Black Hills Power, an electric utility company that provides service to 69,000 residential and commercial customers in 25 communities in western South Dakota, southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming, has selected Sixnet’s (News - Alert) IndustrialPro cellular routers to provide wireless backhaul connectivity for the secure Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project.

The AMI collects data from smart meters at more than 69,000 customer sites over a 3G cellular network, allowing Black Hills to monitor energy consumption and maximize power availability.

“Previously, we checked electric meters manually, which was a time-consuming process that involved a great deal of driving and home visits,” said Rick Dobbe, communications engineer at Black Hills Power, in a statement.

“The security, performance and reliability of Sixnet’s rugged cellular routers give us real-time access to data so that we can remotely monitor energy use, outage and restoration notifications and alarms over our Verizon (News - Alert) 3G network, helping us to conserve costs while increasing productivity,” said Dobbe.

Officials with Sixnet said that the company’s IndustrialPro routers provide secure, cost-effective cellular connectivity to remote locations and devices such as meters, sensors or RTUs in industrial environments.

Company officials pointed out that the IndustrialPro routers used by Black Hills Power are managed by Sixnet’s SixView Manager, which enables remote management, configuration and monitoring of multiple devices from a single console.

“The Black Hills Power AMI program is an ambitious project that required a wireless solution that was not only secure and reliable, but also easy to deploy,” said Scott Killian, director of sales for Sixnet/Red Lion.

Killian said that Sixnet’s industrial wireless routers combined with the SixView Manager software make it easy to install, configure and monitor remote units so that organizations can proactively utilize 3G networks for innovative applications such as smart meters.