Copper Labs, a utility hardware and software company whose patented solutions enable true interoperability for electric, gas and water meters, announced an upgraded web-based portal that provides unparalleled grid-edge visibility and deep customer engagement. This centralized and user-friendly resource lets utilities see near-real-time data from existing meters in their territory in a filterable map-based interface, allows for sophisticated and personalized customer outreach, and makes it easy to create behavioral load flexibility events in the moments that matter most.

“Virtually all other grid-edge solutions currently face significant hardware limitations, including reliance on expensive smart meters and the widespread use of proprietary communication networks,” says Dan Forman, CEO of Copper. “Utilities shouldn’t be held captive by a single meter type or vendor to get the visibility they need. Copper is the only solution that unlocks data from a wide array of meters, uses robust existing broadband networks, and facilitates a practical and cost-effective path to digital transformation for all utilities.”

Because Copper’s portal can uniquely bring together data from a mix of different meter types, vintages, and vendors, it offers unprecedented new opportunities to better understand the impacts of electrification pathways down to the customer level, support distributed energy resource (DER) adoption and management, and accelerate integrated electric and gas system planning efforts by making it easier to compare consumption data across resources. “With our powerful new portal, utilities can easily see trends across their territories or focus on particular areas of interest, such as neighborhoods where growing EV adoption may strain local distribution transformers,” says Forman.

When paired with its consumer-facing mobile app, Copper’s portal provides a unique channel for customer engagement. With sophisticated and customizable filtering capabilities, utilities can target priority or income-qualified customers, or use AI-driven algorithms to find customers with EV charging or large HVAC loads. They can then send personalized messages to drive program participation, provide education on new time-varying rates, or share other relevant information. The portal also makes it easy for electric, gas, or water utilities to create behavioral load flexibility events so customers can choose to help alleviate peak demand challenges. This approach can help utilities improve reliability and resiliency while enabling deeper decarbonization efforts, expanding customer choice, and empowering consumers with actionable data-driven insights.

Copper is actively working with major utilities across the country, and its solutions are challenging the business-as-usual model of expensive metering infrastructure upgrades. As Forman notes, “by collecting better data from existing meters and enabling true meter interoperability, we’re providing unprecedented grid-edge visibility, improving customer engagement, and allowing meter vendors to quickly prove out the expected benefits of new technologies through small-scale demonstration projects instead of waiting years for standard territory-wide deployments. Ultimately, Copper is putting utilities back in control with a more flexible, centralized, and lower-cost approach.”