As shown in a new white paper, a Zpryme survey of 223 Smart Grid executives sponsored by Elster reveals that 21 percent of Smart Grid executives rated ‘reducing peak energy consumption’ as the top justification for investing in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), while 28% rated ‘improved grid reliability’ as the top justification for investing in distribution automation (DA). Sixty-nine percent of executives ‘strongly agree’ that the potential for utilizing aspects of electricity’s advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) within distribution automation (DA) is very high.
The findings shown in the Elster Answers AMI & DA Trends 2012, released today reveal that utilities will benefit the most from DA-AMI convergence in the short-term, but customers will win over the long-term, as these technologies will give them more choice and control of their energy usage, a more stable grid, and lower electricity bills. Further, distribution automation play a vital role in integrating renewables, distributed generation, and advanced demand response applications.
Over the next five years, the survey findings indicate that North America and Asia will drive the growth of both the AMI and DA market.
“We’ve been working side by side with our AMI customers for years to integrate DA capability into our solutions where it makes business sense,” explains Dave Buster, Director of Marketing at Elster Solutions. “Utilities benefit from all types of distribution system monitoring available through their Elster systems, including voltage, asset, loss/theft and outage and restoration.”
“Based on the Elster sponsored survey, about half of the smart grid executive respondents feel national smart grid policies or goals should be put in place, while 40% prefer for polices to be set at the state level,” said Jason S. Rodriguez, CEO & Director of Research, Zpryme. “Similar to renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for solar and wind production, industry stakeholders will be looking for explicit commitments from governments to ensure the long-term viability of the industry, especially as smart grid government funding dries up over the next year or two.”
About Elster
With more 170 years of experience, Elster Solutions has built a reputation on providing cutting-edge technologies to deliver world class products, systems and services to utility clients worldwide. Elster Solutions has two main areas of business – electricity metering products and Smart Metering and Smart Grid system solutions. Elster Solutions engineers fully interoperable smart electricity metering products through custom-made options for utility customers and award-winning end-to-end solutions for the Smart Grid with EnergyAxis, a multi-utility advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system for water, gas and electricity around the world.
Elster Solutions helps utilities improve their revenue cycle services, customer service, delivery reliability, and enable efficient energy usage by utility consumers through demand response and in home networking capabilities.
For more information about Elster Solutions, please visit http://www.elster.com and follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/EnergyAxis.
Contact
Dave Buster, Director, Solutions Architecture
Dave.Buster@us.elster.com
+1 919 212 5127
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