This article is for anyone looking to maximise value from smart metering. I have focused these steps and the examples on commercial, industrial, institutional, and government users.
Below are the 5 key steps to ensure smart metering projects meet their goals and requirements. Each step was originally posted as an individual article before being compiled as one master article with additional content.
1) Define Your Requirements (Posted here 16/01/2017)
2) Choose the Right Solution (Posted here 18/01/2017)
3) Analyse Data and Gain Insight (Posted here 29/01/2017)
4) Take Action to Improve Efficiency (Posted here 06/02/2017)
5) Ensure On-going Success (Posted here 25/02/2017)
Step 1) Define Your Requirements
To define your requirements you must first understand what smart metering is and what it involves. Smart metering is the digital recording of meter data, the systems that deliver this data to you, the applications that turn this data into information, and the actions and outcomes that the project will ultimately achieve.
All successful smart metering projects deliver efficiency improvements. There are three key areas to achieve this efficiency improvement; resource use, labour, and economic. The most successful projects achieve demonstrable efficiency improvement in all three areas but all successful projects achieve improvements in at least one area.
By improving efficiency in these areas, smart metering projects enable improved sustainability performance, reduced labour requirements, and reduced monetary spending. By reducing operational costs, smart metering projects often pay for themselves with attractive ROIs.
Properly designed and executed smart metering projects solve a wide variety of problems. Most successful smart metering projects solve more than one problem, often without the user intending it to from the start.
What is the problem you are trying to solve? What benefits are you seeking?
Here are some examples of problems that smart metering can solve:
“Our university has unusually high water bills and we don’t know what is causing it. I need greater visibility.”
“I know that our organisation could greatly improve our sustainability performance and reduce our utility bills but we don’t have the expertise or resources to deliver results. I need engagement with a specialist.”
“We are spending too much time reading meters and creating bills for the tenants in our building. I need to automate meter reading and billing.”
“Our utility needs to ensure our supply meets the demand. I need 15 minute interval usage data from a sample of our customers to understand peak demands.”
“Our factory’s boiler is old and I know it is inefficient. Upgrading it will be costly so I need to build a business case. I need data to demonstrate the benefit of new equipment. “
“I manage an aging facility and can’t afford to risk unexpected down-time or structural damage if a water pipe breaks. I need alerts as soon as there is a leak.”
“I report water and energy usages every month as part of our corporate sustainability commitment but utility bills are only sent quarterly and give very little information. I need more detailed data and ideally, software to make my reports for me!”
List any possible use cases you may have for smart metering. Detail why they are important and what the potential benefits may be. Which capabilities are essential for your system? Which are desirable? Consider them in order of priority.
Consider the people who will be involved with the smart metering system. Who will be responsible for it? Who will operate it? Who will benefit from it? Will these people be internal to your organisation or external? Who will pay for it? Identifying stakeholders and ensuring their engagement is a key part of defining your requirements. Your use cases and requirements may evolve through this process.
Once you know what you want to achieve and stakeholders have been considered, you are ready to start mapping out your metering locations. This is where your metering data will come from. Map out your locations taking note of;
Geographic areas, site maps
Total number of sites
Total number of monitoring points at each site
Location of the monitoring points e.g. metering to be installed in basement, at entry to site, on roof top cooling tower, etc.
By reading through this article you will gain an understanding of what smart meter projects involve from inception to being an integral part of your operations. It is beneficial to consult with experts in the requirement defining stage. There may be benefits that you weren’t expecting and pitfalls to avoid. Expert consultants can guide you through these issues and help you on your way to success.
When your requirements have been defined and you understand what data you need to collect, how you will interact with that data, what actions and outcomes you may expect and how you will handle them, you are ready to move into Step 2) Choose the Right Solution.
Step 2) Choose the Right Solution
There are many different products and services available in the market and it may be a steep learning curve to understand the pros and cons of each one. Once you have prioritised your use cases it is much easier to find a system that meets your needs.
Three key components to consider are hardware, software, and service.
