Onzo to develop consumer displays for Echelon's utility metering services

Echelon and Onzo have collaborated to develop consumer displays for Echelon's smart utility metering infrastructure solution called Networked Energy Services (NES) system.

Onzo's in-home displays will allow consumers to monitor energy consumption in real time, facilitating energy-use behavior change to benefit both the consumer and utility.

The U.K. plans to require all households to have smart meters by 2020.

Echelon says, its new generation of smart meters includes a Multipurpose Expansion Port (MEP) interface that can enable Onzo to develop extensions to the NES System, making the grid smarter and helping create a dialogue between the consumer and the grid.

Joel Hagan, CEO of Onzo, said, "This development agreement will enable Onzo to provide utilities that choose Echelon's NES System with solutions that match today's sophisticated consumer demands, allowing them to offer friendly yet powerful interfaces for energy monitoring and management. Echelon provides a unique architecture based on open standards which enables the extension of basic AMR functionality to a rich application portfolio and offers capabilities to go beyond the meter."

"Engaging with the consumer is a key challenge for utilities. We are excited to be working with Onzo and believe that the combination of Onzo's consumer interfaces and Echelon's NES System will be able to offer new services to consumers, utilities and laterally to their distribution networks, said Mark Ossel, Echelon's vice president of Energy & Utility. "Onzo demonstrates the advantages of an open architecture with the addition of innovative applications on the head-end and end-user devices beyond the meter."