Ending months of speculation, Itron confirmed earlier today that BC Hydro had selected Itron to provide the utility's 1.8 million customers with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).

Itron will supply BC Hydro with products from the Itron OpenWay smart grid solution; the $270 million contract will include Itron's smart meters, OpenWay Collection Engine headend software, the OpenWay wireless mesh communication network, and Itron's meter data management system. Itron joins Capgemini and Vancouver-based Corix as suppliers to BC Hydro's Smart Metering & Infrastructure Program.

BC Hydro is one of the largest utilities in Canada and becomes the latest major North American utility to partner with Itron. In 2008, BC Hydro concluded that a full end-to-end integrated solution would be cost prohibitive, and chose to proceed with a "disaggregated" procurement process; with this announcement, the last pieces of the BC Hydro puzzle have been revealed. Capgemini had been named as the Solution Integrator and Corix as the provider of Meter Deployment Services, but analysts were still hypothesizing about BC Hydro's meter and MDMS selections at DistribuTech earlier this year.

While one of the first OpenWay pilots in North America took place at Manitoba Hydro, the has been dominated by Elster and Sensus. It appears as if Itron is developing traction in Canada in the same manner as it has in - with yet another large utility win.

Satisfying these large customers will provide Itron with a strong delivery pipeline for several years, and IDC's Smart Meter Tracker data forecasts that deployments at BC Hydro, Southern California Edison, DTE, and other major utilities will support growth through 2015. However, it remains to be seen whether Itron can continue its impressive win rate at the remaining major North American utilities. The rush is on to deploy AMI, and there are far fewer big fish in 2011 than there were in 2009. Future growth for Itron, and the industry at large, will be predicated on each vendor's ability to serve the small and mid-market North American utilities.