Meter Data Management
by Rusty McCloud, VP of Meter Data Management
Meter Data Management (MDM) has been around in some form or fashion since interval metering became available from meter vendors back in the late 1960s and early 70s. In the early days of interval metering, meter manufacturers created their own software to read their meters.
In the late 1980s, a man by the name of Ed White came up with the idea of working with all meter vendors to create interfaces to all interval meters. And MV-90 was born. MV-90 was the de-facto standard for more than a decade for collecting data from recorders (whether boxes external to a meter or recorders under glass as they were referred to early on) to the meters we have today. These meters were used almost exclusively for Commercial and Industrial customers or Load Research studies in the early days of interval metering and MV-90 was and still is in use by over 700 companies worldwide.
In the early 1990s, people started hearing about Automated Meter Reading (AMR) systems from companies who had developed ways of collecting data over a variety of ingenious networks. AMR systems started out being one way communications and the devices were slow (by today's standards) and were only capable of hourly data at best. AMR vendors developed their own proprietary head-ends, as they are called, to collect the data from the meters and we saw the market start to fragment again.
In between the AMR and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) phases, several companies started creating what was referred to in the industry by several names initially but seems to have now landed on the name Meter Data Management systems. These systems are built around database managers such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle and are there to assist with the management of the massive amounts of data being generated from the second generation AMR and new generation AMI systems of today. This new breed of MDM software can scale to millions of endpoints and can handle virtually any data presented to it.
Olameter operates Oracle Utilities, one of the big 4 MDM systems today. We do so as a service offering for our clients. Our system is continually being customized to provide Olameter the ability to interface with a wide and ever-expanding range of systems including AMR/AMI head ends, billing, CIS, GIS, and/or OMS systems, or any other system needing the data collected from the meters in the field, including today's demand response and energy efficiency programs.
With Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management (OUMDM) software, Olameter can provide our clients with robust data management capabilities at very reasonable rates and save our clients the headaches associated with managing all this data, developing or hiring the expertise to install, maintain, and operate these monster MDM systems, and the ongoing software and hardware costs associated with installing and operating one of the systems available today.
Look to Olameter to provide your company with their proven technology and decades of staff experience in collecting, validating, editing, estimating, exporting and presenting the data for you and your customers. |
