New-Tech Europe | May 2017

Wireless Special Edition

Innovation in cellular communications: making smart meters even smarter

Diego Grassi, u-blox

Smart metering aims to reduce energy consumption and costs, and it brings together a range of disciplines and expertise. It is a global trend where governments, regional regulatory bodies, those in the energy/utilities sectors, system integrators, design houses and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are involved in worldwide deployments of telemetry infrastructure. This is used by utilities in residential, commercial and industrial scenarios. Rapid growth of smart metering The smart metering trend started in the electricity industry, initially with traditional walk-by Automated Meter Reading (AMR). This has evolved into the rapidly expanding wider practice

of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), which can enable features such as dynamic, time-of-use price plans. Smart metering now extends to gas and water, distribution automation and new areas of telemetry, such as remote sub-monitoring of Home Area Network (HAN) devices, including Programmable Control Thermostats (PCTs). The overall smart metering trend is primarily made possible by innovation in communication technology. The benefits of smart metering for both consumers and utilities companies are many: automated billing, profiling of end-user usage data, revenue protection and a reduction in meter- tampering-related fraud. Innovation is also enabling new, industry-specific features that are transforming the full

metering market value chain.

The benefits of smart metering For example, smart metering deployments are the building blocks used by the electricity industry to implement outage management or grid voltage optimisation. Water companies are using them to enhance network leakage control, while in the gas sector, they’re enabling the introduction of new methods of distribution. All these technology enhancements improve the allocation of energy, reduce resource wastage and enable more accurate control of network distribution. This enables utilities to reduce their operational costs; these savings can be passed on to

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