by: Greentech Media January 03, 2010

From Greentech Media:

By Michael Kanellos

Smart grid may be the most hyped words of 2009 in the green tech space, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of hard, cold cash behind the hype. Will 2010 bring a bursting of a smart grid bubble, or a continued unfolding of its promise to provide a framework for renewable energy, efficiency and conservation programs to come? Let these top stories of 2009 be your guide.

1. Government as Market Maker: There’s no doubt that smart grid projects wouldn’t have seen the success they’ve seen without a big helping hand from the public sector. In the United States, the $3.9 billion in Department of Energy smart grid stimulus grants given out this fall was widely seen as critical for unlocking private funds largely left on the sidelines amidst an ongoing financial crisis and economic downturn.

But along with the carrots of government grants and incentives are the sticks of mandates to come. The European Union and individual nations have set deadlines for bringing two-way communications and control to their electricity grids.

2. The Rise of the Smart Meter: 2009′s smart grid story has largely been one of smart meters – two-way communicating meters that allow utilities to remotely monitor customer energy use and share that information with them. In the United States, stimulus funding was expected to lead to about 18 million smart meters being deployed around the country, adding to the nearly 10 million meters expected to be installed by the end of the year. Worldwide penetration could reach 250 million by 2015, according to some predictions.

That’s helped the big five smart meter makers – Itron (ITRI), Landis+Gyr, Elster, Sensus and General Electric (GE) – but it’s been even more helpful to the host of startups that offer new technologies to network those smart meters. The most prominent of those include SmartSynch, Trilliant and the big winner so far, Silver Spring Networks.

3. Silver Spring Networks – Smart Grid’s First IPO? Silver Spring Networks has been plugging away at standards-based networking for smart meters for close to a decade, but 2009 was its year to shine. With contracts announced this year with utilities including Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, AEP, Florida Power & Light and others, the Redwood City, Calif.-based startup is on a roll – and with a recent $100 million investment boosting its VC haul to some $275 million to date, it’s on a short list of greentech companies expected to announce an IPO in the coming year or so.

4. The Smart Meter Backlash: Smart meters haven’t enjoyed wholesale acceptance by utility customers, however. 2009 saw the first inklings of a backlash against the costs imposed on utility customers to roll out the two-way meters, in the form of an uprising by customers of Pacific Gas & Electric in Central California, who complained that their power bills skyrocketed after smart meters were installed in their homes. While PG&E (PCG) denies it’s at fault, the resulting lawsuit has put utilities on alert that they’ll be asked to give customers a cut of whatever cost reductions they’re hoping to achieve for themselves.

5. Home Area Networking – The First Smart Grid Bubble? Smart meters aren’t supposed to begin and end as a laborsaving measure for utilities. Almost all the rate cases supporting the cost of installing them point to home area networks to come – communications links between the meters and home devices to monitor, measure and cut down on energy use.

That kind of gadgetry is a natural for startups, and dozens – some of the more prominent include Tendril Networks, Control4, EnergyHub, Onzo, OpenPeak, AlertMe and Energy Inc. – have entered the field. Many have landed utility contracts, though to date only for pilot projects. Two have already been bought this year – Greenbox by smart grid networking company Silver Spring Networks and Lixar by smart grid software company GridPoint.

But at the same time, utilities are struggling with the same questions that have faced energy-smart homes for the decade or more they’ve been attempted – their cost. Most homeowners aren’t willing to spend much money – no more than $100 or so, according to most estimates – on tracking their energy use, but installing real-time controls and communications to a wide range of household electricity loads can cost quite a bit more than that.

6. The Smart Grid Party Crashers: And then, of course, there’s the entry of the IT giants to make every startup nervous – or desirous of partnerships that could lead to acquisitions. Both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have staked their claim to the home energy management market with their own products – and both plan to offer them for free. Cisco (CSCO) has made a major push into the smart grid space on the networking front, and enterprise software giants such as IBM and Oracle (ORCL) are also staking claims.

At the same time, telecommunications companies are making moves to include energy management as part of their home broadband offerings. That’s part of a broader effort to offer public wireless networks as an alternative to the predominant model, at least in North America, for utilities to build and operate their own communications networks. Home security and entertainment providers are also adding energy management, with hopes of connecting to utilities in the future.

And that’s not to mention the smart appliances being rolled out by General Electric, Whirlpool (WHR) and a host of Asian conglomerates. All these washers, dryers, water heaters, refrigerators and ovens will need to connect with utility and customers communications systems to be effective. Just how all these systems will interconnect remains a big question.

