Press release

Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, March 23, 2009 Elster Successfully Demonstrates Over-the-Air Smart Metering Firmware Upgrade From 8,000 Miles Away

Elster, a global leader in smart metering and smart grid system solutions, today announced the successful demonstration of over-the-air firmware upgrades (OTA) with its EnergyAxis® System and its customer, Metrix, in Auckland, New Zealand. Over the air upgrade capability provides utilities greater flexibility and costs savings when deploying future smart metering and smart grid network enhancements.

The OTA upgrade was initiated from Elster’s operations in Raleigh, NC via an internet connection and included upgrading the firmware on 3,000 meters located in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand.

Richard De Luca, general manager of Metrix, said, “The results are very pleasing and provide Metrix a high degree of confidence in our continued deployment. The support of OTA upgrades is essential to ‘future proofing’ our AMI investment.

“OTA upgrades ensure we can maintain our network in accordance with market and regulatory changes, guarantee that savings related to in-field work force reductions will be realized and afford us the opportunity to easily implement innovative programs for consumers, energy retailers and energy network businesses.”

EnergyAxis’ distributed intelligence design optimizes LAN usage for network management, metering data, OTA and emerging applications. The OTA upgrade process will be used for meters, nodes, smart grid devices as well as the Local Area Network (LAN) and Home Area Network (HAN). The OTA process is also designed to restrict changes to meter metrology in line with customer requirements and country regulations. In 2009, OTA upgrades will be made available as a routine background process within EnergyAxis.

“The OTA upgrade capability demonstrates an important strength of the EnergyAxis System’s flexible design by providing a sophisticated yet simple mechanism for delivering future smart grid capabilities as they are envisioned and implemented by the Elster team,” said Victor Sitton, vice president, product marketing, Elster Integrated Solutions.  “This provides peace of mind to Metrix and ensures all EnergyAxis customers that their deployments will remain viable well into the future.”