By Jay Cappy, Verizon Business PS Utility Practice Lead – IT Advisory Services

This is the first installment of my five part blog series that looks into what it takes to build and run a successful smart metering implementation.  Throughout this series, I will look into the basic principles of sound “build and run” practices in three critical areas: People, Process and Technology.

Complications in the numbers

According to a number utility studies, the smart metering teams are deploying more than 10 million new smart meters a year.  That is a lot of applications, processes, people, network and infrastructure to manage and deploy to support those meters.  If you are a large utility, that means you have hundreds of people managing the build and run phases of the project that are supporting dozens of components across many different ITIL processes and procedures. 

And with smaller coops and municipalities, it does not get much easier.  They will typically have less man-power but the same complexity when it comes to process and technology… 

So how do you do it?  Where do you start?

Implementing smart meters

Implementing smart meters is quite an undertaking because the complexity is enormous and the challenges the utilities face on a daily basis are unlike anything they have ever encountered.  You cannot compare a smart metering solution to an ERP implementation.  There is no comparison.  ERP vendors have over time built a highly complex solution that is interoperable with most of the major functionality required today. Whereas the smart metering solution is a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be built. 

Time and money… isn’t everything

Just imagine if you put all the money, time and effort into it to find that you are no better off.  For example, you go to all this time and trouble and you have major gaps in the data (“gap fit”) so that you are still estimating the bills for your customer.  Or if your backhaul is not providing the resiliency and reliability you demand.  If I was a customer, I would want to know whether my bill was estimated or based on reads from the meter. One of the typical goals a customer was promised was smart metering would provide timely and accurate meter reads.  If this is not the case, then there is something wrong - either the organization, processes or technologies implemented for that utility.

The gap fit dilemma

The gap fit dilemma that smart metering utilities face now is going to be front and center as these major systems take root here in the US.  The utilities are going to have to shore up their infrastructure through people, process and technology in order to make it highly available, reliable, manageable, serviceable and scalable. 

Stay tuned

In my following blogs, we will investigate the challenges you will face with the components, processes and the organization as you build your Smart Metering solution.

What are your thoughts?

This blog was also posted on Think Forward.