Special Metering Supplement

Deck: 
Metering Supplement
Fortnightly Magazine - March 2005
This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.

Metering Supplement

presents a special series of articles that clarifies misconceptions and reviews the progress and pitfalls regarding automated metering technology.

Time and time again, the advancement of new technologies has been misunderstood.

In the decades before the personal computer revolution of the 1980s, the chairman of Digital Equipment Corp. said, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." And who can forget IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, in 1943, predicting a world market for just five computers? Only decades later would the world come to understand how revolutionary computers really are.

Likewise, the promise of automated meter reading (AMR) has been lost on those who would benefit from such a technology, many experts say. They describe a technology which, much like computing, has been underestimated, misapplied, and certainly misunderstood.

But things are starting to change. An AMR revolution may be in the making.

No longer seen as a technology that just improves customer billing, AMR is seen by leaders such as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state public utilities commissions across the country as a vital component to state-wide resource planning.

Craig F. King, an energy expert and leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Utilities Tax Practice, says the industry is buzzing as a result of a paradigm shift in thinking over the benefits that AMR can bring.

Moreover, utility executives are becoming more aware of the company-wide benefits of AMR, and the greater understanding of customer consumption the technology brings.

This full article is only accessible by current license holders. Please login to view the full content.
Don't have a license yet? Click here to sign up for Public Utilities Fortnightly, and gain access to the entire Fortnightly article database online.