2021 Smart Meter Trends
The expansion of smart meters, or advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), is ramping up. As such, there seems to be a number of smart meter trends vying for attention. What follows is an overview of 3 of them.
Smart Meter Trends for 2021
Smart meters have the potential to force a paradigm shift in the industry. Not only do they provide much greater access to data and information, but they also integrate seamlessly with IoT devices and computer networks, offering the potential to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. For these reasons, there is, understandably, a growing degree of interest in this technology within utilities across all sectors.
With that being said, here is a snapshot of 3 smart meter trends that utility companies need to pay attention to (summarized from this PowerGrid.com article).
- Environmental friendliness: Smart meters will be critical for businesses and municipalities that are looking to improve the environmental friendliness of their operations. Increased access to data will enable smarter decisions around safety protocols, storm hardening, energy consumption, and maintenance strategies.
- Remote monitoring: Smart meters will improve the ability to remotely monitor operations. This will improve the efficacy of anticipating equipment or infrastructure failures, as well as damage assessment procedures. The benefit will be reduced maintenance downtime and lower labor costs.
- Smart home device adoption: Smart meters will likely lead to an increase in the adoption of devices designed to help customers reduce costs associated with energy, water and gas consumption.
So, there you have it. The good news is that all 3 of these smart meter trends have the potential to streamline utility operations, improve customer service, improve outage recovery processes, enhance decision-making, and reduce costs.
Of course, these trends only matter if they are acted upon, so if you’re not up to speed on the various pros and cons of smart meters, now would be a great time to get educated.
