Friday night, sipping a chilled beer! What better time to talk about how our suppliers or going to get benefited by smart metering. Many consumer interest protection lobby have criticized suppliers over the implementation of the smart metering program who seem to be transferring the entire cost to the consumers. Though its too early for me to comment, but as a consumer I would definitely do my mathematics before letting the utility talk me into looking at smart metering as their biggest gift to me. Enough of supplier bashing....
Now then, Smart metering provides a perfect opportunity for the energy suppliers to mine the customer usage data and transform themselves as service providers rather than a mere utility company. It would enable them to segment their customers and service them better. Let us take a brief overview of the benefits to suppliers by implementing the smart metering program:
(1) Utilities have always struggled matching supplies with consumption in the absence of energy usage metrics and patterns. With real time energy usage data available, utilities are better positioned to match consumption levels with adequate and balanced supplies
(2) Customer self service is when customers log onto the utilities portal and perform activities which typically is done by the service representatives on their behalf. By leveraging the information made available by smart meters and the resultant simplicity in business processes, suppliers can promote self service amongst customers thereby reducing CSR related costs.
(3) As discussed before, Smart meters support a lot of remote operations like readings taken automatically, tariff changed remotely, payment modes updated without a physical visit etc. With such remote operations supported field operation costs are reduced substantially.
(4) Suppliers invest a lot in trying to align them to a customer friendly image in the market to boost sales. Smart meters provide utilities a lot of information about the customer’s usage pattern i.e. their lifestyle. This enables suppliers to service their customers better.
(5) Utilities can reduce operation costs further by using Smart meter features like energy theft alarms, enable/ disable meter remotely on theft detection, faulty meter remote detection etc
(6) With Smart meters in place, Utilities can encourage customers to use different tariffs like Time-Of-Use (TOU). They can agree with customers to remotely shed load in-order to reduce peak time loads thereby meeting peak time energy demand.
(7) Smart meters allows suppliers to remotely upgrade the firmware on the meter to fix bugs, roll-out functionality supporting newer market advances etc which is not supported in conventional meters.
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