U.S. electric companies continue rampant smart meter deployments, IEI reports

Published on December 15, 2017 by Kim Riley

A key technology creating monstrous changes for both American customers and electric companies continues to be smart meters, which are being deployed by numerous utilities at breakneck speed, according to a just-released report from the Edison Foundation Institute for Electric Innovation (IEI).

“A major transformation of the energy grid is under way and electric companies continue to find ways to create value from the data smart meters provide,” said Lisa Wood, executive director of IEI, whose members are the investor-owned electric utilities representing roughly 70 percent of the U.S. power industry.

And investments in key technologies such as smart meters are foundational to enabling a 21st century electricity system that’s both dynamic and flexible.

“Advanced metering is the first step in upgrading our technology and has helped utilities around the world put more information and control into their customers’ hands, while paving the path for a more energy-efficient future through the integration of new technology,” Lauren Kenney, vice president of product development and program management at Entergy Corp., said in a statement sent to Daily Energy Insider.

“It is the foundation for modernizing our power grid,” Kenney said.

Entergy and other companies are leveraging smart meter data in myriad ways. For example, to better monitor the health of the energy grid; more quickly restore service after outages; deliver the latest customer energy solutions; and to integrate distributed energy resources (DERs), such as rooftop solar, energy storage systems, electric vehicles and connected home devices like smart appliances and thermostats.

“Investing in smarter energy infrastructure, particularly in smart meters, is the foundation for a customer-facing, modern and more resilient energy grid,” said Wood, who is also vice president of the Edison Foundation.

Smart meters provide a digital link between electric companies and their customers and open the door to new and expanded services, such as smart pricing options, budget billing, high usage alerts and online energy management.

At the end of 2016, electric companies had installed 72 million smart meters, covering 55 percent of U.S. households, according to the December IEI report, Electric Company Smart Meter Deployments: Foundation for a Smart Grid.

And IEI estimates that based on survey results and approved plans, smart meter deployments could hit 76 million by the end of 2017 — covering about 60 percent of U.S. households — and may reach 90 million deployments by 2020.

“Smart meters are just a better, more current technology and they provide many operational benefits,” Annemarie Newman, spokeswoman for Alliant Energy, told Daily Energy Insider this week.

The publicly-held, Madison, Wis.-based utility generates and distributes electricity and natural gas in Iowa and in southern and central Wisconsin.

This fall, Alliant Energy began installing smart meters for customers in its Iowa service area as part of a broader upgrade to its electric and natural gas distribution systems. Work has started in the company’s Northeast Iowa region and is expected to last three years into 2019, Newman said.

“We’ve been operating smart meters and related communications equipment for our Wisconsin customers for 10 years,” she said. “We were able to complete full deployment to our customers and had no real issues with it.”

Newman added that when the Iowa project is completed, Alliant Energy smart meter deployments will encompass all of the company’s operations and total 961,000 by 2020. Alliant Energy had 476,000 meters installed at the end of 2016, according to IEI’s report, and has plans to deploy 485,000 smart meters in Iowa.

Brand new plans

Overall, 40 electric companies in the United States have fully deployed smart meters and another 50 are actively installing the smart meter technology, according to IEI’s report.

And recent approvals of full-scale smart meter deployments in Indiana, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina and Ohio demonstrate the importance of a digital energy grid.

For instance, Orange and Rockland Utilities Inc. (O&R), a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Edison Inc., one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, received approval to install 230,000 electric smart meters in its service area by the end of 2020.

“We began formulating the program two years ago,” explained O&R spokesman Michael Donovan on Dec. 14.

Deploying smart meters “is an important next step for customer convenience, choice and control,” he told Daily Energy Insider.

O&R provides electric service to roughly 300,000 customers in southeastern New York under the Orange & Rockland franchise name and northern New Jersey, where it’s known as Rockland Electric Co.

Since O&R began the smart meter installations July 20, crews and contractors have installed approximately 26,000 electric smart meters and 20,000 smart modules on existing gas meters in Rockland County, N.Y., as of Dec. 13, Donovan said, adding that between 300 and 500 meters are installed each day.

