Energy Management Systems Advance with Smart Meter Technology and the Cloud

Everyone benefits from being able to use our planet’s limited energy and water resources more efficiently. By using the power and flexibility of cloud technologies combined with smart sensors and other energy management systems, utility companies can now deliver better service to their customers and save energy at the same time.

Utility companies need to maintain and manage the equipment that supports millions of users—no easy task even in the best of circumstances. Exciting new emerging areas such as smart meter technology being connected to the Internet are revolutionizing the utility industry by generating more information than ever about usage and service disruptions. Utility meters have long been read by drive-by trucks. The next logical step for even more efficient service is to tie these meters to a broadband network that automatically monitors the systems out to individual locations. In rural areas, smart meter technology would allow the opportunity to gather usage information and monitor the systems over satellite networks. Imagine being able to pull data from thousands of sensors looking for usage patterns that can be used to balance the power grid to help prevent large scale blackouts caused by cascading power distribution failures?

All this information coming in from thousands or millions of locations needs to be gathered in a central location for processing and analysis. What better way to control the data coming in from energy management systems than pooling it on cloud storage and processing it in a cloud computing infrastructure? The cloud provides the right amount of flexibility and on-demand resources to meet the challenges of managing the data from millions of devices.

Of course new technology always brings its own risks. Using Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) technology will enable the utility companies to more closely monitor their systems, but it also opens these same systems up to potentially being hacked if the technology is not secured properly. The best way to protect the data from sensor to customer is to transport it over a private, secured network and keep it in those secured cloud infrastructures.

So, next time you flip that light switch or boil up some tap water on your gas stove, think about how information gathered from huge grids of thousands or millions of data points, using smart meter technology, stored on huge pools of cloud storage and processed on seemingly limitless cloud computing resources, will be used to revolutionize your energy management systems.

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Beth Cohen is a new product strategist for Verizon, helping to develop cutting-edge products for the next generation. Previously, Beth was a director of engineering IT for BBN Corporation, where she was involved with the initial development of the Internet. She is one of the authors of the recently published OpenStack Architecture Design Guide.