Unlocking Real-time Visibility and Situational Awareness

Introduction

An electric meter was originally designed to provide utilities with a simple number—the amount of electric current that flowed through the meter each month. The first significant technological evolution came with the rise of first-generation smart meters and the transition from analog devices to basic digital technologies. With the development of more sophisticated hardware and the miniaturization of computing power, “second-generation” smart meters have leapfrogged traditional definitions and now encompass connected networks of intelligent edge-computing devices, fully equipped with onboard sensors, computers, and communications capabilities. Furthermore, these devices can now measure the full waveforms of current and voltage, and capture these measurements at sub-second intervals.

However, there is still a fair degree of technological differentiation throughout the space, as highlighted in Figure 1-1. For the purposes of this white paper, second-generation AMI constitutes these baseline enhancements, while the term AMI 2.0 is reserved for the continuous sampling of ultrahigh resolution data (at a minimum of 15 kHz) across all smart meters, significant local processing, and real-time networking functionalities1—requirements that some devices labeled as AMI 2.0 meet to varying degrees.2 These innovations aim to align the energy industry with other verticals in enabling real-time experiences to meet modern-day expectations.

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