White Paper: Smart Grids: Strategic Planning And Development

Smart Grids help utilities respond to a variety of emerging customer and community needs. But utilities may miss many of the benefits if they regard Smart Grids as primarily evolutionary steps in consumption measurement and grid monitoring.

Smart Grids link customers to electricity. They infuse the distribution grid and metering system with a full range of computer hardware, software, and communications networks to increase the intelligence of utility business processes and help customers use energy wisely.

Smart Grid technologies affect how virtually every utility department accomplishes its work. They can and should involve the reengineering of multiple utility business processes. They can and should revolutionize the way utilities relate to their customers.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) — today more commonly known as Smart Metering — facilitates consumption measurement in intervals (typically 15 minutes to an hour for electricity). Many utilities have begun Smart Metering initiatives with metering departments in the lead role. This can be a strategic error. Smart Metering is a transformational technology. It reaches far beyond the metering department, providing data quantity and quality that profoundly change the way utilities collect revenue, interact with customers, and deliver services.