Headquartered in Washington State, Itron, Inc is a manufacturing and information integration company and a leading technology provider to energy and water industries throughout the world. One of its two US manufacturing facilities is located in Oconee County, West Union, South Carolina. The plant manufactures component circuit boards and AMI meters. This facility was recently expanded to accommodate increasing order for smart grid related components, and is expected to increase man hours and hire more workers to accommodate new orders as a direct result of DOE’s selections for Smart Grid Demo and Investment Grants. Expected deals include CenterPoint in Huston TX, Detroit Edison, Southern Edison, and San Diego—all very large projects supported by ARRA Smart Grid Investment Awards. The $5.2 million Recovery Act 48C Tax credit will help them re-equip their West Union, SC facility to help with an increase in demand for their OpenWay CENTRON. This meter is a fully interoperable, solid-state smart meter with a built-in, two-way communications path and integrated remote on/off switch. The CENTRON meter is the first advanced meter for the residential market providing open-standards architecture, modular design for communications flexibility, and extensive functionality to support smart grid infrastructure. The reequipping of the facility in this project will allow an annual production capacity of 4 million meters. Itron estimates that one year's production of the meters will be able to reduce electricity use by approximately 1.7 million MWh per year.