7. The Evolving Demand Response Landscape: While the public’s smart grid attention has focused on smart meters and home energy network, the business of curtailing energy use at commercial and industrial sites is already well developed. It’s called demand response, and it’s spawned the first IPOs in the smart grid space in the form of demand response aggregators Enernoc (ENOC) and Comverge (COMV).

Demand response now accounts for about 41 gigawatts of power use that can be turned down to help utilities manage their peak demand loads today. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission projects the potential for peak power reduction could reach 188 gigawatts – and because cutting peak demand eases the need to build new fossil fuel-fired power plants to meet that peak, it’s a big target of utilities and government alike.

What’s next for demand response? New frontiers include the largely untapped residential market – perhaps enabled by smart meters – as well as new open standards-based demand response technologies that could be more broadly replicated across new smart grid networks.

8. Distribution and Transmission Up Next: Not all smart grid systems are visible to the untrained eye. Upgrading distribution and transmission grids with communications and controls could help utilities squeeze up to 10 percent more efficiency out of their existing generation capacity, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. Those savings can come from preventative maintenance and replacement, shortening outage times, and optimizing grid voltages, among other sources.

At the same time, managing the massive growth in renewable solar, wind and geothermal energy that will be needed to cut the nation’s carbon emissions will put new pressures on the grid. Hundreds of billions of dollars will need to be spent on new transmission lines to carry Midwest wind power and Southwest solar power to load centers, according to studies – which opens up new business models for startups.

And at the neighborhood level, distribution grids will need a whole host of new technologies to manage the increase in rooftop solar panels, demand response-enabled homes, and future plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles that will soon place unprecedented new pressures on utilities built on the model of delivering power from central generation stations to millions of customers.

9. Smart Grid 2.0: All of these emerging smart grid technologies will be a lot more useful if they can be linked together. That’s the idea for the next surge in the industry – a whole ecosystem of smart architectures, stretching from generations sources and transmission lines to the wireless and wired networks in utility customers’ homes and businesses.

GridPoint, one of the more prominent – and well-funded – of the smart grid startups out there, is centered on delivering this kind of integrated offering to utility customers. Its approach has included buying up a host of startups offering vehicle charging, home energy monitoring and industrial and commercial energy management, indicating the breadth of functions it hopes to provide.

What will the smart grid of the future look like? Duke Energy (DUK) CEO Jim Rogers speaks of a utility-managed system that orchestrates smart meters, solar panels, batteries, demand response systems and plug-in vehicle chargers to serve as “virtual power plants” scattered throughout a utility service territory.

But if a utility can orchestrate multiple systems to save money, why can’t utility customers? That’s the idea behind microgrids, or localized integrated systems that can maximize the same efficiencies to take advantage of the benefits – namely, selling power back to the grid.

10. The Standards Battle: We’ve saved this one for last, because it’s the most complicated issue facing the smart grid industry – and it’s developing amidst on-the-ground deployments of technologies both proprietary and open, all of it needing to interoperate with decades-old utility systems. Making the shift to a standards-based architectures for the smart grid is a focus of an ongoing project by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a host of industry players with their own technologies to champion. Similar processes are unfolding in Europe.

Of course, technologies that have taken an early lead in smart grid deployments today aren’t likely to be completely abandoned. At the same time, companies offering open standards-based solutions are sure to press their advantages over more proprietary systems.

This is from: http://Auto-Mobi.info
Electric utilities that keep customers well informed during planned service outages should expect to score higher marks for customer service and satisfaction, new Chartwell research suggests.

About nine out of 10 respondents to a recent survey of electricity customers from the U.S. and Canada considered it important or very important that their utility let them know when the power will be out due to maintenance. This aspect of outage communications was even more important to the 1,500 utility customers who were surveyed than estimated times of restoration (ETOR), which is often the primary concern for utilities seeking to improve in this area.

Electric utilities should keep this customer preference in mind as they begin to install new smart grid technologies and make other infrastructure improvements that will require short- or long-term power shutdowns, says Scott Johnson, Chartwell senior research analyst.

“With the rollout of smart metering programs across the country, utilities have a unique opportunity to reach out to customers and keep them fully informed, thus turning a potentially negative situation into a positive one. Utilities that perform well may be able to improve their customer satisfaction and build goodwill that will prove useful should they be faced with a major outage in the future,” Johnson says.

