In June 2009 Arc Innovations completed the Orion Project that rolled out an end-to-end AMI platform to Meridian Energy's 125,000 urban and rural customers spread across 14,500 km² in Canterbury, New Zealand. 

Five key aspects of the Orion Project were as follows:

Solution: The project deployed Arc Innovations' full end-to-end AMI platform (CPE, communications network, MDMS and service bus). It involved planning and building a citywide, urban RF mesh network, small town RF networks, and using GPRS and satellite for rural and remote regions.

Commercial Model: Arc Innovations provides a full service model, which involves the end-to-end AMI platform, a turn-key deployment service, an asset financing package, and a long-term operational service contract delivered by our customer services team.

Delivery Model: The project was delivered by a combined Arc Innovations/Meridian Energy team. Arc Innovations was responsible for the field deployment. Meridian Energy's retail team was responsible for managing customer appointments, and internal process change. The combined team approach worked extremely well to ensure that the customer transition from the legacy meters to AMI happened in a seamless manner, and that any customer questions were resolved via a fast, clear, and effective process.

Approach: The joint project team used the Arc Innovations' Deploy/AMI methodology; a holistic methodology, which spanned all phases of the AMI deployment project, and covered both the field deployment activities and the customer's process/people/system changes. The methodology was designed to integrate best practice project methodologies with the specific nuances of AMI deployment projects.

Customer Engagement: The deployment was a one-off opportunity to enhance a new level of engagement with Meridian Energy's customers.