Hardware
Smart metering hardware is the electronic devices that will collect metering data, process it, and deliver it from the field to the software you use to access it. Some hardware aspects to consider are;
Leverage Existing Equipment: Do you have existing ‘dumb’ meters that could be connected to a smart metering device? Retro-fit devices are often the most economic and future-proof choice for hardware. Water meters are designed to last for 10 to 15 years. Having the ability to replace the smart metering and communication component is a significant advantage as technologies will likely evolve and improve over the life of the meter. The alternative is fully integrated meters where the electronics and communications are built directly into the meter
Data Collection Functionality: What detail of data do you need? Automated Meter Reading (AMR) systems may only collect daily totals. Enormous benefits can be gained with more detailed data e.g. identifying and quantifying water leaks
Data Delivery: How often do you need the data delivered to you? Almost all use cases can be fulfilled with data delivery from the field to your software occurring once per day. This is considered ‘near-real-time’. If any less frequent, issues such as leaks may go undetected for too long. If more frequent, battery life may reduce and operating costs increase
Communication Type: Most smart metering systems use wireless communications to deliver data from the meter. Selecting the right technology depends on your use cases. The Internet of Things (IoT) has brought the rise of new communication technologies that are well suited to smart metering. Some of these new technologies include Sigfox, LoRaWAN, and NB-IoT. These fit into the category of Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) and may be the best choice where there is greater distance between meters, or if there are a high concentration of meters in one area. More info on LPWANs can be found here. 3G may be the best choice at present if you have many sites with only a few meters at each and no LPWAN is available.
Software
Smart metering software will allow you to analyse data and gain insights into your resource use. Visualising and interacting data is a key component of any smart metering system. Software may be bundled with the hardware or it may be sourced separately. Software may also be used for management of hardware including set-up, configuration, device performance, etc. Some software aspects to consider;
Visualisation Tools: Do you need graphs, tables, or reports? Many data display software solutions allow you to visualise your resource use in many different ways
Automating Information Delivery: Software can reduce the time that you spend looking at data by delivering only the information you need. Reports can be created and emailed to you for some or all of your metering points. Alerts can be sent to your phone for events such as unexpected or increased usage
Integration: Some smart metering software will allow you to share data with other software such as building management systems or sustainability reporting platforms
Export Data to Other Platforms: you may already have a data management platform that you wish to use. Your smart metering system should be able to send data to other platforms via FTP, email, APIs, or other methods
Hardware Management: It is greatly beneficial for smart metering software to allow you to manage your smart metering devices for status, battery level, signal strength, etc. This functionality may not be necessary if you have an external operator who can manage the hardware for you.
Service
The third component of the solution is service. All smart metering solutions require some degree of service. This could include hardware installation, battery replacements, software training, software as a service (Saas), data as a service (DaaS), or ultimately a complete managed smart metering service where specialised consultants take responsibility for the smart metering system and ensure the best possible outcomes are achieved. When choosing service for your system you should consider;
Internal Capabilities: Do you have staff capable of managing your system? Is your system larges enough to justify training staff and taking on the responsibility for the system? Do you have expert data analysts, consultants, and engineers to drive the project and achieve the best possible results? Typically, a smart metering system must have highly automated analytic software and properly trained operators who take ownership of the system in order for a user organisation to realise the full potential and achieve best results without outside help.
Capex and Opex: What will the system cost to establish and operate? Does your use case require ownership of the system, or do you simply need the outcomes? An increasingly popular model for commercial smart metering systems is Data as a Service (DaaS) where the supplier provides all hardware and equipment necessary to deliver data to the client. The client then pays as a subscription with a service level agreement. The ultimate incarnation of this popular model is an end-to-end managed service where all aspects of the smart metering are handled by outside experts. The client then receives reports, alerts and recommendations. This is usually the best outcome for all parties.
Support: It is important that your system comes with necessary support to ensure you get the best results possible. Local suppliers have an advantage as they can send technicians to repair damaged parts, replace batteries, and troubleshoot complex issues that may arise. Training is essential to ensure users understand software and can interpret the information generated by the system. All large smart metering systems should have a suitable level of support maintained under a service level agreement to ensure a successful project.
These three aspects; hardware, software, and service must be considered to ensure successful smart metering. If you're ready to procure and implement a smart metering system, contact us to ensure all aspects of your requirements and the latest technologies are considered to arrive at the best solution for you.
Step 3) Analyse Data and Gain Insight
Once hardware and software have been implemented, the next step of successful smart metering is to analyse data and turn it into insightful and actionable information. This is where the benefits of smart metering start to be realised and opportunities to save resources and money appear. Data analysis is an on-going process.
Your individual use cases will determine the level of data analysis that you undertake. Some common examples of smart metering data analysis are:
Base Flows/Leaks: in graphical form, this is where the flow rate never reaches zero, indicating constant usage. If there is constant usage, consider what equipment is in your facility. If nothing should be constantly using water, you probably have a leak or a tap left on. For smart metering of water this simple analysis is often ‘the low hanging fruit’ for realising efficiency gains. Our users are regularly surprised at the quantity and size of leaks realised and the savings of water, money that can be achieved.
