Smart meter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Smart meter generally refers to a type of advanced meter (usually an electrical meter) that identifies consumption in more detail than a conventional meter, and optionally communicates that information via some network back to the local utility for monitoring and billing purposes.

1 Overview
2 Purpose
3 Companies
4 Implementation Examples
5 Technology
6 References

[edit] Overview

The term "Smart meter" typically refers to an electrical meter, but the term is also starting to be applied to the measurement of natural gas and water consumption.

Similar meters usually referred to as time-of-use or interval meters have existed for years but Smart Meters usually involve a different technology mix such as real-time or near real-time reads, power outage notification, and power quality monitoring. These added features are more than simple AMR (automated meter reading). Smart Meters are also believed to be a less costly alternative to traditional interval or time-of-use meters and are intended to be implemented on a wide scale to all customer classes, including residential customers. Interval and time-of-use meters are more of a legacy technology that historially have been installed to measure commercial and industrial, but typically provide no AMR functionality.

[edit] Purpose

Since the inception of electricity deregulation and market driven pricing around the world, government regulators have been looking for a means to match consumption with generation. Traditional electrical meters only measure total consumption and as such provide no information of when the energy was consumed. Smart meters provide an economical way of measuring this information, allowing price setting agencies to introduce different prices for consumption based on the time of day and the season.

Electrical pricing usually peaks at certain predictable times of the day and the season. In particular, if generation is constrained, prices can rise significantly during these times as more expensive sources of power are purchased from other jurisdictions or more costly generation is brought online. It is believed that billing customers by how much is consumed and at what time of day will force consumers to adjust their consumption habits to be more responsive to market prices. Regulatory and market design agencies hope these "price signals" will delay the construction of additional generation or at least the purchase of energy from higher priced sources thereby controlling the steady and rapid increase of electricity prices.

[edit] Companies

Several companies are vying for the leadership role in providing utilities with this type of technology. Examples include (alphabetically):

Advanced Metering Data Systems [1]
Badger Meter Inc. [2]
Cellnet [3]
DCSI-TWACS [4]
Echelon [5]
Elektromed [6]
Elster [7]
EnergyICT: Smart Metering
Hunt Technologies [8]
Intelemetrix [9]
Itron [10]
Sensus Metering Systems [11]
Silverspring [12]
Smartmeter [13]
SmartSynch [14]
Tantalus [15]
Triacta Power Technologies [16]
XEMTEC [17]

[edit] Implementation Examples

The world's largest and arguably "smartest" smart meter deployment was undertaken by Enel SpA, the dominate utility in Italy with over 27 million customers. Over a 5 year period beginning in 2000 and ending in 2005 Enel deployed smart meters to its entire customer base. These meters are fully electronic and truly smart, with integrated bi-directional communications, advanced power measurement and management capabilities, an integrated, software-controllable disconnect switch, and an all solid-state design. These meters communicate over low voltage power line using standards-based power line technology from Echelon Corporation to Echelon data concentrators at which point they communicate via IP to Enel’s enterprise servers. The system provides a wide range of advanced features, including the ability to remotely turn power on or off to a customer, read usage information from a meter, detect a service outage, detect the unauthorized use of electricity, change the maximum amount of electricity that a customer can demand at any time; and remotely change the meters billing plan from credit to prepay as well as from flat-rate to multi-tariff. In various publications Enel has estimated the cost of the project at approximately 2.1 billion Euros and the savings they are receiving in operation of 500 million Euros per year, an astonishing 4 year payback and a testament to the power of next-generation advanced metering systems.

The Ontario Energy Board in Ontario, Canada has actively strived to define the technology [18] and develop the regulatory framework around their implementation. Smart meters will be installed in 800,000 homes by 2007, with an eventual goal of 100% penetration by 2010.^[1]

Other jurisdictions such as California are actively pursuing the same technology [19]. On July 20, 2006, California's energy regulators approved a program to roll out of conventional meters retrofit with communications co-processor electronics to 9 million gas and electric household customers in the Northern California territory of PG&E. These meters report electricity consumption on an hourly basis. This enables PG&E to set pricing that varies by season and time of the day, rewarding customers who shift energy use to off-peak periods. The peak pricing program will start out on a voluntary basis, and the full rollout is expected to take five year. [20]

More than 1 million prepayment smart gas/water/electric meters are implemented by Elektromed in Turkey as one of the highest records in the world.

In 2004, the Essential Service Commission of Victoria Australia(ESC) released its changes to the Electricity Customer Metering Code and the Victorian Electricity Supply Industry Metrology Procedure to implement its decision to mandate interval meters for Victorian electricity customers. The ESC's Final Paper entitled "Mandatory Rollout of Interval Meters for Electricity Customers" foreshadowed the changes to be implemented and contained the rollout timetable requiring interval meters to be installed by 2013 for all small businesses and residences with new and replacement installation commencing in 2006. The ESC forecasts that within 7 years of the start of the rollout up to 1 million large customers and other customers will have existing meters upgraded to interval meters. The Victorian government is not alone with other state governments and the Commonwealth issuing a Joint Communiqué at the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra on 17 February 2006 committing all governments to the progressive rollout of smart metering technology from 2007.(http://www.esc.vic.gov.au/apps/page/user/pdf/IMRO_FinalDecisionFinal9July04.pdf).

[edit] Technology

Of all smart meter technologies the critical technological problem is communication. Each meter must be able to reliably and securely communicate the information collected to some central location. Considering the varying environments and locations meters find themselves, that problem can be daunting. Among the solutions proposed are: the use of cell/pager networks, licensed radio, combination licensed and unlicencesd radio, power line communication. Not only the medium used for communication purposes but the type of network used is also critical. As such one would find: fixed wireless, mesh network or a combination of the two. There are several other potential network configurations possible, including the use of Wi-Fi and other internet related networks. To date no one solution seems to be optimal for all applications. Rural utilities have very different communication issues than urban utilities or utilities located in challenging locations such as mountainous regions or areas ill-served by wireless and internet companies.