Beyond Smart Meters

Digital smart meters are a key technological component to improving our energy systems, but despite years on the market they are under-valued and under-utilised.

Smart meters provide real-time energy consumption data to energy providers and their customers, increasing awareness of energy consumption activities throughout the day and ultimately reducing costs for the consumer and reducing pressure on the energy grid.

But the benefits of smart meters go beyond solving today’s grid problems — they are changing the way customers and energy companies understand consumption profiles and plan for future energy demand. Smart meter data analytics mine electricity consumption data to improve consumption forecasting, thus creating money-saving insights for energy suppliers and their customers.

In addition to efficiency gains, the data sourced through smart meters is enabling new behaviour mechanics and novel products to emerge on the market in the form of new analytical software systems. However, the adoption of these new products in the market is reliant on energy providers and energy customers understanding the value of their smart meter data.

Basic Benefits to Energy Suppliers

Smart meters are changing the way energy suppliers operate. Smart meters stream data automatically, enabling utilities and energy retailers to save time and costs on collecting meter data. They also reduce the man hours necessary to connect and disconnect energy services when customers change energy suppliers or fail to pay for their energy consumption.

Real-time data tracking makes it easy for the data to be digitally delivered directly to the customer in a simple, user-friendly format. Customers with real-time dashboards can easily see the connection between the times of day they consume most of their energy and the impact it has on their energy bill. This may prompt customers to change the timing of their energy intensive processes.

When customers use less electricity during peak hours, utilities can reduce their reliance on expensive power plants to cover the peak electrical output. Utilities save money when the usage of electricity is more even across the day.

Data for Utilities

Customer smart-meter data is essential to grid planning for Energy Retailers and Utilities. When energy demand can’t be predicted the risk of brownouts and blackouts increases. Smart meter analytics enable energy providers to better avoid load-shedding and blackouts through the use of time-of-use billing.

Using smart data analytics, energy providers can understand demand patterns and vary the price of electricity throughout the day, making energy more expensive when demand is high and cheaper during off-peak hours. Pricing varied by the time of consumption provides financial incentives to companies to reduce their strain on the grid by deferring their energy-intensive operations to non-peak hours. Moreover, many smart technologies like electric vehicles use digital time-of-use data to charge their batteries at the time of day when electricity prices are at their lowest.

Utilising smart meter analytics is especially crucial when variable renewable energy generation is part of the energy mix. Wind and solar energy generation varies by the hour which means energy companies must track energy input versus energy consumption from the grid.

Smart meter data analytics can also help decision making during unforeseen peaks in demand. Understanding consumption patterns through meter data, energy distributors can avoid frequent load shedding events. When overt demand on the grid cannot be avoided, smart meter analytics can decipher and help cut electricity to non-essentials for short periods of time in order to avoid widespread, rolling blackouts.

Smart meter data analytics can also help energy providers make decisions around maintenance and infrastructure updates. Smart meters can detect basic voltage change events, the data of which can be analysed to detect line problems and power shortages.

Smart Data Analytics

The real value of smart meters lies in the analysis derived from smart meter data directly linked to the capabilities and the business process implementations in analytical systems. At WePower, we’re working at a granular level to take smart meter data to the next level, offering products and services that enable buyers and sellers to implement mutually beneficial business processes using analysis of energy data from smart meters. We are creating generation-linked products and meaningful processes that are changing the commercial and contractual approaches to energy.

To learn more about how WePower’s products can support your company, reach out to our CTO Kaspar Kaarlep at kaspar@wepower.com.

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