5057 Distribution Utility Technology Roadmap 2025 - meeting the changing needs of customers in the 21 st
Century
CEA Technology (CEATI) contracted with Capgemini in 2002 to write the first report in this series and it was well received by the industry, selling more copies for CEATI than any other report in history. In 2006, CEATI asked Capgemini to continue the series with 3 additional reports on 2025. These reports are now finished and available from CEATech.ca
The final report in the series looks at the common infrastructure and is written from a communications paradigm. The common infrastructure's primary goal is to share the cost of communications amongst a large population of devices using many technologies and provide a unified way for data to return to a central location. This is by far the greatest challenge facing a
Smart Grid implementation and the next generation distribution utility. It discusses communications methods, data needs and examples of the changes in standards currently underway. It includes the communication needs of the next generation workforce presently being served by today's radio and cellular systems.
The report calls for a major shift in the entire electric distribution business, resulting in a dramatic increase in data being generated, moved, received, and analyzed. It recognizes utilities' need to connect a large number of sensors and intelligent devices to form a Smart Grid in order to forecast confidently, plan accurately, grow/maintain/sustain the grid economically and safely whilst meeting customer needs for reliability and power quality.
It also discusses the impact of a burgeoning volume of data on the existing radio system and a mismatch between shorter communication technology and longer utility industry asset life cycles.
Looking at the density of customers and topology of the utility, there are clear challenges facing utilities as they monitor and control of the grid. As population density increases, the ability to self-generate significant amounts of electricity decreases and so does the demand for full twoway power flow. The report discusses the repercussions on the design of the grid and the instrumentation installed. It examines how signal congestion, RF interference and commercial communications infrastructure differ vastly in an urban environment in comparison to a rural one.
The report cogently points out that there is no single perfect communications method or system today that covers the whole service area of a utility's grid, including adequate coverage to handle every meter and other device that might be deployed.
CEATI examines various smart metering installations and their additional operational benefits.
Operational Smart Metering means smart meters will clearly play a key role in providing intelligence and switching on the grid. For other utilities, meters may be in the minority as sensors on the grid. This difference will have a major impact on communications. The wrong commercial contract could conceivably stop any use of Smart Metering for operational purposes. This is just one example of the decisions that will have to be taken as the implementation of new technology unfolds.
The report predicts that the fundamental driver in our industry may shift completely from being a
"load following system" to being "supply following" in the next 10 to 30 years. There are only a few utilities with an abundance of Hydro or other green power that exceeds the projected needs in 2025 and beyond. As an industry we will have to make a decision on whether we want to proactively drive the future changes or give up our position of leadership.

Climate change, distributed generation, demand management, Time of Use tariffs, performance-based rates, aging equipment, and aging workforce all point to the idea that significant increases in infrastructure and grid complexity will be necessary. Electric utilities will no longer be allowed to waste precious power due to phase imbalance, low efficiency losses, and other previously acceptable practices.
With the various communications frequency regulators moving to limit spectrum for the utility industry, it appears the industry will be relying on commercial providers to be the backbone of the future for communications.
Smart Metering: A Fresh Approach to Managing Peak Demand and System Security
In the near future, nearly all North American utilities will adopt smart metering and the supporting advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) at some level or another.
Some utilities will inevitably take a bare bones approach, doing just enough to meet the minimum requirements set forth in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and other regulatory mandates. The more visionary companies, however, will use smart metering as an opportunity to positively influence their destinies, and ultimately, the direction of the North American electrical system.
The only sure thing is that doing nothing is not an option. The current state of the electrical infrastructure in North America is not sustainable. To change its course, utility companies must embrace a fresh approach to managing peak demand and system security, one that will drive market efficiency while supporting economic, environmental and social priorities.
Certainly this is a tall order, but Capgemini believes utilities can meet all of their priorities (and likely realize a host of other benefits) if the approach they adopt in managing peak demand and system security includes benefits that motivate consumers to embrace conservation and load motivation as well as business cases that look beyond the meter-to-cash process for benefits to justify investments.
The investments required to implement smart metering are substantial. They usually cannot be justified based solely on the benefits realized from the elimination of manual meter reading, efficiency improvements in the revenue management process, improved control over tampering and theft, and improved outage notification and restoration.
These investments must be leveraged to support a broader set of benefits and opportunities such as aggregating demand response and allowing it to be dispatched to reduce the need for peak generating capacity and ancillary services. Benefits also include refining grid planning processes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of investments in the grid, improving grid monitoring and control processes to improve reliability and power quality as well as providing customers new energy management capabilities through smart appliances and PCTS enabled by AMI.
Utilities that structure their smart metering programs strictly from a revenue management perspective are selling themselves short. There's much more to smart metering programs than interval reads and time-of-use (TOU) rates. Utilities should leverage their smart metering programs to make near real-time, point-of-use consumption data available to all participants in

