Meteringonline™ (MOL) is an Internet based Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) System that provides a unique operational tool to manage metering services and Billing information system for utilities, municipalities or individual commercial and industrial users.

Meteringonline uses state-of-the-art smart metering data acquisition technology to communicate with utility meters automatically. Metering data such as energy registers, load profiles, event logs and other critical metering information is converted into metering information accessed on a powerful Internet Portal that provides reports and graphical interfaces to allow commercial and industrial customers to better understand their energy usage and improving business performance and increasing revenue for the utility. The service is easy to use and is available twenty four hours a day, everyday.

The best way to describe Meteringonline is via the diagram shown in the figure below:

Meteringonline Overview

The system starts with a Metering Data Acquisition process that is based on a combination of GSM CSD and GPRS technologies. Meters are read at specified intervals according to a priority system configured in the scheduler. Typically one or more of the following types of information can be read from each meter at any given time:

• Billing registers
• Demand registers
• Profile data
• Event logs
• Instantaneous voltage and current readings

All data collected is passed to a Metering Database. The database itself is the heart of the whole system and can be any SQL compliant RDMS in theory, but there are aspects that should be considered carefully before making a choice which will be discussed in more detail later in this document.

Administration of the system is implemented by a suite of applications collectively referred to as the Back Office System. The main components of this system are:

• A database administration suite
• A fault handling suite
• Data validation processes
• A process for dealing with customer queries

The main output of the system is a Billing System Interface which processes raw metering data obtained from the data acquisition into metering data and seamlessly transfers this metering information to the Utility’s own billing system so that accounts can be processed. All metering data is backed up on a daily basis to an off-site backup database to ensure data security.

Most AMR systems address the issues of data acquisition, storage and billing system interfaces, but very few pay any consideration to customer interaction. We strongly believe that the value of an AMR system does not simply lie in reading meters alone, but also in providing a value added service to benefit the most important asset that any utility has – its customers. Meteringonline provides a powerful yet simple to use Internet Portal as a Customer Interface to allow end users to monitor many aspects of their energy usage.

In conclusion then, it is clear that Meteringonline is much more than a simple AMR system. The system, designs and thinking are supported by three fundamental pillars as shown below: