Top three trends in smart metering for 2021
The impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic has forced businesses to adopt remote workforces and establish new operations protocols. This year, businesses and cities will alter their operations, and employee and customer interactions to address the impacts of COVID-19. With nearly one-third of the global population secluded to their homes during lockdown, the demand to support traditional and labor intensive utility operations declined while the demand for smart utility applications increased. Smart metering has become a top IoT technology to address these COVID-19 challenges and is expected to continue in 2021.
Why smart metering is a viable option?
Utility companies were early adopters of the IoT and sensor-connected smart meters. This technology provides a solution to businesses and cities looking to embrace big data and automation to streamline operations and deliver cost savings. Smart meters connect seamlessly to the network, IoT platform and related applications for accurate, efficient and ongoing data collection, with limited interruption or error.
There are several different connectivity offerings for smart utilities and metering applications such as WiFi, Bluetooth, or in some instances 5G. However, because meters are often located in dense urban environments, indoors or even underground, it can be difficult or impossible to reach by such solutions. LoRa devices and LoRaWAN open protocol enable long-range connectivity of IoT devices and aid in connecting sensors to the Cloud. Its long range performance coupled with its low power consumption enhances the overall performance of smart meters, by capturing actionable data in real time. This year, the top three trends in smart metering will be reduced energy consumption; an increase in remote monitoring; and smart home device adoption.
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Today, at least a fifth of the world’s electricity is produced by renewable energy, motivated by unprecedented drops in production costs and developments in technology such as resilient, high-capacity storage batteries. Meanwhile, innovative approaches to renewable energy infrastructures, such as growing crops beneath solar panels to farm food provide added incentives to switch to renewables. But how does energy from those solar farms arrive at our homes? How is electricity from renewable sources discerned from traditional sources such as fossil fuels or nuclear power? To answer these questions, we need to take a closer look at the ubiquitous power lines, transmission towers, and generators that we call the grid. The power grid can be divided into four sub-categories: generation, transmission, distribution, and utilization of electricity. The first step is generation: electricity is produced historically at large-scale hydrocarbon (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) or nuclear power plants, though in recent years production has been augmented by wind and solar farms. In the transmission phase, electricity is moved, often across vast distances, from generators to distributors. Depending on how the energy market is set up in your country, distribution and retail might go hand-in-hand. But at its core, distribution is about the movement of electricity from transmission networks to consumer networks, while retail deals with billing and interacting with consumers themselves. For the scope of this post, we’ll be focusing mostly on the transmission and distribution stages.