What are Smart Meters?

Smart meters are the devices that accurately monitor electricity meter and gas usage which can send usage information through radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RF) that helps the utility company to efficiently manage the energy consumption. Smart meters provide a number of benefits such as reduced meter reading cost, eliminating inefficiencies in billing, avoiding disconnection and re-connection costs to industries and consumer.

In general, the main purpose of smart meters is to improve the activity of data monitoring and collecting. Particularly, smart meters have a number of industrial applications. One of the most importan

What are Smart Meters?

Smart meters are the devices that accurately monitor electricity meter and gas usage which can send usage information through radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RF) that helps the utility company to efficiently manage the energy consumption. Smart meters provide a number of benefits such as reduced meter reading cost, eliminating inefficiencies in billing, avoiding disconnection and re-connection costs to industries and consumer.

In general, the main purpose of smart meters is to improve the activity of data monitoring and collecting. Particularly, smart meters have a number of industrial applications. One of the most important application is to collect and record industrial electricity consumptions. Nowadays, it is a fundamental activity on which energy efficiency of industries and sustainability depend on.

Smart meters offer additional control over the way energy is consumed. Such devices are being rapidly installed in a huge number of industries as customers are seeking different ways to improve power usage and reduction of overhead costs by decreasing wastage and theft. Several opportunities in the industrial segment for implementation of the smart energy system is expected to fuel the global industrial smart meters market growth during the coming years.

The bill accuracy offered by smart meters, intended for a number of industrial applications can deliver several analytics in terms of predictable power outages as well as consumption factory locations. These analytics aid in the appropriate distribution of power over the production unit with optimizing operations to decrease loss during downtime.

Why Industries prefer Smart Meters?

The several advantages of smart meters have made it the best choice particularly, in the industrial area. A huge number of industries or several manufacturers have been the highest end-users of smart meters. However, light industries have currently forayed into this space contributing to more than 29.9% to the industrial smart meters market share in 2017. The main purpose of smart meters in the industrial sector is valuable. In the increasing era of the IoT (Internet of Things), it is easy to measure the importance of devices which can independently collect information and connect them to other systems.

Benefits of Industrial Smart Meters

• Save Time: Smart meters provide us reading automatically, so there is no read meter again.
• Save Money and Energy: Monitoring how much energy you are using in pounds, and in real-time, could help industries save money.
• You can get a smart meter installed at no added cost: You will be able to get smart meter updates for electricity to replace your previous meters, based on what type they are.

Case Description:

Background

The client is a top global smart meter manufacturer of USA and is a leading Smart Grid solutions supplier. The client's most concerned division has a worldwide team of near around 4500 employees, spread across around 35 countries and is helping government advisory committees and standard boards to overcome the challenges of growing electrified world.

Industry Overview

Reduction of energy consumption and effective energy management has come into light as an essential green initiative for ecological sustainability across the globe. Several governments are authorizing the adoption of a number of smart devices in power management and distribution under the umbrella term called “Smart Grid”.

Smart Meters are the major components which add intelligence to the organizations. Smart Meters have to comply to governing standards of various regions and countries. Besides differences in standards there are also functionality/features variations such as the purpose of usage, mode of communication, security levels, tariff calculations, tamper protection methods etc. Utilities are adopting such smart initiatives and allowing users to monitor, measure, and control energy usage.

The Opportunity

To capture the developing opportunities from a number of countries, smart meter manufacturers must quickly produce highly customized products which obey with the pricing edge and corresponding regulatory standards. The client needed to address a market opportunity that required an entirely new Smart Meter product with improved features such as intelligent communication, calculation of tariff, monitoring the quality of power supplied etc.

The client was seeking a strategic partner which can enable to understanding the required product along with validation and verification within the strict timelines. Smart meters track, monitor energy usage and energy consumption by industries as well as households. With appropriate real-time data on load forms, electricity companies can incentivize customers to spread their power consumption to decrease fluctuations and peaks in power usage.

Solution

The client selected Wipro as its strategic partner due to its wide-ranging and proven capabilities in smart energy management. Wipro offered end-to-end industrial product pattern and advancement solution which comprised prototype, designing hardware, mechanical and firmware, validation and verification, and testing with a time period of 10 months only.

The company adopted consistency-centric design approach and confirmed standard-driven advancement. The improved Smart Meter had three-phase power-line and tamper detection, wireless communication modes, Optimized memory footprint, Service disconnect, and involved diagnostics features. Wipro's best practices knowledge and dedicated Smart energy aided the Smart Meter's validation and verification without any interruptions within the timelines.

Business Impact

The instant advantage that the client attained was the capability to harness the opportunity of numerous million meter deployment in a fresh market.

The client benefitted with near around 25% speed up in “go to market” timelines that resulted in growth in market share. This has started influencing the market growth as it has unlocked new revenue opportunities. Likewise, the client obtained the advanced smart meter along with desired features and the product pricing with more than 15% savings on the development side. Therefore, the client made Wipro as a strategic partner and is working together in creating the new smart meter variations to provide to developing markets.