Traditional meter vs Smart meter - An overview

There are very few homes in our cities that are not connected to the main power grid. After all, can you imagine your daily life without electricity? Electricity is not a free resource and your consumption needs to be billed regularly. For this, every connection needs to be metered. When it comes to electricity meters, home owners can choose to set up a traditional meter or a smart meter. Let’s look at the differences between them and how they influence energy efficiency. 

A traditional meter meets the basic requirement of measuring the amount of electricity being consumed by an account. At the time of bill generation, a representation from the utility company must physically check the meter and take a reading. If a visit is not possible, the utility company must raise an invoice based on estimates. This can be disadvantageous for both the consumer and the company. Also, traditional meters do not store any data. 

The advantages of smart meters

On the other hand, smart meters do a lot more than just calculate energy consumption for monthly billing. Firstly, they negate the need for manual meter readings. A smart meter shares information remotely with utility offices so that they can generate bills without physical visits to every customer’s home. They display information on how much energy is being used in real time and how much its costing the company per hour, day, week and month. This means that there is no risk for the company to raise an estimated invoice. There’s also no risk of human error influencing the bills. With the assurance of every account being billed on actuals, the utility company can boost its image for transparency.

The second advantage smart meters has over traditional meters is with respect to energy efficiency. These meters store data and make it accessible to the company as well as customers. By accessing this data, a clearer understanding of consumption patterns becomes visible. Based on this data, the company can make decisions for better utilization of their resources and customers can get detailed feedback on their electricity usage. 

The effect on the environment

Smart meters also have an effect on the environment. It helps the company distribute power according to usage trends, and thus minimize wastage. A more balanced distribution of resources can also reduce the need to build new power plants. Reduced power plants translate to reduced emissions, and hence smart meters have a positive impact on the environment. 

Adopting smart meters is easy in today’s world. The meters keep the system well connected and require minimal training from the company or consumer’s end. That said, there may be a few challenges - smart meters may have a comparatively shorter lifespan and utility companies using the new meters must devise ways to store and analyze data to make it useful. Some meters may also need to be powered by a battery. The benefits in terms of billing and energy efficiency far outweigh the costs and challenges you may need to incur to replace traditional meters with new ones.

Minionlabs’ Minion, a smart meter, uses machine learning and deep learning techniques and leverages artificial intelligence to disaggregate the net electricity consumption of a building. It learns about the consumption pattern of each device and informs the user about it.