AMR Supports Business Initiatives Far Beyond Revenue Billing

By Ronald Chebra, AMRA President

Many industry participants are familiar with Moore's Law, the corollary used to measure the pace of computing transformation. Now, because technology is such an integral part of people's lives, a new postulate called Metcalf's Law has emerged to define the value of connectedness. Metcalf's Law states that the value of interconnections grows at an exponential rate based on the number of devices that are linked together.

To realize the value of connectedness, utility leaders must view automatic meter reading (AMR) as more than an alternative to manual meter reads. All to often, utilities use AMR merely as a means of capturing the data needed to issue a bill.

Captured consumption data undoubtedly is an important tool for revenue billing and customer service, but it has many other uses. And the Internet - with its easily accessible and pervasive information - spurs renewed interest in the value of utility consumption data that goes well beyond a single read each billing period.

As consumers' comfort with e-commerce increases, so do their expectations. Thus, many utilities are extending elements of their customer-information systems to consumers through Web-based interfaces. Consumers increasingly seek to view their consumption patterns and profile to make decisions about their use of energy while also having the ability to pay bills through electronic bill presentment and payment systems, or EBPP.

Systems Are Ineffective Without Accurate, Timely Data

Several companies now provide EBPP tools that link the utility and banking industries, thus "e-nabling" some back-office functions such as bill rendering and collection. These functions require the utility back office to be rather high-tech, though, and technology upgrades often reveal weaknesses in various utility systems.

Utility planners must take a holistic view to create effective, integrated automation systems. And if the meter data that goes into these systems isn't timely, accurate and easily accessible, the very foundation of integrated utility operations will be significantly compromised. Therefore, relying on data collected through manual meter reads could dramatically reduce the value of advanced services such as Web-based customer interfaces.

Utility leaders could view enterprise-wide system integration as an extension of the procedures they began in the late 1990s to prepare for Y2K. Many utilities had to replace or upgrade customer-information and billing systems, and those utilities now are ready to reap the benefits of improved data-input and meter-data access functions.

Advances in processing power, mass storage, server farms and high-speed computer interconnections allow the creation of a mesh of intranets, extranets and virtual private networks via the Internet. We now can network with browsers, applets, Java scripts and XML structures that are applied across the enterprise system and, in many cases, within network elements. And though companies once had to choose from hundreds of communications protocols, the dominance of TCP/IP has established the protocol as the worldwide interconnection standard.

AMR Can Be the Anchor Function of Residential Gateways

All of these advances apply to the networked world, but companies also are making strides in linking end devices. Several vendors realize the challenge and ultimate value of device networking and have designed devices to link with wide-area networks. Many of these devices can operate on local-area networks that can be linked directly to the WAN through gateways.

Just as personal computers evolved to allow networking of hardware and software via an Ethernet-based LAN, devices such as meters and household appliances will link together to provide valuable information about customers' habits and needs.

Many vendors realize that AMR is not the main reason consumers want gateways at their houses. But most gateway vendors recognize the value of a respected "anchor tenant," such as a utility, connected to their devices. Customers also can benefit from this partnership because detailed consumption data can be analyzed on an individual basis to help improve energy management.

Meanwhile, as the dot-com boom slows, many companies are retooling and transforming themselves to provide significant customer-valued information derived from meter data. Indeed, numerous opportunities can be driven by detailed meter data and, as the attendance record at the AMRA 2000 International Symposium indicates, these new business trends will continue to draw the interest of utility leaders, investors, consultants, equipment manufacturers, software system providers, consumers and others.

About the Author:

Ronald Chebra is senior vice president of FirstPoint Energy, a Portland, Ore.-based venture that provides products and services for focused energy information. His expertise is in communications products and services for utilities, including customer communication networks, AMR and other advanced monitoring and telemetry services. He was among the pioneers who formed a consortium of major cable operators to provide broadband interactive energy services for electric utilities.

Chebra is a recognized leader in applied technology solutions and has been granted several U.S. and foreign patents for alarm and telemetry products. He also is president of AMRA, an international nonprofit association dedicated to providing unbiased research and news about AMR and related technologies.

AMRA is an international, nonprofit, membership organization founded in 1986 to address standardization, justification and deployment practices in the implementation of advanced metering technologies. AMRA supports members by providing accurate and balanced educational forums, and identifying new technologies and trends. These educational and networking opportunities help members make informed decisions about AMR and resource-management technology, and participate more effectively in the metering and information-management industry.