The survey was conducted in October. Details of the outage communications survey questions, which included utility customer preferences for contact channels and opinions on social media, are provided exclusively to members of the Chartwell Outage Communications Group, a membership-based service. Participation helps members improve outage communications programs and customer satisfaction through collaborative consulting, sharing practices, and building relationships.

Outage Communications Group members include some of the largest and best utilities in the U.S. and Canada. Chartwell conducts group-directed research and serves as a repository for information gathered on technologies and concepts. To date, Chartwell has identified a number of significant outage communication trends concerning ETOR targets and accuracy, text messaging and mobile Web, and “blue-sky” performance. The group has also looked at proactive communication in front of planned outages.

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Posted using ShareThis

Saver: Bethany Lewis with her family’s meter

WANT TO KNOW MORE?Five step guide to energy saving
Houses lose out on energy cuts
Energy bills to soar by 60%
OTHER STORIES£500 each for tide and wind power
£340 smart meters only save £28 a year
Sainsbury’s offers in-store energy advice
Water bill hikes will push some to £1,000
Households to see £3 cut in water bills
ENERGY PRICES Is now the time to switch gas and electricity supplier? (It’s all about timing).
- Latest advice

CUT YOUR BILLSPay less for
household bills: Please select… Gas & electricity Home phone Broadband Mobiles

Preliminary findings of the trial of 50,000 smart meters that have been operating for a year show a dramatic reduction in bills, coupled with a 40% drop in billing enquiries.
The vast majority of households are said to find smart meters easy to use and effective in cutting energy use.

Home displays show instant cost information on a screen, encouraging families to turn off appliances when they do not need them.

Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas, said: ‘Smart meters will lead to the single greatest revolution in energy use since British Gas converted all the nation’s homes to natural gas in the Seventies.

‘These figures show only a snapshot, but they provide early evidence of the benefit of smart meters.’

The Government wants to have smart meters in all homes by 2020. It believes the devices will save more than £4.6bn a year in energy as households become more aware of the cost of keeping on expensive appliances.

Over the next few years British Gas engineers will be sent to every home not only to install but also to explain to families how the meters work.

Ian Lewis and his wife Janine who live in Cookridge, Leeds, with their ten-year-old daughter Bethany believe their smart meter has helped them to save more than a third on their bills.

‘We keep our meter in the sitting room,’ said Ian. ‘When it flashes red we turn off appliances if we don’t need them.’

From: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/household-bills/article.html?in_article_id=493068&in_page_id=510

Itron is the world’s leading provider of solid-state meters ($1.46 billion)—electricity, water, gas and heat—and data collection/communication systems, including automated meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) technology. We offer enterprise-wide software platforms, project management, installation and consulting services.

Itron is looking to hire a Manager of Research and Development to direct, design, and implement a comprehensive product management strategy. This individual will function as the central resource with design, manufacturing, quality and test, and marketing as the product(s) move to completion and distribution.

This challenging role will provide an opportunity to work with and lead an exceptionally talented group of technical professionals. The ability to manage a team comprised of experienced SQA Engineers and other key resources is vital.

Key Focus

• Ensure that products shipped meet specifications and quality goals
• Formulate and execute long-term plans for cost/profit control
• Promote use of new technologies and industry-leading trends to product management activities
• Select, develop, and evaluate personnel to ensure the efficient operation of the function
• Direct those involved in the design, modification, and evaluation of all phases of a specific product or group of products from product definition through production and release (i.e. Product Lifecycle Management)

Duties & Responsibilities

• Deliver quality products in a timely fashion
• Review and approve proposed architectures, technologies, and implementations for risk and feasibility
• Support existing products through customer issue triage, planned maintenance releases and hot fixes
• Plan development activities
• Collaborate with quality assurance, product management, and marketing on product specifications, requirements, features, delivery dates and quality levels
• Create, maintain and manage departmental budget
• Implement policies, procedures and processes necessary for consistent development of quality products

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in related field or equivalent experience.
• Travel Requirements: 10 – 30%

Join our Dynamic Team!

In today’s complex world, nothing is more important to utilities than delivering affordable, reliable energy and clean water. Steadily-growing populations are putting more and more strain on finite supplies, forcing utilities to be proactive with conservation and management programs. Itron is dedicated to helping these providers create a smarter future by developing technology that more effectively delivers and manages precious resources.

At Itron, “Knowledge to Shape Your Future” describes the value we provide to our energy and water customers. It also describes the value that we provide to our own employees. Itron management is committed to providing employees with opportunities and resources that they can utilize to shape their own future.

