Smart Metering Pros and Cons

The electric meters used to measure and record the use of electrical power in the houses of the end users have turned smart. An increasing amount of electric utility companies replace the old analog meters with this new version. Read on and find out what are the pros and cons of them.

Analog Meters – The electrical company personnel had to go to each end user house and read the measure manually every month.

Smart Meters – The new version of electric meters captures data about electricity consumption automatically and transfers it to the supplier.

Advantages

• Eliminate all manual meter readings carried on a monthly basis.
• Faster results.
• Increased efficiency in the distribution of power resources.
• Prevent outages because electrical companies and governments can use the real-time data to distribute the power more efficiently on the grid.
• Dynamic price scheme (based on demand) is possible.
• Once the entire network has been changed by the company, end users get more detail on their energy consumption.
• End users can change their habits to lower electricity bills.
• Smart meters are more efficient and hence prevent the creation of additional power plants helping to reduce the greenhouse gases that generate health risks and pollution in the environment.

Disadvantages

• Transitioning to a new technology involves high costs. These costs are related to developing and producing the correct equipment and training the personnel operating them.
• Handling all sorts of negative reactions from end users when transitioning to the new type of technology.
• Committing to the software and technology involved in the smart metering methodology is to make a big long-term investment.
• Additional servers and storing facilities are needed to store all the large amounts of collected data from users.
• The privacy and security of the meters' data need to be ensured.
• Accuracy of the meter is hard to establish clearly to end users.
• Mostly, meters installation comes as an additional fee.