Reasons Why Smart Meters Are Beneficial To Utility Companies

Let us try and understand how the smart meters benefit the customers and utility companies alike. First of all, let us view the usage of smart meters as an alternative to the conventional digital meters that are used to measure the consumption of gas, water and electricity. They are meters which send the consumption information to the utility companies on a regular basis. They eliminate the need of the meter be read manually for billing purposes.

Smart meters are read only under exceptional circumstances when it is assumed that they are not functioning properly. They have been designed to communicate with their hosts automatically, hosts being the service and utility providers in this case. These smart meters help a utility company reduce any issues related to the consumption. Manual reading of non-smart meters has been prevalent but is a time consuming process. Manual resources used for this purpose can be employed in maintenance and other sectors, which also help a utility company to save on time and increase efficiency.

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There are many fault elements that are probable in manual reading, especially in case the meter reads are not standardized. For example, in the U.K. there are 2 types of non-smart meters. There are the single read meters for gas and electricity and there are also dual rate meters which provide the consumption information separately for day and night. These are called dual rate meters and have 2 tiers of calculations, one tier more economical than the others. At times it is difficult to read these meters if one is not acquainted with the concept. There are other times when digits can be misread.

The smart meters take care of all such information and remove the possibility of any errors. These meters regularly send information to the utility providers and many a times as frequently as every hour. Many in the same area can be programmed to do so and this kind of data collection is not possible manually at the same time without the use of a singularly large workforce. This regular supply of information helps a utility company keep a check on the consumption trends of a customer or an area and helps it better channel resources in that region. Any outage in the area gets immediately reported with them alerting the utility services as soon as the supply is withdrawn.

They can be installed any where within or outside the house and the customers do not have to bear the inconvenience to look for the meter readings in case of any questions. The utility companies have better, accurate and more up to date information with them to inform the customers and do any analysis that is required till the same day. The smart meters allow the efficiency to increase many fold.

Reasons Why Smart Meters Are Beneficial To Utility Companies

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