Mr. Chris J Law - TET's expert on smart electricity meters - sharing at conference
At the conference, experts from TET exchanged and shared international experiences in deploying advanced metering infrastructure (AMI - Advanced Metering Infrastructure) with main contents such as system design, data requirements and applications in business, information technology, security for AMI, challenges and considerations when making AMI investments, etc.
According to Mr. Chris J Law - TET's expert on smart meters, General Director of Future Grid Australia Energy Company (one of the 3 largest energy enterprises in Australia), with the level of development and application With the wide spread of information and telecommunications technology, combined with electronic meters with more intelligent features, more and more power companies around the world are deploying advanced metering infrastructure AMI to meet the requirements of the world. Increasingly asked by customers to use electricity. This application also facilitates the production and business operations of the power companies themselves.
"AMI is a higher level than AMR (electronic meter and automatic data collection system - Auto Meter Reading). It is an effective support tool in the process of operating electricity production and business in power companies, especially in the current energy transition, with the participation of distributed energy sources in the power system," emphasized expert Chris J Law.
Conference held both offline and online (Zoom platform)
Mr. Chris J Law said: "AMI will empower customers to evaluate the quality of goods and services provided by power companies. Therefore, besides its superiority, AMI also has complexity, requiring strict requirements in terms of technology, system engineering, data types, information security, as well as the need to adjust and improve processes and regulations on traditional operation management. It takes a lot of time, effort and investment capital of enterprises".
TET's experts also gave some notes when deploying AMI in Vietnam: The infrastructure system must be suitable for smart meter investment; When deploying AMI, it is necessary to have a process of preparing operation personnel, training over time, and making appropriate adjustments in the process of technology replacement. Besides, experts recommend, EVN also needs to consider investing in AIM according to the market's demand, for example, it can start from urban areas where the smart power grid system is developing, residential areas using smart home systems...
Compared with Vietnam's electronic meters, the AMI meter system can automatically send data to the control center by both wired (optical cable, copper cable, PLC, dial-up) and wireless connections (Mesh network, point-to-multipoint communication, mobile network) depending on the characteristics of each area. With the benefits, AMI is also a technology applied in many states in the US with about 16.1 million smart meters deployed, accounting for 29% of the total number of smart meters in this country.
It is known that from 2016 to now, EVN has promoted equipment using electronic meters and automatic data collection (AMR) systems to gradually replace mechanical meters. From only 3.8 million electronic meters automatically collecting data (accounting for 16% of the total 23.9 million electricity meters) at the end of 2015, by the end of 2022 there were 24.7 million electronic meters automatically collecting data (accounting for more than 81% of the total of 30.3 million semi-electrical meters). As a result, the quality of production and business management, and customer service of EVN and other power corporations in recent years has improved, enhancing customer satisfaction.
Power corporations have a 100% rate of automatic data collection electronic meters such as Hanoi Power Corporation (EVNHANOI), Ho Chi Minh City Electricity Corporation (EVNHCMC), Central Power Corporation (EVNCPC), power units and customers can look up and monitor meter readings and daily consumed electricity output through the applications on computer, phone. In which, EVNHCMC also completed the implementation of the power failure warning system of the power grid based on the use of power failure data from the metering system.