The last decade has seen rapid changes in the utility marketplace – increasing energy prices, pressure from regulators and customers to conserve energy, and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that requires utilities to provide a suitable meter to any customer requesting a time-of-use rate.
As a result, some utilities have considered deploying an Advanced Metering Infrastructure or AMI using digital meters and a communication network to address these problems. However, that creates a volume and a granularity of data that utilities haven’t had to manage in the past.
Storage, data management, data integration … these are just a few of the other issues utilities are facing. At the same time, advancements in metering and other technologies have utilities looking for ways to incorporate these new technologies into their business processes and legacy systems to achieve maximum return on investment.
These drivers are creating the need to better manage data while improving overall utility operations. The key is to optimize the use of advanced metering data across the entire utility value chain – Generation, Transmission, Distribution and Retail. By utilizing the meter data across the value chain, utilities can achieve their own business objectives while simultaneously improving customer and regulator satisfaction.
Many focus on meter data as a measure of energy usage, but it should be viewed from a broader commercial and operational perspective. A thorough assessment of business processes and current applications can identify additional uses for the data, and can extend business benefits beyond a reduction in meter reading costs.
Deploying AMI technology provides an opportunity to review current business processes and rationalize/modernize your applications portfolio to achieve, operational efficiencies, lower costs, increased revenue, and improved customer satisfaction.
HP holistic view determines which processes and applications need to be modified or implemented to meet the business objectives. This approach intelligently extracts vast amounts of raw data in order to provide the utility and its customers with key information.