Manage Alarms: your smart metering software should be capable of generating alarms. These alarms are triggered when usage is occurring outside pre-determined parameters. The operators and stakeholders then receive an email or text message notifying them of the event. Use any existing data you have such as past utility bills, industry standards, plant specifications, equipment datasheets and your on-site experiences to determine what alarms to set. For water, leak alarms are typically set for usage exceeding a small amount, say 10 litres, at a time when no usage would normally occur, say between 2am and 5am.
Ensure alarms are delivered to the right people. The people responsible for your utility spend, your facility manager, your sustainability manager, the director. Make sure that alarms are investigated and acted upon. Our clients see great success when we manage their alarms for them from setting trigger parameters, receiving the alarms, checking the detailed metering data, calling the client to explain the situation and offering advice and support.
Multiple Site Cross Comparison: if you have multiple sites, you can compare sites against each other to give a high level overview. This will allow you to focus your attention in critical areas. Does one of your sites use significantly more water than the others? Could this be due to inefficient plant equipment or processes? You can add other factors to improve your comparison. A powerful formula to make multiple site cross comparisons is
Total Use Per Site ÷ Scale of Site = Use per Unit
where Total Use Per Site is the total resource consumption at each site, Scale of Site is the output e.g. quantity of product produced, number of people on site, or size of facility and Use per Unit is the total resource use relative to the output of each site. This is the best way to gauge efficiency of your sites.
Automated Reports: a simple summary of your usage can give you a brief overview of your usage to see how your performance is tracking and help identify and major problems. Smart metering software can automatically give you summaries such as total monthly use by site, or, weekly use by network zone. As well as helping you identify issues, the automation of reports can significantly reduce manual labour required to calculate figures and create tables and charts.
Untimely Use: equipment may be operating outside its required schedule. A common instance of this is irrigation systems running on days that it is not required or in less efficient hours. Unscheduled use can also result from human actions such as water theft.
Heat Mapping: this is a great way to visualise when and where usage occurs. Usage is represented in a table or grid with cells correlating to periods of time. Each cell is shaded lighter or darker for less or more usage. Analysists can quickly see ‘hots spots’ where resource is at its highest. This can quickly show areas where efficiency can be improved e.g. cooling tower water use begins at 05:30am in summer but people don’t arrive on site until 07:30am. If the air conditioning is started at 06:30am, the facility will reach optimal temperature just before people arrive at the building, while saving 1 hour of water and electricity use.
Bench Marking: do your sites and facilities have bench marks? Do you know the manufacturer consumption specifications for your processes and equipment? Are their industry standards to compare your site to others? Your government or industry body may have published data on how much resource use to expect for a site like yours. For example, a great resource for buildings in Australia is NABERS. Water utilities typically see losses between 10 to 20% where water is lost through the network before reaching a consumer. Some utilities may feel that 5% losses is an acceptable benchmark, but if 2%, 1%, or even less are achievable then these improved figures should be the target. Industry bench marks are often helpful for starting out but ultimately your bench marks should be based on the best performance that you can achieve. When it comes to saving resources and money, it is best to lead rather than simply meet the minimum requirements. Bench marks will likely change over time as your processes improve or your facility grows.
Expert consultants use these tools and processes to turn data, charts, graphs, and alarms into insights to your resource use. We help our clients achieve success by having our consultants and engineers apply their experience to analyse their data and maximise the savings opportunities.
One of the biggest causes of smart metering projects not achieving real outcomes is when there is no commitment to having experienced people frequently analysing data. It is essential that capable people take responsibility for analysing smart metering data on a regular basis.
Step 4) Take action to Improve Efficiency
No smart metering project is truly successful without actions being taken to improve efficiency!
Actions = Outcomes. Remember the three key areas to achieve this efficiency improvement; resource use, labour, and economic.
The most successful projects achieve demonstrable efficiency improvement in all three areas but all successful projects achieve improvements in at least one area. Conversely, unsuccessful projects do not achieve improvements, often as a result of inaction. Users who are missing out on benefits and achievements may be saying “we don’t have the time”, “we don’t have the budget”, or “we have higher priorities than resource use” but are overlooking the fact that taking action is an essential step in the project. Taking action can be a quick and relatively inexpensive step, and once taken, the time of realising savings and reaping rewards begins. With this in mind, consider the actions you should be taking.
