Echelon Corporation, an open-standard energy control networking company, and Chinese manufacturer of energy meters Holley Metering Limited, announced a partnership through which they intend to ship more than 10 million smart grid meters into the Chinese and international markets this year.

The first objective of this new collaboration is to develop advanced smart metering products that are capable of meeting the stringent requirements for the vast China market set by the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) and China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd. (CSG).

Echelon claimed that its NES Smart Meters are intelligent endpoints whose primary function is to serve as revenue-grade electricity meters. They incorporate the most sought-after, higher-value, highest-return features that utilities around the world expect in next-generation metering systems. And because they're based on a singular R&D effort, and a single form factor and circuit board design, they're competitively priced.

Holley Metering will work with Echelon to integrate Echelon’s power line smart transceivers into meter communications modules and adapt Echelon's Control Operating System (COS) and control modules to the unique standards of the China marketplace. Echelon's COS software is an open software platform running on the new Edge Control Node (ECN) 7000 series of open and extensible hardware. It offers an open applications platform that can host a range of third-party apps that provide intelligent distributed control services to utilities and their customers.

Echelon asserted that the new partnership will create a unique energy control networking platform, based on the best technologies and years of real-world experiences, to deliver unsurpassed reliability, performance, capabilities and value to the market.

Officials with Holley Metering commented that they are extremely excited to utilize Echelon's field-proven technologies and leverage their extensive experience gained by connecting more than 35 million homes to the smart grid. Utilities inside China and throughout the world are developing unique perspective and capabilities for the smart grid and for energy management, and the newly formed partnership can bring these in one package to all customers.