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Over the course of many years, utilities have established robust meter, network, and customer service infrastructures that are supported by processes and systems designed for well-defined work routines and functions. Conventional meters, with life cycles that can last up to 40 years, have been a persistent feature of this landscape. These technologies have served the needs of largely regulated energy and utility markets characterized by price regulations, easy access to energy resources, and sufficient infrastructure capacity. There have been few examples of “old” technologies that can make such a compelling argument against replacement.
But this situation is about to change. Resources and infrastructure capacities are becoming more marginal, and inelastic demand is restricting revenue growth. Organizations must find ways to reduce costs over the short term while simultaneously adapting to new legislatively mandated market rules that require utilities to compete for customers on the open market.
To address these challenges, the next generation of technology to be applied to metering and customer service infrastructures is known as advanced meter infrastructure (AMI). Widely seen as a disruptive technology, AMI can be described as a set of interdisciplinary composite-application technologies consuming enterprise services that are exposed by a process-centric data exchange infrastructure for two-way communication between metering systems and enterprise applications within and beyond company boundaries. Although AMI impacts asset and commodity management at utilities, this paper will discuss AMI in the context of its ability to help utilities innovate business processes for sales and customer service. In this regard, AMI drives the optimization of revenues and demand, enables more cost-effective customer service, and facilitates market efficiency and the automation of data exchanges at new business networks of energy suppliers and infrastructure operators.
On a regional basis, the business case for AMI will vary. North American and European utility markets, for example, differ significantly in terms of grid and meter-infrastructure design, regulatory framework, load capacity, consumption patterns, operational costs, and revenues. AMI technologies, however, are sufficiently broad in their application to a wide range of requirements. This is indicated by the fact that these two regions are experiencing a drive toward AMI-based technologies as utilities and legislative bodies take measures to respond to resource and capacity limitations and growing demands on the part of customers for more choices and greater flexibility. Indeed, Sweden, Ontario (Canada), and Victoria (Australia) are already exploring AMI as they respond to mandates that dictate AMI by 2007, 2009, and 2011, respectively.
Regardless of the specific market requirements, however, it is clear that without sufficiently adaptive IT landscapes, utilities across the board will find it difficult to deliver on the promise of AMI. This is where enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) comes into play. Enterprise SOA is a business-driven software architecture that goes beyond the fundamentals of service-oriented architecture, allowing utilities to flexibly expose various technology components within the IT landscape as Web services and more easily compose solutions to support AMI. This paper examines how AMI is gaining a foothold in energy markets and explains how utilities can use enterprise SOA to make AMI a reality for those facing new and unanswered market challenges.
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