Canada-headquartered WiMAX kit supplier, Redline Communications, has entered into a trial agreement with Hydro One, an electricity transmitter and distributor based in Ontario, to test remote wireless monitoring of ‘smart’ meters using WiMAX.

Hydro One Networks and Hydro One Brampton are working to install smart meters in all the homes and small businesses of their combined 1.3 million customers in the province of Ontario by 2010. To date, the company has installed almost 900,000 meters.

Smart meters, when teamed with time-of-use-pricing, are a key part – says Hydro One – of building a culture of conservation across the province and achieving significant reductions in peak electricity demand through load shifting.

The Redline WiMAX solution is designed to enable remote meter reading as well as outage monitoring with the aim of adding a number of additional applications in the future. These include power distribution automation, power station/security monitoring, smart home applications, remote work dispatch for field staff, increasing customer service and providing opportunity to reduce Hydro One’s operational and maintenance costs.

“The demand for WiMAX technologies goes well beyond that of major telecommunications carriers,” says Kevin Suitor, vice president of marketing at Redline. “With the advances we have made in our RedMAX products, we can provide the bandwidth, reliability and price points required for deployment in a range of vertical applications, including smart metering and video surveillance.”