As smart grid systems are developed and refined, automated metering infrastructure (AMI) will no doubt play a key role in a fully automated grid, and powerful benefits such as planning, customer service and marketing will show up in organizations.

AMI is of interest to a much broader audience at utilities than our precursor technology, automated meter reading (AMR). AMI touches and can benefit just about all the major organizations within the utility industry. For example, AMI can feed valuable information into applications such as outage management systems. By using AMI information, we will no longer need to depend on customer calls to locate outages.

AMI will enable us to significantly enhance customer service, which, in turn, will increase our customer satisfaction numbers. Because we know when the customer's power is back on, for example, we won't have to call the customer to verify that power has been restored.

DO YOU LIKE THE SOUND OF UTILIMETRICS?

Automatic Meter Reading Association (AMRA) officers realized that our organization must change to keep pace with advancing technologies in the industry. The name change of our organization from AMRA to Utilimetrics is an outward indicator of the ongoing changes within our organization.

A number of drivers led us to shift direction. Our industry has changed its focus from AMR to advanced two-way metering communication. This gives us the opportunity to build out our AMI, leading to revolutionary changes within the utility industry. AMI is an integral part of the emerging smart grid, which requires us to broaden the focus of our association.

At Autovation 2008, Sept. 7-10 in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., we will be demonstrating how the latest developments in AMI are being integrated to benefit the industry and propel the vision of an intelligent grid.

WHERE ARE WE WITH AMI?

We currently have several different yet viable AMI technologies such as power line carrier, mesh-based radio frequency (RF), tower-based RF, and hybrid tower and mesh-based RF. Each of these technologies will likely find its niche in the marketplace. What is yet to be determined is whether or not we'll experience some fall out within each category as AMI implementations proceed and lessons are learned in the process. The industry is on the trailing edge of AMR technology, but on the leading edge of AMI technology. It remains to be seen how these different technologies will prevail in the marketplace. Another unknown is the attraction to new players and technologies that hundreds of billions of dollars will bring. Utilimetrics will be tracking all of the AMI players and technologies.

WHAT ABOUT MANAGING OUR DATA?

Meter data management (MDM) has been around since utilities first began operations and measured service delivered to customers through electric meters. In the early days, this consisted of information printed on index cards. Utilities filed these cards in metal cabinets and meter-reading books carried by meter readers on their routes. In today's AMI world, MDM takes on a whole new meaning. AMI systems can pump thousands of meter readings per minute into the utility's MDM environment. Of course, all of these readings have to be matched up with the appropriate account in a database to make sure the customers are correctly billed.

The MDM environment includes much more than just meter readings. We also need to track the meter inventory, the form of the meter, the meter's features, how the meter is programmed and other hardware that is installed on the meter. In the case of large commercial and industrial accounts, we must track and verify the configuration of the meter and the meter system to assure accurate billing. For example, are we using the correct meter multiplier?

Other issues that will have to be addressed with MDM are the development and usage of a meter data warehouse, long-term storage of terabytes of data, access to meter data by internal/external data users, and making all of this data available to the rest of the enterprise in an efficient and timely manner.

LET'S NOT MISS THE OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME

Over the next three to five years, we will see a great deal of advancement in all of the AMI-related technologies and systems. The advancements will be seen in the AMI meters themselves, the communication systems over which they communicate, the head end systems that control the AMI networks, the MDM systems that manage all of the meter data, and the IT environment that glues it all together within the enterprise. This is an engineer's dream come true.

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Kevin McDonald is metering principal at Georgia Power, where he has served as chairman of the Southern Co. Meter Technical Committee, project manager for the Itron Enterprise Edition and supervisor of GPC meter engineering. He is presently serving as the vice president of Utilimetrics. kewmcdon@southernco.com