative effort between Landis+Gyr and Utilidata demonstrates the value of IoT in the smart grid sector, "[enabling] smart cities to collect data, process it on the cloud, and pass commands to municipalities in real time," said Wang Shen, senior analyst for LEDs and lighting at IHS Markit.