O&R plans to install the communications infrastructure in Orange County, N.Y., beginning in January 2018 and the meters in March 2018 with 112,650 meters over a three-year period.

In O&R’s New Jersey service area, smart meter development is scheduled to begin in January 2018 and take about two years before smart meters are provided to its 72,000 customers, Donovan said.

Smart meters, he added, are safe, secure and reliable encrypted devices that allow customers to better control their energy costs and participate in various energy efficiency and/or demand response programs.

And their benefits go beyond power monitoring to provide customers with greater control over their energy consumption, Donovan said, because customers can see where and why their consumption increases or decreases and then take action to reduce their bills.

In the Deep South, Entergy has deployed 20,000 smart meters in New Orleans where it is headquartered. And the publicly held energy company is at the start of an enterprise-wide deployment across Louisiana of almost three million electric meters by December 2021, according to Kenney.

“Meter installations at homes and businesses will begin in 2019 with expected completion by the end of 2021 across each of the areas we serve. We’re already designing the systems and preparing infrastructure to support advanced metering,” Kenney said.

Entergy’s electric service territory includes the southeast corner of Louisiana and the cities of Lafayette and Baton Rouge, as well as parts of Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas.

Entergy’s advanced meters currently are installed in many homes and businesses throughout the country and she said they’ve shown significant benefits to utilities and customers alike, including:

• Stronger and smarter localized electrical infrastructure to help improve system resiliency;
• More tools and better information to help customers understand and manage their energy use more effectively; and
• Improved customer service, including better information that allows Entergy to answer customers’ billing and service questions more quickly and effectively.

Heather Rosentrater, vice president of energy delivery for Avista Utilities, said that the company is “excited by the possibility this new technology brings.”

“Avista is investing in smart meter technology to modernize our grid and position us for the utility of the future,” Rosentrater said.

Avista Utilities, which is part of the Spokane, Wash.-based Avista Corp., a public energy company that generates and transmits electricity and distributes natural gas to residential, commercial and industrial customers, thus far has installed 13,000 smart meters in Pullman, Wash., as part of a Smart Grid Demonstration Grant project.

Currently, the utility also is in the early stages of planning a full deployment of 263,000 meters across Washington, Rosentrater said. The company’s service territory includes northern Idaho and parts of Oregon.

Deploying smart meters is “foundational to our future — and a critical component in continuing to ensure system reliability and resiliency,” Rosentrater said.

“Plus, it aligns with Avista’s vision by enabling us to offer the choices that matter most to our customers,” she said.

Additionally, Avista is involved in the Urbanova Project announced in September 2016, a public-private partnership that includes Gonzaga University, Itron, McKinstry Co., Washington State University and the University District in Spokane.

Earlier this year, Avista also won a $3.5 million grant from the Washington state Commerce Department’s Clean Energy Fund to develop electricity microgrid projects. The company plans to team up with area businesses, as well as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on these projects, which will include the Urbanova energy-sharing project.

Hefty investments

IEI estimates that electric companies will have invested a combined amount upwards of $35 billion in modernizing the distribution system during 2017.

“Through targeted investments, electric companies are developing a digital distribution grid that can serve as a platform to enhance grid resiliency and reliability, integrate a growing number of DERs, and provide more customer solutions,” according to the IEI report.

Additionally, IEI reports that going forward, the computing power in each smart meter opens the door to applications beyond traditional metering services.

For example, applications are under development to predict the behavior of customer-sited energy resources so that these resources can be utilized more efficiently, according to the report, and smart meters are being used as platforms for distributed analytics, decision making and communication across devices on the grid edge.

“The role of the distribution grid continues to evolve, but smart meters remain the fundamental building block,” the IEI report says.

And, the report concludes, as electric companies continue to manage, operate and invest in an increasingly digital energy grid, “the next step is to utilize the data being generated as a strategic asset to improve grid operations, use customer resources more efficiently, and offer new services to customers.