Smart electricity meters are gradually replacing the traditional electricity meters in the past few years. In many countries, utility companies have spent trillions of euros replacing analog meters. It seems to be a big investment that has little cost-performance, but in the long run, it will bring back the cost and make huge profits in the long run.
There are some benefits of smart electricity meters:
Higher efficiency on mangement of power consumption.
This is mutual-beneficial for both home users and utility companies. Users may get power consumption data by several clicks in computer software or apps on cell phones. With this data, users can know how much electricity they used for a week or a month, the utility companies can master the peak consumption timing period and optimize their supply.
Remote control of electricicty
The smart electricity meters have a network connection module, they enable the utility companies to remotely control the power meter. As the switch inside the meter is connected to a mechanism that can receive remote instructions, the utility companies can choose to shut down or re-open the valve if users fail to pay on time.
Charge can be prepaid easily
Some types of smart electricity meters allow users to insert the IC or IR card, which includes the balance amount. Users may pay online to this card before the electricity is used up. No window service of charing is needed anymore.
Labour and time costs saved
This sounds a little wired. How can a smart electricity meter help with virus infection? In fact, this point is an extension of points no.2 and 5. With smart electricity meters, in-person reading work is canceled and users don’t have to go to service windows for inquiry and payment. Less interaction reduces the chance of being infected. Although this is not a deciding factor of how the pandemic situation goes, it indeed avoids being infected for some people.
Anti-cracking and failure waring
The traditional analog meter is driven by electricity with a pure mechanism, it doesn’t send any data. If some user opens the analog meter and cracks it like short-circuits the measuring device to skip the measuring function, or just modify some mechanism so that the meter no more counts. The appearance may look as normal as any good un-cracked meters, and it will take a long time before the utility company discovers. With a smart electricity meter, the electronic board can instantly report the failure or abnormal behavior, the utility company will know which one has problems and send an engineer for maintenance.