Big changes are coming!
The recent Itron and Bidgely announcement of their meter data analytics partnership is a harbinger of things to come. We at Sagewell expect more AMI meter data analysis partnership announcements to come on two fronts: 1) more inside-the-meter “nano” level analysis solution offerings similar to Itron-Bidgely announcement and 2) “micro” and “macro” level analytics software (such as Sagewell’s SageSightSM) that will take all of the various nano-level data, individual AMI interval data (micro-level) and join it with large quantities of other metadata for a comprehensive macro view of how energy is actually used.
The industry is on the cusp of utility meter data being turned into value. Sagewell’s analysis indicates that there are billions of dollars in annual savings that can be delivered to customers.
Utilities have been hampered from delivering the savings because they have lacked analytical tools to evaluate how much electricity has been used by each individual customer at any moment in time and how to value that energy use at an individual customer level. Therefore, the real cost-drivers have been elusive to many in the industry. Sometimes it is because utilities don’t have AMI meters that could deliver the 15 minute or hourly interval data that could then be analyzed. However, while there already are about 100 million AMI meters in the U.S. today, the main problem continues to be that much of the data goes un-analyzed. But, technology has now changed. Today, our analytics tools could take the data from all of the U.S. AMI meters and analyze the trillions of data points that are generated annually. This is a recent development, and the new data mining capabilities are delivering new insights that will change the way utilities operate their businesses, price their product, service their customers and reduce carbon emissions.
The insights will be delivered from the combination of the nano and micro data to deliver macro level insights -- if utilities will actively use the data they are collecting. Stay tuned for more data analysis related announcements in the industry. We will continue exploring some of those announcements and what we discover from the AMI data in future blog entries. Subscribe to stay in the loop.
