The Age of Smart Meters

Imagine as a consumer, being able to view and track your own electricity consumption on a real-time basis, so that you consume electricity according to the lowest tariffs that utilities make available on a real-time basis and thereby reduce your bills. Or imagine as a utility or a power company, being able to track consumption in real-time, manage peak load effectively and minimize electricity outages. These are just some of the possibilities that smart meters, as part of the smart grids, bring to the table. But first, let’s understand what makes an electricity meter smart.

Unlike a conventional electricity meter that is also known as a static meter, a smart meter is able to ‘communicate’ directly with the power company (the utility) and exchange data on parameters such as electricity usage, load factor and others. In other words, a smart meter is permanently connected to the utility through a specialized communications network. The utility therefore need not send a meter reader every month to prepare the bill; this information is always and continuously available right at the utility office, captured and analyzed by intermediary software known as Meter Data Acquisition System or Management System (MDAS or MDMS).

The ability to track all existing meters and their usage enables the utility to raise timely and accurate bills. More importantly, the resultant revenue assurance for the utility (provided customer dues are assiduously collected) helps improve the financial health and also enables the utility to reinvest in infrastructure; ensuring uninterrupted and affordable electricity for all consumers.

Now, in spite of various advantages that smart meters bring to both utilities as well as their customers, these meters have seen a slow rate of adoption primarily due to the fact that they are comparatively expensive as a replacement to the conventional meters. This, however, is set to change for a country like India, where many of the utilities are already hard pressed for finance and would not be able to afford expensive western smart meters, even if the said adoption is in their long-term interest.

Low-cost smart meters for India

Many years of R&D efforts have yielded breakthrough communications technology that allows for the rollout of a very low cost individual smart meters. This breakthrough makes it possible for Indian utilities to embrace smart metering on a widespread basis, where the benefits are then quick to follow.

While the low-cost smart meters are a great innovation, we also need to take into account possible scenarios where a large scale rip-and-replace model may not be practical or desirable for various reasons. For example, many customers may have recently acquired static electricity meters and the utilities would therefore be averse to replace these existing meters. Fortunately to address such situations, technology innovations have yielded solutions that can convert static meters to smart meters with a simple external enhancement.

Finally, there is one last barrier to the wider adoption of smart metering. Regardless of whether the meter is new or an upgrade, it should be able to capture and transmit data in a seamless manner to the utility regardless of who manufactured the meters. In other words, the smart metering solution should be ‘interoperable’ for a utility to keep its costs to the minimum and extract maximum advantage from it. This is because a utility may have over the years bought or installed meters of different makes, specifications or manufacturers.

A majority of utilities in India are actively exploring solutions to minimize their distribution losses by minimizing revenue leakage and prevent electricity theft. Smart metering is one solution that precisely addresses these challenges. And that is why we are going to see a growing number of utilities embracing smart meters in India in the coming years, if the 14 pilot projects already underway across India are any indication. The age of smart meters is upon us and it promises cheaper, better and more reliable electricity for all – a proposition nobody can say no to!