electrical energy markets. Access to data improves transparency in the market, and as a result, drives efficiency. Efficient markets offer incentives to both generators and consumers that stimulate balanced investment and consumption decisions and in turn, support economic, environmental and social priorities.
But today's utilities need to look beyond the technology into the opportunities and incentives the technology unlocks. Indeed, utilities must take a more comprehensive view of smart metering.
More important than the technology itself is the role it plays in enabling system operators, retailers, load serving entities, aggregators and customers to use real-time load data to improve market efficiency.
Capgemini believes the strategy for utilities should be proactive and that programs for action should include a long-term approach around smart metering and its linkages to operational improvements, conservation programs, demand response, capacity planning and new revenue opportunities. Utilities should also work to engage with other stakeholders in their markets and develop consensus around synergies, critical success factors, required incentives and alignment of performance measures. Finally, they should also consider formulating a business solution that is capable of meeting today's requirements while being scalable to deliver on future demand.
In Capgemini's view, effective smart metering solutions share a number of key components such having meters that are standards-based with two-way communication, remote connect/disconnect and interoperability with in-premise networks and devices. Further components should include an event management system that interprets filters and transfers event data to stakeholders, near real-time display of usage and cost, and smart energy management appliances providing customers greater control and convenience.
Before embarking on a smart metering initiative, utilities should seek out partners who will work collaboratively with them to ensure the success of the initiative. Partners should have a proven track record, be prepared to sign up for end-to-end responsibility and be willing to have a stake in delivering results.
Assessment of Technologies for the Launch of a Smart Metering Project
Many countries have started shifting from the existing population of low-voltage power meters to a generalized remote reading or remote management system. These initiatives are aimed at deploying meters with extended functions, in particular: remote transmission of the index, remote transmission of the interval data, remote disconnect and changes of authorized maximum power.
This article is based on a project which was achieved in collaboration with the French energy regulatory authority (CRE). It aims to give an insight into the various technologies that should be considered for the development of a business case for the global deployment of a tele-metering solution.
The objectives of the smart metering model in France were three fold. Firstly, to improve the functioning of the electricity market, in particular in the interest of consumers. The benefits sought include informing consumers about their consumption and the frequency and quality of billing (actual data).

Secondly, to minimize network management costs while maintaining the quality of supply and the level of service. The benefits sought include reading costs (planning of rounds, wasted travel, sharing of gas meter reading costs), the costs of particular operations (cut-off, reconnection, recommissioning, cancellation, reprogramming of the meter), the cost of the change of supplier to the network manager and the cost of fraud.
And finally, the Demand Side Management and easier insertion of micro-generation through better consumer information and new peak/off peak offers, the demand of energy can be better managed, and may help to reach ambitious objectives of energy savings. With smart metering systems, micro-generation (such as solar, wind, micro-hydro, etc.) can be better included in the global power system and therefore encouraged.
When assessing which technology to use for the launch of a smart metering project, at the lowest level of the technology architecture, the smart meter must incorporate enough intelligence to be power limiting, have the ability for remote cut-off/restart authorization, incorporate physical fraud detection functions and have the possibility to switch to prepayment mode.
When considering network technologies for the collection network the use of a medium-speed
PLC technology is perfectly suited to dense areas allowing the connection of at least 50 meters to a PLC concentrator installed in a medium or low volt (MV/LV) substation. In low-density areas covered by the GPRS network, where the installation of a PLC concentrator would be rather unprofitable or where the distances between the meters and the concentrator would require the installation of too long a chain of repeaters, it is preferable to rely on the available GPRS. In lowdensity areas not covered by the GPRS network, where the installation of a PLC concentrator would require the installation of too long a chain of repeaters, a PSTN connection should be used, but only as last resort.
The implementation of a medium-speed PLC type technology requires the installation of PLC concentrators in MV/LV substations. The main function of the concentrator is to perform the concentration of the metering points and to provide a gateway between the collection network and the transmission network. Therefore, it is recommended for this equipment to use a hardware and software architecture that is as open as possible. The CPU of this equipment should be powerful enough to allow the implementation of new protocol and standard supervision agents. This openness will make it relatively easy to adapt (simply by replacing the communication board) to the technological evolutions that will inevitably take place in the transmission network in the future. This openness should also make it possible to minimize the impact of the technological choice on the transmission network for the duration of the project.
Functionally, the concentrator must allow at least the daily remote reading of the meters, the automatic detection of the network typology in order to allow an asynchronous deployment of the population of meters and concentrators and the transmission of orders, on demand, from the
Automated Meter Management system to the meters.
Going Global - Smart Metering and Smart Grid
There is no question that smart metering is a hot topic. As green house gases (GHG) and demand management grow in importance on the political agenda, so does smart metering.
While many politicians may not understand why they should be interested in smart metering,

