Making the Grid Smarter
Embedding Intelligence into the Metering System Makes the Grid Smarter
The most cost-efficient way to transition to the smart grid is to embed intelligence into the grid itself. The NES System uses signaling technology that puts the control and communications of a smart metering system into a utility’s distribution lines — the same lines used to deliver electricity.
Using a distribution line carrier (DLC) technology embeds intelligence into a utility’s core asset: the electricity infrastructure. The benefits of embedded grid intelligence include:
- Lower deployment costs. The embedded grid eliminates a utility’s need to build a private meter network (typically with RF technologies), which is a huge cost and logistics burden. Electricity is supplied directly to the home. Communications is also ensured, regardless of signal barriers such as trees, metal fencing, buildings, or inclement weather that, with an RF-based system, would require additional repeaters and testing.
- Lower operating costs. Smart meters and smart grid connectors (also known as concentrators) embed intelligence and communication in the core assets that a utility already maintains. Instead of maintaining both an electricity and a communications network, the utility maintains only the electricity network. In fact, communication errors most often indicate faults in the physical wire or other assets owned by the utility.
- Line management intelligence. Utilities can better monitor outages, detect tampering, reduce service restoration time, and verify when service is restored. Variations in signal strength on the line can indicate imminent failure, allowing service crews to be dispatched. Often, service is completed without customers being aware of a problem.
- Power quality. Grid intelligence lets utilities measure and detect events related to voltage surges and sags, phase changes, long and short outages, and total harmonic distortion. These key indicators of the health of the distribution network can point to substation-, capacitor-, and transformer-related issues that would otherwise require explicit monitoring through costly additional hardware.
- Highly accurate asset management. DLC-equipped components — NES smart meters and concentrators — have an installation topology that exactly matches the distribution transformer line topology, providing a much more accurate asset evaluation than Atlas and CIS systems.