If you are interested in learning more about this fantastic opportunity to join a financially stable organization with tremendous opportunities for growth and development, please email Chris Hood directly at: networking@hoodatwork.com

Originally Posted: Jan 2nd 2008 9:59AM

The Rules of Success

As MicroSolutions became more and more successful, and as I paid attention to the common traits of businesses that I saw succeed and those I saw fail, I came to realize that there are “Rules of Success” that I saw in companies that excelled. Where companies failed to follow those rules, inevitably, they failed. I found myself checking with “My Rules” before I made decisions. When I traded stocks or considered investments in companies, I applied The Rules to their business before I made a decision.

The Rules are not infallible. They have their limits. I’m an entrepreneur. My businesses have had hundreds and now more than a thousand employees. My world has been limited to starting, building, growing and running businesses that are never going to make the Fortune 500. My dreams were never to build the biggest corporation in the world. So, if you are a middle level manager in a Fortune 500 company, these rules may not help you manage your department. If you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company with tens of thousands of employees, some rules will apply, some won’t, but where they will help you is to know how little guys coming out of nowhere are going to disrupt your business.

Where The Rules will help you is if you are considering starting, or currently run your own business. There are always exceptions to any rules, but I can assure you that those exceptions will be rare. Entrepreneurs that don’t follow the rules are far more likely to fail. There is no doubt about it.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Rule #1: Sweat Equity is the best start up capital.

The best businesses in recent entrepreneurial history are those that have been started with little or no money. Dell Computer, MicroSoft, Apple, HP and tens of thousands of others started in dorm rooms, tiny offices or garages. There weren’t 100 page long business plans. In all of my businesses, I started by putting together spreadsheets of my expenses, which allowed me to calculate how much revenue I needed to break even and keep the lights on in my office and my apartment. I wrote overviews of what I was selling, why I thought the business made sense, an overview of my competition and why my product and/or service would be important to my customers, and why they should buy or use it. All of it on a piece of yellow paper or in a word processing file, and none of it cost me more than the diet soda I was drinking while I was writing it up.

I remember the foundation for each of my businesses. MicroSolutions was very simple. To use microcomputers and software to help our customers become more productive, profitable and gain a competitive advantage. AudioNet, which became broadcast.com was simple as well: use the internet to enable real-time, worldwide communications of entertainment and business applications. HDNet is to create great entertainment, originated in High Definition format to allow our distributors to compete for the highest margin customers.

Once I could put the idea on paper, I gave the company a name. From there, I took the most important steps: I tried to find people to shoot holes in it. When we started AudioNet, I remember getting an appointment with Drew Marcus of Alex Brown (it could have been Larry, but I think it was drew , an investment banking company. Drew followed the radio industry and I wanted to see if there was anything he saw from his experience that would blow up the concept. He loved the idea. We took it to Dan Halliburton of Susquehanna Radio. He was an executive in charge of several Dallas area radio stations. We discussed how he could broadcast his stations over the Internet using AudioNet and reach the in office market where there weren’t many radios on desks, and few of those could pick up the AM signal of his stations. He loved it. I took it to Tim and Eric Crown, who ran a newly public company called Insight Enterprises. I asked them if it made sense to broadcast their quarterly earning conference calls over the internet so their investors and the research analysts who followed them could easily listen to the calls and get up to date information, or listen to an archive of the call if they missed it. They thought it would help them reach their Investor Relation goals less expensively.

Each step cost me next to nothing to get great feedback. Each enabled me to check the foundation of my business idea to see if it was easy to shoot holes in it, and most importantly, they all served as sales calls. Each company eventually became a customer of ours.

I went through this in each of my businesses. The step gave me confidence that my business idea was valid. That there was a chance of success. At this point, many entrepreneurs think the next step is to take all this feedback, update their 100 page business plans and go out and raise money. It’s as if the missing link for success in a business is cash to get started. It’s not. Far more often than not, raising cash is the biggest mistake you can make.

Most entrepreneurs tend to think in terms of what raising money means to them. How it can get them started? How many people they can hire? How much they can spend on office space? How much they can pay themselves? They forget to put themselves in the position of the person or company they are asking for money from. They think they are considering that person’s position by making up numbers and calling them expected returns for the investor. If you only give me X dollars, you will get X pct back in X years. You will double or triple your money in X years. Any investor worth anything knows you are just making these numbers up. They are meaningless. Worse, if you tell a savvy investor that the market is X billions of dollars and you just need one or some low percent to make zillions, you are immediately kicked to the curb.

