“The future of smart utilities is not defined by how many networks we build, but by how intelligently we share them. One wireless canopy, three essential services, and a common foundation of intelligence can transform electricity, water, and natural gas into a connected ecosystem that serves every Canadian community.” – MJ Martin
One Wireless Canopy, Three Utilities, and a Unified Emerge Head-End Platform
Introduction
Canadian electricity utilities have an opportunity to transform Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) from a meter-reading system into a shared communications platform serving electricity, water, and natural gas utilities. Landis+Gyr’s Gridstream Connect wireless architecture, combined with its next-generation Emerge Head-End System (HES), provides the technological foundation for this approach.
Think of the electricity utility as the owner of a communications highway. Electricity meters establish the primary infrastructure, while water and gas utilities become tenants, sharing network capacity without constructing separate wireless networks.
Electricity: The Foundation of the Network
Landis+Gyr’s Revelo electricity meters provide revenue metering, waveform sensing, grid-edge intelligence, and communications capabilities. Through Gridstream Connect, compatible meters and dedicated routers establish a self-healing wireless mesh network.
The network can support RF Mesh, Mesh IP, or Wi-SUN FAN technologies, depending on the selected configuration. Gateways aggregate communications traffic and transfer information through fibre, Ethernet, or cellular backhaul.
This wireless canopy becomes the shared communications foundation for all three utilities.
Water and Gas: The Subtenants
Water utilities can connect compatible meters through Landis+Gyr wireless modules, collecting consumption information, detecting potential leaks, and identifying reverse-flow conditions.
Natural gas utilities can use compatible communications modules or advanced meters such as the Landis+Gyr Surent G480 ultrasonic meter, which offers pressure monitoring, interval measurement, and remote shutoff capabilities.
These battery-powered endpoints communicate through the shared network without necessarily functioning as mesh relays. Their compatibility, communications protocols, and coverage requirements must be validated during network engineering.
Emerge: The Central Intelligence
At the heart of the architecture is Landis+Gyr’s Emerge, its newer generation of Head-End System.
Emerge manages network communications, device connectivity, meter interrogation, command execution, monitoring, and data acquisition. It supports bidirectional communications across wired, wireless, cellular, and hybrid networks.
Unlike traditional head-end environments, Emerge offers flexible deployment through cloud, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), hosted, and on-premises configurations.
Its architecture supports integrations with enterprise applications, enabling electricity, water, and gas utilities to exchange operational information through a common technology platform.
Importantly, Emerge is the communications and device-management layer, not a replacement for every utility’s Meter Data Management System (MDMS).
Enterprise Integration and Data Security
Information collected through Emerge can be transferred to separate electricity, water, and gas MDMS, billing, Customer Information Systems (CIS), and operational applications.
A shared network does not mean shared customer records. Each utility can retain independent information systems, data ownership, cybersecurity controls, and operational responsibilities.
Multi-tenant isolation must be designed, configured, and contractually governed rather than assumed to be automatic.
Canadian Deployment Strategy
Canadian utilities must consider radio coverage, winter reliability, cybersecurity, Canadian data-residency obligations, and applicable Measurement Canada requirements.
The architecture also introduces commercial opportunities. An electrical utility could recover part of its communications investment through negotiated network access arrangements with municipal water and natural gas providers.
Conclusion
Landis+Gyr’s Gridstream Connect and Emerge architecture creates an opportunity to establish one communications infrastructure serving three essential utilities.
However, who owns the network? Who pays for additional capacity? Who guarantees service availability? And how should participating utilities share costs and operational risks?
The answers will determine whether this becomes merely another AMI deployment or a new Canadian model for collaborative utility infrastructure.
Updated architecture mind map
Conceptual data-flow architecture. A common RF canopy requires compatible device configurations, and separate utility integrations and access controls must be engineered.
Technical references:
– Landis+Gyr’s Emerge product documentation,
– Gridstream Connect architecture, and multi-commodity RF metering specifications.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, a pilot, and a romantic optimist.