Smart Metering System Offers Energy Efficiency

Dec. 27, 2007
Telvent offers true smart metering to the energy utility marketplace.

Telvent offers true smart metering to the energy utility marketplace. Telvent’s Smart Metering System (TMS), part of Telvent’s Smart Grid Solution Suite, provides benefits for consumers, operators, transmitters and generators of electrical energy. Every aspect of a utility operation, from metering and customer service to distribution operations and value-added business can be improved with Telvent TMS, with the ultimate goal of delivering energy efficiency, according to Telvent.

The TMS system is a tightly coupled set of components that work together to provide the core infrastructure for delivering secure networked energy services. The system consists of a set of intelligent, powerful IP-connected data concentrators, and the software platform called Titanium to supervise and communicate with data concentrators as needed to deliver smart metering services. Telvent’s worldwide meter partner, Echelon, provides a bidirectional Networked Energy Services (NES) meter, which comes with the built-in capability to be the complete energy services platform.

Consumers benefit from the time-of-use aspect of Telvent’s TMS; since the system tracks how much and when electricity is used, better management of electricity use is allowed and rewarded which, in turn, has a positive impact on both the environment and the electrical grid.

Operators benefit in a number of ways as well. Telvent’s TMS improves daily operations through integration of load data with SCADA, DMS, GIS and load control as a demand management tool. The TMS also eliminates the need for site visits by meter readers. The meters allow reading time-of-use rates as well as load control, outage detection, energy theft detection, retrieval of demand, power factor, and energy data at hourly or even smaller intervals, automatically and without error. With advanced metering, the utility is given control over load management in real time. Dispatchers are able to monitor weather forecasts, volatile power market situations, and their own current aggregate loads. Using that information, they can dispatch load similar to the way they dispatch generation.

Properly handled, smart metering systems provide for a year round flat load curve, which can be served with the least expenditure of generation, transmission, and distribution resources. Telvent’s TMS also provides the potential for energy utilities to deliver revenue-producing services such as cable TV, Internet access, and security monitoring.

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