28 August 2023
Global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and industrial automation, Schneider Electric is meeting South Africa’s advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) requirement head on with the availability of its vendor neutral architecture, EcoStruxure Grid Metering Operations (GMO).
The solution is a meter-agnostic platform and offers advanced deployment, management, and integration of AMI systems. It will enable utilities across the country to make their meters “smarter,’ a feature that also extends to include prepaid meters.
Schneider Electric was recently named one of Global Top 10 Smart Meter Companies by global energy research organisation, Blackridge Research and Consulting. The analyst cited EcoStruxure’s “excellent integration capabilities” as a major feature.
“Our EcoStruxure GMO architecture puts our information management services expertise to work to not only achieve effective AMI deployment but also maximise subsequent smart metering returns,” explains Dwibin Thomas, Cluster Automation Leader at Schneider Electric.
Smart meters and smart prepaid meters offer real-time data on power consumption via a smart energy management system. This data can be accessed remotely, allowing utilities to accurately gauge usage, obtain billing information and general consumer consumption patterns.
EcoStruxure GMO provides effective large-scale deployment, efficient operation and rollout management, improved end-customer services, and lower operational costs.
Smart meters also offer important benefits to consumers as it allows them to actively track their power consumption, adjust it according to peak time tariffs. Furthermore, they can also remotely access prepaid meters to monitor top up units.
“This is particularly beneficial to households and businesses that use hybrid solar/grid systems. A common complaint by prepaid users is that when they do switch over to a hybrid system, they do not have real-time insight into the status of their prepaid account i.e., how many units are left,” notes Thomas.
Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure GMO offer the following features:
- It manages meters, concentrator, modem, HAN (home area network) device asset information and relationships, device lifecycle and field service logistics.
- Executes remote operations that include configuration, connect/disconnect and on-demand reads.
- Collects and integrates readings and event such as power outage and quality, errors, tampers).
- Monitors and report the status of rollouts and Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance.
