Ferranti - MECOMS - Don't foget why we need to get Smart
After years of speculation and planning, the first roll-outs of smart meters and smart grids took place in 2011. These installations offer the potential to collect massive amounts of granular data about each and every device. As of now, however, most projects hardly leverage the new infrastructure, as they are only able to collect limited amounts of data.
Having the infrastructure in place is only the first step. Utilities around the world face challenges in transporting, storing and processing all the available data.
Smart meters will continuously generate massive amounts of data. Transporting this data can either be done by continuously reading each meter, or in intervals with daily or hourly communication bursts. Spare capacity will also be needed to transport built-up data after outages. Designing the system will depend on the type of customers served, the geography and the availability of communication channels. Regulatory requirements and security requirements will further add to the complexity.
Data storage is the next important challenge. Utilities will have to manage petabytes of data, not only about consumptions but also quality-of-service. Classic database solutions will not be sufficient to reliably store this amount of data. Alternatives exist, but place limits on updating the data. Cloud-based storage looks promising, but is as-of-now still unproven for such large amounts of data, and has its own challenges, such as security.
But foremost, processing this data avalanche will be the most important challenge. Data must lead to meaningful insights and improve utilities’ effectiveness. Without this, investing in "smart" infrastructure makes little sense. Analysis of metering-events must happen in near-real-time, to allow the operation of a truly smart grid. For example, when meters from the same subnet send "last gap" messages, it should trigger an immediate intervention. MECOMS™ is deployed in a wide variety of MDM situations, and the new version based on Dynamics AX 2012 has unprecedented scalability to process large amounts of data and turn it into valuable insights and actions.
Ferranti believes that grid analytics and customer analytics will be the main value drivers for smart metering and smart grids. Therefore, utilities investing in these areas should focus on their strategy to deal with the coming data avalanche.
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