RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited (Toronto Hydro), one of Canada's largest municipal electricity distribution companies and an Elster Solutions customer, is a finalist for The Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Awards in the Asset Management category. The IEA Innovation Awards honor innovative individuals and companies in science, engineering and technology, and will be presented on November 22 in London.

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Toronto Hydro first piloted an Elster smart metering solution in 2004 to comply with the Ontario government's Smart Metering initiative. Since that first deployment, the project has grown and Elster's EnergyAxis systems are now utilized to read hourly interval data from approximately 650,000 electricity endpoints. Toronto Hydro's service area includes approximately 712,000 customers.

Leveraging both the data collection capability and the pervasive network of their Elster AMI deployment, Toronto Hydro expanded the system's ability to monitor transformers by deploying more than 5000 transformer meters. The transformer meters, also known as low voltage AGInodes, protect key grid infrastructure and assure optimal performance by enabling the utility to more easily manage transformer loading.

"We are excited for Toronto Hydro, because the judges recognized that the utility is delivering financial, performance and risk reductions to the benefit of its customers," said Ed Myszka, president, Elster Solutions. "Toronto Hydro represents a flagship of our EnergyAxis solution, lending its expertise and best practices for Smart Grid deployment to utilities around the world."

The IET Innovation Awards span 15 categories. These include electronics, IT, healthcare and sustainability, and will be judged by more than 80 industry and academic experts.

About Elster

With more than 170 years of experience, Elster Solutions has built a reputation on providing cutting-edge technologies to deliver world class products, systems and services to utility clients worldwide. Elster Solutions has two main areas of business - electricity metering products and Smart Metering and Smart Grid system solutions. Elster Solutions engineers fully interoperable smart electricity metering products through custom-made options for utility customers and award-winning end-to-end solutions for the Smart Grid with EnergyAxis, a multi-utility advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system for water, gas and electricity around the world.

Elster Solutions helps utilities improve their revenue cycle services, customer service, delivery reliability, and enable efficient energy usage by utility consumers through demand response and in home networking capabilities.

For more information about Elster Solutions, please visit www.elstersolutions.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EnergyAxis.

SOURCE Elster Solutions