IoT Trends in the Utilities Industry
Smart meters offer a gateway to smarter grids, greener energy production and better customer relations. Explore the value chain IoT creates for the utilities & smart metering industry.
Automatic Meter Reading Is Just the Beginning
Today, the most common use case for utilities IoT is advanced metering infrastructure AMI via smart meters. Smart meters provide utilities a direct channel to offer consumer value-adding services, such as direct usage feedback , flexible tariffs and smart home applications. Realizing the full potential of IoT will be key in addressing challenges and opportunities utilities are facing today and in the overall digitalization of their business. Customer expectations, market regulations, increasing energy and power demand, electrification of transport and the climate challenge are some of the things where digitalization will play a key role.
Trends in the Utilities Industry
Short term
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- IoT investment focused on regulatory compliance, operational efficiency and sustainability
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- Popularity of LPWA for meter reading
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- Climate change focus will speed up investments in the Smart Grid
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- Direct communication link to consumers enables new services and more engaged consumers
Long term
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- The breakthrough of electric vehicles will increase demand on grids
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- Near real-time data will lead to intelligent energy distribution planning
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- IoT facilitates the growth of the localised green energy production
Regulatory compliance and operational efficiency
Increasingly, regulations require the recording of accurate meter data at regular intervals, and that the data collected be made available to all actors in the grid being producers, consumers or both.
AMI is a cost-efficient way to collect accurate readings based on actual consumption from millions of meters. Smart meters also give utilities the ability to operate and upgrade every node remotely.
Electrical vehicle (EV) charging and smart home offerings
As more people buy electric cars, the demand for smart, connected charging stations installed at businesses and residences will increase. Intelligent charging stations has the potential to play a vital role in the grid as it can help balance the load.
Energy suppliers can further influence demand by offering consumers incentives to use energy at non-peak times. For the end-customer, transparent pricing leads to lower bills, while the grid operator can reduce the cost of building greater capacity.
Mobile Network Connectivity for Utilities
Mobile networks are well-tested and aren’t going away anytime soon. Our mobile IoT connectivity solution gives you access to well established global networks which use licensed radio spectrum, free of disturbances and congestion from competing networks. Mobile technology offers a range of services from LPWA to 5G, meeting various use cases and requirements on speed and latency.
Managed Connectivity allows you to conquer the complexity of IoT, we can help you simplify the development, rollout and management of your connected solutions. With our solution, your solutions use the best available mobile networks to securely connect to your network or the internet.
IoT is redefining the power grid
With increasingly rapid mobile connectivity speeds, smart meters provide near real-time information on energy consumption and transmission. This data allows for more efficient, demand-based electricity generation and distribution.
Smart meters are also facilitating the growth of the local, micro-production of energy such as solar panels and wind turbines. This creates potentially new revenue streams, as well as further efficiencies in production and distribution. It also creates interaction with other market players in – or outside the “traditional” ecosystem.
A partner for the future of utilities IoT
If you offer smart meters and solutions for smart grid, we can help you serve customers around the world. We can help you roll out scalable, stable and secure IoT solutions that meet your needs for coverage, quality and price.
Telenor IoT provides everything you need to successfully deploy and manage connected products and solutions around the world. Together with our partner network, we provide an end-to-end solution, from concept and design to monetization and operation over time. At the core of that end-to-end offering are IoT Connect, Telenor´s Managed Connectivity services and IoT Complete, Telenor´s end-to-end connectivity service.