According to a white paper report published by a research company, global utility companies will triple their investments in smart meter analysis in the following 10 years as they want to unlock the full value of advanced metering infrastructure(AMI). The report predicts that the compound annual growth rate will keep growing in the future 10 years, and the global market revenue will increase from 2021 to in 2030.
According to the report that most of American consumers own smart meters, and utility companies need to keep optimizing the distribution for energy management. It will help the utility companies in increasing its penetration rate in the following years.
When the concept of using smart meters became popular ten years ago, lots of the apllication cases were thought to be related with the reduction of non-revenue electricity for the utility companies by accurately and automatically meter reading. Nevertheless, according to the report, with the introduction of new application cases and operation models related to grid modernization design, technological progress is changing its situation. Nowadays, utility companies are using more and more data caprured from smart meters to improve the energy management, billing accuracy, and optimize the automate grid functions.
As a result, functions such as grid automation, energy efficiency, digital markets, demand analysis, load breakdown, and customer segmentation enable utility companies to enhance customer service, accelerate energy transition and increase the resilience of grid networks to climate change, according to the report.
Utilities are now able to provide customers with personalized services. For example, if consumers’ home appliances use too much electricity, smart meter data can be used to provide energy-saving advice.
Energy companies will increase investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning-based analysis to ensure the acquisition, processing and use of smart meter data to achieve real-time management and operation of distributed energy.
For example, as the use of electric vehicles increases in the next few years, grid operators will be forced to adopt smart meter analysis to be able to use demand response to ensure that electric vehicle charging does not put pressure on the grid. The study pointed out that the deployment of solar photovoltaics is also continuing to increase, but utility companies are struggling to cope with fluctuations and curtailments, and they can use real-time status data about consumer usage to solve these problems to optimize plant performance.
Moreover, with the increase in the number of units and changes in consumer energy usage trends, the amount of data utilities received from smart meters continues to increase. Therefore, energy companies will need to adopt advanced data management mechanisms and technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, to manage, process, and utilize data.
The report pointed out that with the advancement of technology, utility companies have shifted from receiving data from consumer smart meters every day to receiving data every hour, then 15 minutes to receive data, and now it is receiving data in near real time.
Post time: Nov-05-2021