David Kus, Lakeland Electric: SAIC Selected for $13M Smart Grid Contract

June 24, 2010

Science Applications International Corporation has been awarded a prime contract by the City of Lakeland, Fla., to lead its new Smart Grid Initiative program. The contract has a 30-month period of performance and is valued at more than $13 million. Work will be performed primarily in Lakeland.

Through the city's Smart Grid Initiative program, Lakeland is seeking to reduce its annual carbon footprint by 14,000 tons while installing a smart grid infrastructure to facilitate future demand response and distributed automation capabilities. The city also expects the program to help improve operational efficiency, optimize capital investments to minimize energy prices, and facilitate time-of-use pricing to give consumers more control over their energy bills. These improvements will create an enhanced power grid with higher reliability and more dependable energy delivery than the current system.

"Lakeland Electric is embarking on an exciting project where in the near term our customers benefit with new rate options, improved metering operations, and enhanced outage management," said David Kus, Lakeland Electric assistant general manager. "Long term, the installation of a core Smart Grid system positions Lakeland Electric for the future."

Under the contract, SAIC will be responsible for the management, implementation, and integration of an Oracle Lodestar meter data management system; advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) headend systems from Sensus; 124,000 residential electric meters; and 5,000 home area network (HAN) devices. SAIC will also provide business process improvement, incorporate a service oriented architecture (SOA), install a customer facing Web Portal and transition the new business processes into the organization. The contract will be supplemented by a federal matching grant awarded to Lakeland.

"We are very excited that the City of Lakeland has selected SAIC to drive this important initiative," said Rex Ballard, SAIC senior vice president and business unit general manager. "The implementation of this technology prepares Lakeland to meet the challenges of managing their energy needs for the coming years. Their leadership in this endeavor will benefit them in future years."