Are smart-meters THIS hard to read ?

Hi all

I haven't posted for a while as we have been a little busy helping a client out that is suffering from smart meter reading services (or AMR if you are old-school).

I was surprised that the client has no means to qualify the service they are getting - they have too many meters to check each every day, and simple QA is a task that lends itself to automation.

So we knocked this together:

Around 700 meters are supposed to be read
50 have failed (red sending no readings) by the end.
100 (blue) have never been active this year (sending a non-zero value)
Passive meters have sent non-zeroes but now send zeroes  (Gas in Summer)
Active (200 green) are sending non-zeroes

Obviously we could run this daily, weekly or monthly depending on what a client needed (and maybe manage tracking problems as a service). We could also break it down into aged meter failure reports, and how many sites (which may have many meters) are complete for analysis purposes.

So getting a little ahead of myself I wondered how many people are in the same boat. We are hoping to fix this for our client, and we believe it might be generally useful to hold service providers to account!

The bottom line to me is - if energy managers need reliable data, and if they can negotiate collectively more powerfully than as single voices, someone has to pull the stats together kWIQly!

So, if at all interested, please fill in these questions below (4 mins. max.), and if you include an email, we will get back to you (absolutely optional). As ever feedback in the comments below is welcome - Plus please any suggestions for related questions in the future.

regards James

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