Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) – which continually collects consumption data – unlocks the benefits of metering data in a way that Automated Meter Reading (AMR) – which requires once or twice yearly drive-by or walk-by reads – doesn’t.
This was the conclusion of a study report, Unlocking benefits through data and metering, by Frontier Economics and Artesia Consulting, commissioned by Arqiva. The study found AMI outperforms AMR for three layers of benefit:
It estimated that AMI will deliver between £1.3bn and £2.2bn in net benefits, depending on companies’ levels of ambition, compared to £30m to £0.3bn for AMR. These benefits stem largely from enabling reduced water consumption, lower carbon emissions, increased leakage cost efficiency, and avoided data and meter costs.
Other benefits achievable through metering looked at in the study included improved customer engagement and experience; greater insight to better support customers in vulnerable circumstances; and the potential to explore future innovative tariffs. And AMI outperformed AMR across these areas as well, due to its ability to gather much more complete and actionable data.
The report found that an AMI approach to metering was more likely to support the securing of rewards rather than penalties from regulators who will continue to set financial and reputational incentives by reference to the best-performing companies.
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