The Pareto Principal
One approach to start taking action is to look for the most return for the least input. The Pareto Principal is the concept that a small number of the actions you can take will yield a large portion of your results. This is often referred to as ‘the 80/20 rule’ where 80% of your results can be achieved with 20% of your efforts. This is often a good approach to get big results quickly and with minimal cost. The other 20% of your results or ‘second tier’ improvements can then happen in later stages.
What actions can I take?
The insights you gain from data analysis will enable you to make decisions towards improving efficiency. These decisions will lead to actions.
Target your top users: Keeping the Pareto Principal in mind, your best strategy to action may be to target your highest use equipment. This will vary depending on what type of facility or organisation you are in. Some top users are;
Water: irrigation, air conditioning, cooling towers, cleaning and wash-down facilities, refrigeration
Gas: heating, incineration, boilers, other process equipment
Electricity: heating and cooling, lighting, process equipment, refrigeration
By looking at detailed smart metering data relating to these high use items you may find ways to optimise them. This may involve calibration, repairs, maintenance, or reconfiguration such as start/stop times.
Upgrading Equipment: with smart metering data to back your decisions, it becomes much clearer to see when it’s time to upgrade your equipment. This data can help you calculate ROIs and justify spending the funds available. Often upgrading equipment can address all three 3 key areas of efficiency improvement (resource use, labour, economic). Your regular data reporting can then quickly validate your decision to upgrade and demonstrate the savings and benefits.
Leak Detection and Remediation: when your data analysis indicates a leak may be present, it’s important to take action quickly, even for smaller leaks. While fixing larger leaks is often motivated by simple things such as high water bills, there is much more to consider. Leaks can do far more damage than just bill shock and unnecessarily wasting the world’s resources. Leaks can cause issues such mould, electrical damage, and structural damage. Who is responsible for WHS in your facilities? What is the implication of a sink hole or damaged building foundations? This is why it is important to address even small leaks that don’t have an immediately high monetary cost. If a car has an oil leak, people tend to get it fixed quickly to avoid further damage. Leaking water pipes should be no different.
Leak detection can be extremely accurate, even when the pipe is completely buried underground or deep within walls and ceilings. Smart metering data can assist with conducting step tests where sections of your pipe network are closed off (isolated) temporarily to see if the flow (the leak) stops.
Ground microphones, clamp on flow meters, and acoustic correlators combined with an experienced operator can pin point even very small leaks. This means when it’s time to dig up the pipe, you only need to dig up a 1 square meter area, rather than 5 square meters or more.
Install New Systems: It is much easier to demonstrate the benefits in new systems which reduce your demand on grid supplies with detailed smart metering data showing your demand trends. A factory can quickly determine the value of solar panels. A university can quantify the benefits of a rain water harvesting system. A hospital can start saving water by capturing water used to regularly test fire sprinkler systems. The sooner you implement, the sooner you start realising the benefits and getting your ROI.
SDF Negotiation: Sewer Discharge Factor (SDF) is used to calculate the volume of water that your site does not consume and instead enters the sewer system. The SDF on your water bill may be 20-40% of your spend on potable water use. The exact factor charged to you will be predetermined by your water supplier. These factors are based on bulk sewer discharge data from large numbers of users and then applied evenly across user demographics e.g. users with 20mm water meters, or users with 80mm water meters. This means that if your site does not discharge as much of you water use to the sewer as the rest of your demographic, you may be in a position to negotiate your SDF. Again, smart metering data is a powerful negotiating tool to demonstrate your usage behaviour and achieve a better deal.
SDF negotiations are most common for facilities with water reuse and factories where a large portion of potable water leaves the site as a component of a product but can be achieved for any site that can make a case. Water management firms can assist with this process and negotiate on your behalf for faster results.
Improve Retail Contracts: Smart metering can help users realise areas for cost improvements with different plans or by switching retailers. For example a large gas user under an on-peak/off-peak supply contract with smart metering data can see in detail when their usage is occurring. This becomes a powerful negotiating tool with retailers to improve your existing contract or shop for a new one.
Increase Sub-metering: If your data analysis concludes that you don’t have enough clarity of your resource use to solve problems and make the informed decisions, then increasing the number of metering points may improve your insight. Install new sub-meters and expand the smart metering system to include key branch lines and high usage equipment e.g. cooling towers, wash down facilities and irrigation.
