What is Smart Metering?

Posted by Erric Ravi on April 15th, 2021

Building management technology has evolved significantly over the past decade. It now encompasses Traditional buildings, and their construction ways are now an outdated thing of the past. It is often found that more than half of a building’s existence cost is drained towards factors such as operations and maintenance. Keeping yourself updated with the latest building innovations is a necessary yet complicated process mainly because of the wide range of diverse innovations introduced into the market every year. 

To ensure success, smart building owners and operators need to familiarise themselves with both the benefits and drawbacks of these newest tech introductions. Ignorance in ensuring this could lead to missed chances to manage logistical and energy costs and also enhance residents comfort and resources efficiency.

Smart metering is the new-age technology answer for industries and residences searching for ways to keep note of energy consumption to modify their consumption behaviour if required. Along with evaluating consumption, smart meters examine several insights on energy, like which activity absorbs how much energy and when. With the help of network connectivity and a graphical display, the data is transferred and laid out in an easy-to-read manner.

What is a smart meter?

A smart meter is an electric tool that stores vital information related to the power consumption of a building. It gathers data about the rate of consumption, voltage reading and lowers the likelihood of errors. Some advantages of using a smart metering system are mentioned below:

• Displays real-time information about energy utilisation

Smart meters allow real-time monitoring and display technology that portrays transparent feedback on energy consumption. By using communication technology, it helps users keep track of all energy-related operations remotely as well.

• Eliminates the occurrence of estimated billing

With the help of smart meters, users will be able to accurately evaluate bills for the real usage of power in place of the estimated reading, which was the usual method of operation with a manual reading of traditional meters.

• Helps in devising appropriate energy-saving strategies

A significant benefit of smart meters is that by displaying the user’s consumption pattern, they help in planning appropriate steps for energy saving. This, in turn, allows minimising the carbon output of the building. 

• Reduces the chances of reading errors

Unlike traditional manual meters, smart meters are not dependent on human monitoring. This helps ensure minimum chances of reading errors which was a significant drawback of manual reading. 

• Sends regular alarms in case of energy loss

Smart meters are fitted with the built-in feature of raising alarms in cases of energy loss, energy thefts or dysfunction of any appliances. 

Schneider Electric India has the latest smart metering solutions widely used in automated industrial settings and for home automation. Schneider’s EcoStruxure ™ Smart Metering advisor is the perfect answer for detailed data analytics for improved smart grid management. It comes with superior visual tools, accurate data aggregation, and a smooth amalgamation of multiple data sources. This smart metering device supports load profiling, price analysis, outage management, forecasting, etc.