they do appreciate the message from regulators that smart metering is an important part of the solution to the GHG problem.
This has moved smart metering from an interesting technology to a global trend. It is being pushed the hardest in markets where demand at peak is greater than generation capability. In
California more than 20 million customers are looking at acquiring new meters before 2011.
These meters and attached new tariffs are intended to lower peak consumption by between 15 -
20% during high demand phases (150 to 200 hours a year) and reduce the spot price of wholesale electricity by more than $10,000 megawatts an hour. In Ontario, Canada where the government estimates that they will need to spend more than $70 billion dollars on new generation before 2020, smart meters are an answer to a very constrained market, where population is growing rapidly and the average customer consumes more than 3 times the North
American average of electricity.
In Ohio a state with the highest percentage of electricity produced by coal in the nation, regulators are moving rapidly to use smart meters, not because of power constraints, but rather a desire to reduce GHG. Ohio, unlike Ontario and California has excess generation capacity at peak.
In Australia, the goal of reducing both GHG and peak consumption in a heavily coal driven generation market has driven the adoption smart metering. Singapore, a net power importer is also moving down the smart metering path and Korea has already installed millions of smart meters to address peak consumption.
In the United States the federal government, unhappy with the efficacy of the Energy Act of
2005, is working on a new energy act that will mandate the adoption of demand management and will mobilize smart metering. At the same time the Department of Energy movement is continuing to utilize the Modern Grid demonstration projects, validating the business case in the real world for many of the technologies that are expected to make up the smart grid.
Today less than 10% of the meters in the EU and North America are smart meters, by 2020, the expectation of the FERC is that more than 70% of the meters in the US will be smart meters and the FERC expects that the installation rate in the EU will exceed that of the US.
Innovation in Action
Smart metering deployment is not new, but it is complex and investment in smart meters for many companies has a price tag that would exceed the price of a new large generation plant.
Like the construction of a new power plant it takes specialized experience and comprehensive planning to execute the program on time and to budget. More importantly, if the smart metering program does not work well, not only would you miss the benefits in the business case, but customers would notice late or missing bills and revenue flow will suffer. It is important to observe and learn other people's lessons, without repeating their mistakes. To that end, in many cases, it is useful to visit companies that are advancing state of the art technology and processes.
Should you be planning a trip to North America to witness innovative implementation of smart meters some of the key utilities to visit would be: Wisconsin Public Service - one of the first installations of a large scale gas, water and electricity smart metering project, using a single network. Florida Power and Light for its use of residential direct load control; San Diego Gas and Electric for its advanced utility applications and deployment of disconnect switches; Hydro
One for innovation in deployment; field data collection, and home area network thinking; and
Pennsylvania Power and Light for its maturing use of information from smart meters for planning and construction.

Should you be planning a trip to Europe to view best practice innovation, it is advisable to start with DONG in Denmark and its mobile phone based home control system, ENEL for its large scale deployment, Vattenfall in Sweden for its use of multiple technologies for data collection and EdF for its efforts at extending the meter and its functions, as well as its work to open the metering gateway to third parties.
From a regulatory standpoint, studying the work of Victoria in Australia, the Ontario Energy
Board (OEB) in Ontario Canada, Commission de Régulation de l'Energie (CRE) in France, and the Californian Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in California will provide most of the forward thinking from regulators around the world. The good news is that these documents are public and available from anywhere in the world over the internet.
Capgemini is proud to be involved in smart metering and smart grids around the world.
Capgemini is active in France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Ontario, California,
Texas, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, British Columbia, Australia, China, and many other areas on the globe. We have one of the most experienced teams at doing everything from strategy and planning to installing the meters and then operating the system after installation. Capgemini is the only system integrator that has experience in every phase of the smart metering life cycle.