These investors, including myself, know what you don’t, and they are not telling you. The minute you ask for money, you are playing in their game, they aren’t playing in yours. You are at a huge disadvantage, and it’s only going to get worse if you take their money. The minute you take money, the leverage completely flips to the investor. They control the destiny of your dreams, not you.

Investors don’t care about your dreams and goals. They love that you have them. They love that they motivate you. Investors care about how they are going to get their money back and then some. Family cares about your dreams. Investors care about money. There is a reason why venture capitalists are often referred to as Vulture Capitalists. The minute you slide off course from the promises you made to get the money, your dreams fall in jeopardy. You will find yourself making promises to keep investors at bay. You will find yourself avoiding your investors. Then you will find yourself on the outside looking in. The reality of taking money from non family members is that they are doing it for only one reason, to make more money. If you can’t deliver on that promise, you are out. You will be removed from the company you started. You will find someone else running your dream company. If this sounds like a scene out of the Sopranos or an episode you would watch on TV about a loan shark, you are right. The only difference is that it’s all legal.

There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customers pockets. I personally would never even take money from a family member. Could you imagine the eternal grief and guilt from your mom, dad, uncle or aunt because you blew your nephews college money or the money for grandmas last vacation… I cant.

You shouldn’t have to take money from anyone. Businesses don’t have to start big. The best ones start small enough to suit the circumstances of their founders. I started MicroSolutions by getting an advance from my first customer of $500. The business didn’t grow quickly in the first couple years. We didn’t grow past 4 people in the first couple years, and we all worked dirt cheap.

So what’s wrong with that? It’s OK to start slow. It’s ok to grow slow. As much as you want to think that all things would change if you only had more cash available, they probably won’t.

The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.

FOR nearly 30 years, Itron has dominated the American market in what had been a profitable but unglamorous field, automating power, gas and water meters. But with $8 billion in government and private money devoted to modernizing the power grid, meter automation is suddenly a growth industry. Without millions of new smart meters, no smart grid is possible.

Like many established technology companies, Itron has wrestled with how to adapt. It faces well-financed and well-connected start-ups offering the prospect of managing energy use from a desktop computer.

Even as it has lost big contracts to agile new competitors, Itron has maintained a cautious pace. Now that strategy may be paying off, with the most prominent start-up stumbling over the introduction of its new system.

Itron, of Liberty Lake, Wash., was started in 1977 on the first wave of modern meter reading. Utility bills were assessed by workers who went house to house using pencil and pad to record readings from mechanical meters.

Itron replaced the pad and pencil with a hand-held computer so that meter readings could be loaded into a computerized billing system.

In time, the meters could send signals to trucks driving though a neighborhood. The trucks could read as many as 16,000 meters a day, compared with 500 meters with its most advanced hand-held reader. Itron quickly grabbed and has held 50 percent of the automated meter market in the United States.

Itron maintained its lead by carefully — some would say slowly — engineering solid technology.

But the smart grid requires a major shift. For it to work, meters must collect information not once a month for billing, but every few minutes, a huge amount of data, so a utility can save energy by channeling only as much electricity as an area needs at a time. An industrial area might need large amounts of power in the day, but less at night.

New smart meters also need two-way communication. Before they just sent billing information to the power company. Now a power company needs to send instructions back through the meter to home appliances, like a thermostat, that can be adjusted by a few degrees on a hot day to avoid a brownout.

The idea is that if electricity is used more efficiently, fewer plants will have to be built, pollution will be reduced and people will save money.

While everyone seems to know what they want the smart grid to do, few agree on how to do it. Each meter company wants to establish its design for the grid as part of the standard. The first recommendation will come from the National Institute of Standards and Technology next month. The standard will continue to evolve by a consensus of state and federal regulators.

Of the start-ups in the smart grid business, none have a higher profile than Silver Spring Networks. The company is backed by the renowned venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, counts Google as an investor and has Al Gore, a Kleiner Perkins partner, on its advisory board.

Silver Spring, of Redwood City, Calif., conceived a strong marketing message — creating the Internet for electricity.

“You can call it marketing, but they did drive the right message home,” said John Quealy, an industry analyst. Silver Spring’s innovation was to look past meters to market the system that connects them. It proposes to build a network based on Internet protocol that would connect meters from a variety of companies to its version of the grid.

