Tidal Wave of Data from Smart Meters: Now What?

Recently saw an article in Intelligent Utility Magazine that talked about the results of a survey they did of utilities implementing meter data management systems. Utilities launching such projects know that they are going to get a torrent of meter data but have not fully figured out what exactly to do with it. Besides customer billing, one can see applications in outage management, grid maintenance, tamper/theft etc. One of the key benefits, as we see it, is the ability to tap into this granular data to handle verification of energy savings due to DSM programs - conservation measures and DR events in particular.

If the data analyses are done right, utilities can save a ton of money that they now spend on annual M&V work [which can run to 3 - 5% of their DSM portfolio budget]. More importantly, by running the analytics closer to DR events, they can get real-time confirmation on how well the DR program is working and make changes in real-time instead of having the results about year after the events. For this to work effectively, the utility IT department needs to work cooperatively with the DSM group so that they can feed the right data to the DSM program data tracking and reporting system.