Benefits of smart meters recognised worldwide Utilities across the globe are increasingly implementing smart grid initiatives, with annual growth in the Asia Pacific region approaching 40 per cent and the projected benefits of smart meter deployment pegged at millions of dollars in the US. Recent research by economic and financial experts at the Brattle Group revealed the phenomenal advantages of smart operations that may be available to US energy suppliers in years to come. According to the study, an American utility with one million residential customers could potentially net benefits of between $96 million and $287 million (£177 million) over the next 20 years, simply by rolling out smart meters. Prepared for the Edison Foundation's Institute for Electric Efficiency, the investigation estimated the costs and advantages of smart meters. Researchers used four "prototypical utilities" with differing generation resources and load forecasts, as well as capacity and smart meter costs. The group then assessed the operational benefits that each utility would experience as it replaced its existing metering infrastructure with the smart technology. It was found that the majority of positives would be realised once customers began taking advantage of special offerings enabled by the smart meter. These may include energy-use data delivered via in-home devices, dynamic pricing and direct load control. The Brattle Group concluded that for each of the four utilities, the commercial advantages of implementing smart meter initiatives far exceeded the costs of doing so. Ahmad Faruqui, a principal with the organisation, said: "We all know that smart meters provide operational benefits by eliminating or avoiding the cost of reading meters. "However, what we have demonstrated is that they also open a gateway to benefits on the customer side of the meter. Even without dynamic pricing, smart meters allow utilities to offer customers a variety of programs that would lower their energy costs," he added. But Mr Faruqui went on to say that "with dynamic pricing, these benefits rise considerably"... For the full article, please visit the Smart Utility Summit 2011 Website: http://bit.ly/enRdPS