Every day there are multi-million dollar decisions made based on insights gained from smart metering around the world. Taking action to improve efficiency is a fundamental part of any successful smart metering project.
Step 5) Ensure On-going Success
Successful smart metering requires on-going commitment. It is not simply a matter of installing hardware or buying a software licence. As your utility resource use continues and evolves, so should your smart metering practices.
The fifth step to successful smart metering is to create and implement a plan to continue to drive insights and outcomes towards improved resource use, labour, and cost efficiency. Your plan should address these ten aspects:
Allocation of Resources (people, finances and time)
On-going Analysis of Data to Gain Insights
On-going Action to Improve Efficiency
Measurement and Verification
Maintenance
KPIs and Benchmarks
Strive for Continuous Improvement and Refinement
Accountability
Expert Advice and Consultation
Sharing Results and Promoting Success
Allocation of Resources
Consider what is required to ensure on-going success with your smart metering system. People will need to be involved to oversee the operation of the system. This may be staff tasked with ensuring operations run efficiently. It may be stakeholders with an interest in the outcomes of managing utility expenses. It may be a sustainability officer tasked with ensuring water and energy consumption stay in line with targets. It may be an external consultant tasked with engaging with all stakeholders and guaranteeing success across multiple areas of your organisation.
Consider the on-going costs of smart metering operation and allocate budget accordingly.
On-going Analysis of Data to Gain Insights
This 5th step, Ensuring On-going Success, requires continuously analysing data as described in the 3rd step. This analysis will again feed into taking action to improve efficiency.
Once a smart metering system is installed, it will continue to generate data on your utility resource use. As your usage changes, so does your data. The below graph shows exactly what can happen if smart metering data is not analysed regularly.
A small leak started to form within the facility in late September. This leak increased over the following weeks up to 26 litres per minute when it was finally realised on the 6th of December. 26L/min is equivalent to four taps being left completely open with water gushing out and a monetary cost of $10,000 for the 9 weeks of unchecked usage. It was not until the utility bill arrived in the mail that the issue was realised and was promptly attended to.
How could this situation have been avoided? Setting up automated alarm messages for excess daily consumption or overnight water use could have alerted staff of the facility. An expert consultant could have been engaged to monitor water use, receive and manage alarms, and call the facility to notify them of the issue and advise how to identify and resolve the leak sooner.
On-going Action to Improve Efficiency
With on-going data analysis must come on-going action to improve efficiency. If an issue is discovered, you should know the risks associated with it and know what it is costing you in utility use. If you’re losing 1,400kL and $5,000 a month due to efficient water use, you should quickly work to solve it.
If you are responsible for these issues and don’t have the time to solve $5,000 per month problems then you should engage someone else to solve it. If you spend $5,000 on a solution, the next month you get your full ROI, and every month thereafter you reap the benefits and cost savings. Every month you don’t solve it is $5,000 down the drain and further risk of property damage. Simple.
Measurement and Verification
The process of quantifying savings from efficiency improvement measures is commonly referred to as measurement and verification.
If you have implemented systems or equipment with the view to improve efficiency, use your smart metering data to verify the outcomes were achieved.
Consider data demonstrating an old gas boiler using around 2,500 MJ of gas per day at $0.03/MJ. The total use per year is $27,600. This boiler is 10 years old and is rated at 70% efficient.
A new boiler exists that is rated at 85% efficient. If the old boiler was replaced with this new boiler then an 18% reduction in gas use would be expected. This would equate to 164,250MJ and $4,968 per year in savings.
If the cost to remove the old boiler and install the new boiler is $10,000 and it achieves an 18% reduction in gas use, then the pay-back period would be just over 2 years.
Smart metering data can compare gas use during the time of the old boiler with gas use of the new boiler from the time it is installed. If you see an 18% drop in gas use, then your project is achieving its goal as originally planned. If gas use does not decrease by 18%, perhaps there is an operational issue to address, or, perhaps there is a fault with the new boiler.
Measurement and verification is essential for demonstrating the results of equipment upgrades and efficiency improvement initiatives.
Maintenance
All smart metering systems require maintenance to ensure on-going success. This may replacing batteries in data collection hardware, repairing damaged cabling, or reconfiguring radio link gateways after security upgrades on a central server.
Smart metering systems can be programmed to alert operators of faults or upcoming events such as battery decline. It is essential that these issues are addressed, ideally before they occur.
The best people to maintain smart metering systems are typically the original suppliers, smart metering system integrators, or smart metering consultants who operate systems and deliver projects. These people will have the specialised knowledge and skills to ensure systems are maintained to the appropriate standard.
