THE MOVE TO THE SMART GRID RESULTS IN A PARADIGM shift regarding metering data. Currently, most utilities create monthly files of meter reads (using manual collection) and submit them to the billing system. With the smart grid, utilities are transformed from distributors of power to brokers of information that handle millions of data transactions every day. For a utility this means that the simple transactions involved in the meter-to-cash function are completely altered. When the numerous other functions are considered, such as outage management and demand response events, the impending scale of the challenge becomes apparent. To illustrate, for every million meters that a smart meter operations team serves, the team can expect to support :
- More than 2,000 meter exchanges per day during deployment
- More than 1,000 customer moves per day (assumes 25 percent yearly turnover)
- 10,000 missing reads per day (assumes 99 percent daily read success)
- 20 meter failures per day (assumes a 0.5 percent annual failure rate)
- 10,000 data changes per day
- More than 97,000,000 meter reads per day (assumes 15-minute data intervals)
Utilities will be inundated with data not only coming from smart meters, but also intelligent assets on the grid, weather systems, energy traders, customer patterns, social medias, participants throughout the energy community and other sources.
Clearer view of typical behavior
The amount and frequency of this new data will provide utilities with a much clearer view into how the end-customer utilizes their service by revealing their typical behavior and usage patterns. The next evolution in the smart grid is to utilize this influx of data and associate it with key action items that can be applied and communicated to customers to help modify their behaviors.
To minimize costs and maximize benefits, utilities need a long-term, structured plan that provides a clear and coordinated map of where data originates, where it goes, what processing takes place along the way and how every department that touches it extracts its full value
To do this, utilities need to determine their data strategy. This will require a substantial amount of education, research and knowledge development. Having a clear line of sight on what the end purpose for the data is, and what intelligence the utility, the regulator and the customer needs to create real, tangible value, is critical for such a strategy. By having a structured plan, utilities will make the management and storage of data much more focused.
Faced with the prospect of dealing with enormous amounts of data, such a step will ensure that the volume of data and associated costs will be effectively managed
