BACKGROUND
Businesses rely on data to make informed decisions and grow. Understanding resource utilization is vital data; one way to do this is through Smart Metering. By tracking and analyzing usage data, businesses can get insights into customer behavior, improve service delivery, and ensure they’re billing customers accurately based on their use.
Metering is especially helpful when different customers use different amounts of resources. It can save costs, identify patterns, and help businesses allocate resources more efficiently.
Metering also gives customers information about resource usage and helps them make decisions based on this knowledge. Businesses can build customer trust by being transparent and fair about billing accuracy.
Typical use cases for smart metering
IoT suppliers provide transmission and metering devices for counting something in the physical world, for instance:
- IMB (Individual Metering and Billing)
- Electricity
- District heating
- Gas
- Water
- People counting
- Traffic flow
- and more
Meters report accumulated data
Meters are typically devices that report accumulated data. They count usage since installation and send this accumulated value to the billing system.
In cases where you need to understand people or vehicle flow, sensors count them as they pass through a specific point, such as a door or a crossing.
Some meter events, such as outages, are transmitted immediately upon detection because of their time-sensitive nature. Interval consumption measurements, such as kWh, are typically collected every 15 minutes or hourly and sent every few hours.
Early adopters of Smart Metering have realized that billing data is only a part of the value equation. Data obtained from the meter, combined with event information, answers several questions and challenges they regularly face. For instance, this data can be used to design new rate structures by analyzing the capacity contribution of various customer types during system peaks and overall consumption.
The granularity of the data collected by Smart Meters also allows for consumption pattern analyses to detect theft and malfunctioning meters.
How can we further analyze the collected data?
Yggio release 3.24 offers new options for chart analysis of historical data. Graph features now allow different calculations (mean, aggregation, difference, max, min, etc) to be applied to any time period.
The graph above presents the same data as the first graph but with a calculation for consumption per day. This gives us a better understanding of the daily usage. Additionally, below the chart, you’ll find the same data but with calculations for consumption per week and month.
This feature is especially useful when comparing various data streams, such as water usage from different meters or apartments.
Automatic reporting
Yggio release 3.24 allows you to schedule automatic Excel reports to be emailed periodically to specific recipients who require updates.
A new tab, “Scheduling,” has been added to the standard report dialog to enable users to set up the report content and schedule.
Another helpful report is the Connectivity Report, which displays the current status of your network. This report is beneficial in determining which areas of the network need improvement or which sensors should be moved to prolong battery life. The connectivity of your devices has a significant impact on battery longevity, so this report can help you optimize your network accordingly.
We have a variety of standard reports that are readily available, and we can also create more customized reports upon request if needed.