KPIs and Benchmarks
Key performance indicators and benchmarks are excellent ways to measure performance that can be applied to smart metering projects. Some examples of KPIs and benchmarks include:
Maintaining resource use per staff member (or unit of production) to within 3% of the previous year.
Reacting to all system alerts (e.g. water leak) within 48 hours.
Individual sites within an organisation keeping resource use within 10% of the mean of all sites.
Ensuring the ROI of efficiency projects is achieved in the originally planned time-frame.
Improving or maintaining a ranking by an accreditation body e.g. NABERS star rating
Strive for Continuous Improvement and Refinement
In addition to KPIs and benchmarks, smart metering provides powerful tools to enable organisations who wish to strive for continuous improvement and refinement. Big results can be achieve by addressing only a small number of key issues but often, significant improvements can be made through many smaller incremental improvements. These improvements may be ‘second tier’ priorities but may still contain excellent cases for resource and monetary efficiency gains.
A great place to start is to look at areas of high frequency use items. Hand washing in a hospital may only account for a low percentage of total water use within the facility but still total as a significant volume. Installing lower flow tap fittings can result in significant savings and short term ROIs. Hand washing facilities may not be individually metered but, say, 50 tap upgrades in one site, should result in measurable performance improvements seen in the data collected from the main water meter to the site.
Minor operational changes can refine and optimise processes to use less resources without any expenses other than time. For example, if a sports field could use 5% less water and achieve the same quality of turf simply by irrigating 1 hour earlier in the morning when evaporation is lower, it is a simple task to change the scheduling on the irrigation controller to yield a significant result.
Accountability
To ensure on-going success, one or more individuals or organisations should take responsibility for operating the smart metering system, analysing data, resource use performance, and taking action to improve efficiency and reduce risk.
A proven arrangement for allocation of accountability is:
Operating the smart metering system – expert smart metering consultants & engineers
Analysing data and engaging with relevant parties – expert smart metering consultants & engineers
Resource use performance – utility manager, sustainability manager, financial manager
Taking action in the field – facility manager, operational manager
This arrangement allocates responsibilities to the individuals most capable of managing them. Smart metering consultants will be far more efficient at operating and interpreting data of smart metering systems than other individuals. A sustainability manager will typically be more engaged in resource use performance than others. This allocation of responsibility can be strengthened through individual KPIs and service level agreements.
Publicly sharing resource use information or ranking in rating systems will also increase accountability and would typically lead to better performance. A great example of this is in commercial and residential buildings where demonstrating higher sustainability performance can increase property value and attract more tenants.
Expert Advice and Consultation
Having the right people engaged in smart metering projects is essential. Engaging specialised consultants and engineers who analyse your smart metering data and transform it into rich insights into your utility use is the most effective way to guarantee results. Most organisations that implement smart metering systems do not have sufficient internal resources to undertake this analysis themselves. This is one of the key reasons that outsourcing this service is so popular.
Smart metering consultants who have mastered the hardware and software of the system can apply their skills to quickly summarise data as simple statements. These can be delivered as scheduled reports and for more urgent items, can be communicated by a phone call to the relevant people on site and offer advice and assistance in resolving issues.
By having an experienced, dedicated smart metering team to pro-actively monitor, analyse, action and provide tailored high level recommendations on pragmatic resource saving initiatives, the asset becomes fully utilised to achieve the full intended benefits of the system. Furthermore, there is no additional burden on internal staff.
Share Your Results!
Smart metering drives outcomes to improve sustainability, reduce labour, and save organisations unnecessary costs and risks. Communicating this success is important to raise awareness of the positive outcomes.
Organisations who successfully improve and reduce their resource use can tell their customers about the outcomes. This sends the message that sustainability and efficiency are highly valued and improves the perception of the brand or organisation.
Success can also be promoted internally in an organisation. For example, if you are a sustainability manager who has implemented a smart metering system and have achieved sustainability outcomes which have led to reduced utility bills, let management and your finance department or director know about it. This builds reputation for yourself and your projects!
A lack of planning for on-going analysis, action, and success is one of the most common reasons that smart metering projects don’t achieve their potential. It is essential to have a plan in place to ensure that the smart metering system continues to deliver value and results.
Following these 5 steps will put you on the path to successful smart metering. While this article applies to all smart metering projects, utilities and residential users have specific goals and requirements which will be covered in greater detail in future articles
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