Following a rising international interest in the subject, and amongst other energy regulators, the Flemish Energy Regulation Commission (VREG) has recently launched a study around the subject of Automatic Meter Reading (AMR), also called Smart Metering or Intelligent Metering.
Ongoing studies on the AMR subject are meant to value the impact on the metering chain and assess potential benefits of the general deployment of AMR. In fact AMR induces technological change in data capturing, data storage, data processing and thus involves new investments.
Furthermore, through the generation of a more detailed insight in energy consumption, AMR opens up possibilities for suppliers to improve and extend their service offer.
A mature technology, ready for domestic customers
The metering process consists in transmitting consumption data such as load curves or indexes to the distributor and the TSO control centre which then carry out the following operations:
- Validity checks and correction of values,
- Aggregation, profiling and calibration,
- Storage and publication,
- Transport invoicing to the suppliers and the direct customers,
- Invoicing of positive/negative imbalance to ARP’s.
In addition to the methods of self-reading or over-the-phone meter reading which still require the passage of an agent, remote reading presents a real potential for service improvement.
Concerned by those issues, distributors currently explore technologies such as: Radio frequency receiving/transmitters, Switched Telephone Network (STN), Power Line Communication (PLC), Broadband.These new technologies for AMR are already implemented by some companies. The Italian company, ENEL, which has chosen PLC as principal communication mode, succeeded in renewing and implementing over a period of 4 years around 30 millions meters. British Gas and Illinois Power, who are betting on immature radio technologies, show that choice of technology is essential to succeed in an AMR generalization. In France, EDF has already studied for several years different technological opportunities and could decide to launch an in-house developed PLC technology in order to benefit from the progressive lowering of the threshold of remote meter reading.
General AMR: a common interest…
The principal benefit of AMR adoption for the distribution networks management is directly related to cost reduction (like in meter reading, data processing, remote meter setup, etc…) and hence the improvement of financial performance. On the other hand, traders and customers share the benefit generated by the optimization of the invoicing process.
In spite of benefits mentioned above, the generalization of AMR is not without obstacles and requires the construction of a solid business plan. Such a plan has to be built on a rigorous financial analysis, taking into account the heavy initial investments, maintenance costs of the new system, staff savings and the profits related to the optimization of the network and the meter fleet.
The early development stage of the AMR industry and technology also calls for attention. Lack of shared technology standards and the technological fragility of some solutions (cf. the recent problems of CellNet Data Systems) make operators hesitate.
Indeed, the stakes of the smart metering put forward the importance to build a common vision of the evolution of the metering function, allowing them to commonly generate the benefit and optimize investments.
In one word, the generalization of AMR cannot be evaluated peacefully without measuring the social impacts inherent in any automation.
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Electricity theft is a social evil. Billions of dollars are stolen from the utilities annually. These costs are routinely passed along to the customer in the form of higher rate. Utilities are struggling hard to find ways to combat it. Most of the countries have realized the importance this evil and formulated strict laws to curb theft of electricity. The British India, way back, realized the importance of mis use of electricity, formulated rules, and modified later few times. All countries have treated this as a criminal and cognizable offence.
But crooks always have the ability to keep one step ahead of the anti theft system. They stay in business purely through their flair to circumvent any challenge that comes their way. They will always be ahead of the vigilance wing or any Anti power theft detection system. Gone are the days of crude mechanical ways to tamper the meter or divert electricity from main line. The R&D of electricity theft is growing faster than that of the metering mechanism, which was revolution with the advent of ICs and Programmable logic circuits. Now power theft using the Remote sensing devices has been developed. The money power involved in this game is beyond imagination. Globally hundreds of million-worth energy is pilfered by these anti social elements.
I’m a vigilance engr working with antipower theft operation for a decade and detected 100s of power theft ranging from crude form to high-tech thefts in precision meter. I’m a faculty of this subject at various premier institutes of my country. As of now as many as 75 varieties of power thefts were detected by me of which majority are high tech.
I would like to know the chances of power theft once AMR is introduced.
regards
Sreenivasan
AMR with PLC Technology in low voltage net works
You write about “recent problems with Data Systems” makes operators hesitate. In fact, there has been no hesitation at all with Cellnet systems in the Americas marketplace and they have captured an additional 4 million advanced metering endpoints all across the country and the company now has over $2.0 billion in USA dollars backlogged so you;ve got your information mixed up here as they support open standards and their new technology is getting strong uptakes with customers.Their new technologies at Illinois Power is not immature since its been used for advacned control with utilities in much more strenuous settings for many years and is now applied to advanced metering very successfully.
Hi thanks for the great information. I’ve been looking round for data storage stuff anda I.T. stuff for my new office and stumbled to find this blog.