That message has been a success for Silver Spring. In 2009, when Itron announced winning few contracts, Silver Spring announced four major contracts and called itself the “most widely adopted smart grid platform in America.” In response, Itron designed its meter and systems to adapt with software to the Internet protocol, or other standards.

“We have lost some deals and have not been as competitive as we might have been, but I don’t think if we went more quickly we would have had the right system,” said Deloris Duquette, Itron’s vice president for investor relations and corporate communications.

Itron focused on delivering on its old contracts. It did not bid on new work for nearly a year. It spent 15 months with Southern California Edison designing how the system would be used, then spent a year testing its metering before introducing it to the public.

It also changed its marketing. “We are being painted by the competition as a stodgy meter company,” Ms. Duquette said. “We aren’t. We are, and have always been, a technology company.”

Itron changed its advertising slogan to “Smart grid reality” from “Smart metering for the smart grid.” That may seem minor, but it is beginning to resonate. Silver Spring gained ground selling its system’s potential, but the deployment has not been entirely smooth.

A lawsuit in California claims that the metering system for Pacific Gas and Electric overcharges customers. California State Senator Dean Florez has called for a halt to the smart meter deployment, and the California Utilities Commission is investigating. The utility said the higher bills resulted from a rate increase and a hot summer. Eric Dresselhuys, executive vice president of Silver Springs, declined to comment.

Since making the changes, Itron said, it is a finalist for contracts it would have not been considered for previously. “It’s the credibility that we really understand the requirements, that we have things in the field that are in operation, and that we have thought this through for the long term,” said Richard Creegan, an Itron vice president.

Mr. Quealy, the analyst, said, “Utilities are buying technology to avoid risk.”

The International Tax Manager will provide support and assistance to the International Tax Director to ensure that Itron, Inc. and affiliates’ foreign tax liability and the US tax liability on foreign income is managed at the lowest sustainable rate.

Primary functions will include:
•Assist in managing the quarterly and annual accrual of income taxes on foreign operations in support of FAS 109, including APB 23 assertions, FAS 52 functional currency issues, reviewing and managing foreign data in support of FIN 48 positions, and reviewing the worldwide effective tax rate
•Assist International Tax Director in managing global intellectual property as well as preparing policies and procedures with respect to global ownership of intellectual property
•Utilize technical tax expertise to assist the International Tax Director in strategic tax planning and corporate restructuring projects as well as managing the day to day activities of international business in a tax efficient manner, and making recommendations regarding their implementation,
•Assist with M&A activities of the global operations,
•Support the Treasury department in managing cash in a tax efficient manner as well as the tax efficient repatriation of offshore earnings,
•Assist in coordinating and preparing data in support of the filing of US informational returns (e.g. Forms 5471, 8858, 8865, 5713)
•Assist in the preparation of Earnings & Profits calculations, foreign tax credit pools, Subpart F, tax basis, OFL/ODL and other relevant analysis of foreign subsidiaries in support of the US tax positions
•Assist as necessary in the managing of tax audits regarding the foreign aspects of US income,
•Support the International Tax Director in managing external completion of transfer pricing studies and review of business activities to ensure compliance,
•Ensure international tax functions are compliant with internal SOX policies, including reviewing and monitoring necessary revisions to existing documents and procedures

Qualifications
•Candidate requirements:
•BS Degree in Accounting
•Masters in Accounting or Tax or JD is preferred
•CPA or equivalent required
•Minimum 4 years experience working in US international taxation
•Comprehensive knowledge of US GAAP and tax provision accounting
•Prefer Big 4 or large multinational experience
•Highly motivated with excellent technical and analytical skills
•Analytical ability and detail orientation
•People and project management skills
•Strong organizational skills
•Excellent communication skills (oral and written)
•Willing to travel internationally as required (10%)

Join our Dynamic Team!
In today’s complex world, nothing is more important to utilities than delivering affordable, reliable energy and clean water. Steadily-growing populations are putting more and more strain on finite supplies, forcing utilities to be proactive with conservation and management programs. Itron is dedicated to helping these providers create a smarter future by developing technology that more effectively delivers and manages precious resources.

At Itron, “Knowledge to Shape Your Future” describes the value we provide to our energy and water customers. It also describes the value that we provide to our own employees. Itron management is committed to providing employees with opportunities and resources that they can utilize to shape their own future.

If you are interested in learning more about this fantastic opportunity to join a financially stable organization with tremendous opportunities for growth and development, please contact Chris Hood directly via email: networking@hoodatwork.com