AMI 2.0: Driving the Utility Customer Experience

The American electric utility market has changed significantly in the past 20 years. The government's decarbonization goal drives the sector-wide move to prioritize the energy transition and digital transformation and launch nationwide smart grids. However, electric utilities would be wise to remember that consumers also play a major role in the historic migration to greener, smarter electricity.

 

Image used courtesy of Adobe Stock

 

The rise in residential solar panels and EV purchases and recent concerns over energy prices are directly related to consumer behavior, trends, and demands. As electric utilities look to advance their digitally driven business strategies, they cannot forget to embed customers—and customer experience—into everything they do. After all, their technology, products, and services enter Americans’ homes every day.

 

Advanced Metering Infrastructure

One of the most significant pillars supporting electric utilities’ digital strategies and impacting customers’ daily experience is likely a solution they have heard of but may not fully understand its benefits—advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). In fact, many consumers are not even familiar with the smart meters in their own homes. Business, IT, and engineering leaders at electric utilities are well aware of AMI’s critical role in their operations—connecting devices, communication services, and IT systems to collect and analyze real-time usage and power quality data, predict outages and consumption powers, and support the deployment of emerging tech investments. However, some leaders may be losing sight of the important role consumers–and customer experience–play in modernizing their AMI capabilities and, at a higher level, their energy transition and digital transformation journeys.  This is arguably most poignant amongst engineering teams. After all, everything engineers do revolves around consumer information and, directly or indirectly, impacts customers. And yet, engineers rarely get the chance to meet or interact with customers, especially in the residential market.    

 

Smart meter. Image used courtesy of Adobe Stock

 

Advanced Metering Infrastructure 2.0

To understand how engineering leaders can help their organizations modernize their advanced metering infrastructures to transform their companies into greener, smart organizations that keep their customers top of mind, it’s important to assess where today’s AMI programs currently stand. 

Most electric utilities began their AMI evolution in 2009, spurred on by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocating $7.9 billion to modernize the electric industry through the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG). 

By 2015 when the program ended, over $4 billion was spent on AMI deployments—with additional investments towards distribution and customer system technologies, enabling utilities to reduce outage disruptions, improve customer experience, and reduce workers’ time on sites during outages. According to the DOE's report, This led to a substantial reduction in operational and maintenance costs and improved revenue streams by automating billing services.

Since completing the SGIG program nearly a decade ago, AMI deployments have introduced key advancements, including new and improved customer-facing technology, enhanced engineering processes, and edge-of-the-grid applications driven by consumption demand and propelled by customer adoption tools. However, there’s still a long road ahead for advanced metering infrastructure in the United States and the engineering teams responsible for those deployments.

 

What Lies Ahead for AMI and Engineers 

Many electric utilities recognize the need for next-generation AMI programs that move beyond AMI 2.0 advancements, but change is never easy—even when anticipated. In a matter of years, AMI 1.0 meters will reach end-of-life stages, and electric utilities that were early adopters will need to upgrade their infrastructures quickly. Across the board, engineering teams will also have to ensure their updated AMI deployments account for an increasing rate of weather-related events in the coming years—both their AMI solutions and customers will require reliable power in such instances. 

Legacy technology and unpredictable natural disasters aside, engineers must contend with a much larger challenge—simultaneously scaling advanced metering and smart grid infrastructure. They’ll need to account for the surge of more affordable, widespread renewable energy sources powering nationwide grids, requiring new grid solutions and AMI capabilities that will be compatible with respective regional grids. 

Engineers must not forget their consumers as they strategize how to scale both AMI and grid technology. Increasingly, customers will become prosumers—feeding energy back into the grid with residential solar panels—and they’ll also place strain on the grid to power EVs.

Simply put, tomorrow’s electric utilities consumers will give and take from the grid. That’s why today’s engineering teams must start developing smart-grid compatible AMI systems that account for customers’ consumption and production patterns and incorporate consumer-friendly smart meters and residential technology that will gather essential data points, drive efficiencies, and ultimately improve customer experience.  

Electric meter. Image used courtesy of Adobe Stock

 

How to Achieve Next-Gen AMI Capabilities and CX 

That said, how engineers consider customer experience differs greatly from how business and IT departments comprehend the customer journey. 

Here are four essential tactics engineering leaders can implement to drive next-gen AMI capabilities—while incorporating CX (customer experience) into their overarching plans:

1. Become active stakeholders in business case development planning and use case exploration.
2. Identify the types of customers and their interactions with the utility rather than just focusing on the meter-to-cash process.
3. Implement AMI 2.0 use cases that reduce operational barriers between engineers and customers, such as distribution planning for distributed energy resources (DERs).
4. Recognize that AMI 2.0 is not just about metering but is also a foundational component of an advanced grid.

As energy transition and digital transformation agendas accelerate across the electric utility landscape, engineering teams will help their organizations blaze ahead by playing a key role in AMI 2.0 deployments. Engineering leaders recognize their teams' crucial role and the barriers they’ll have to address to achieve next-generation metering operations and infrastructure. While some organizations incorporate demand-side transitions into their AMI 2.0 strategies, more utilities must adopt an approach that places customers at the center of their plans. This approach will enable traditionally non-customer-facing teams to deliver enhanced customer value, accelerating the energy transition journey.