Note: This is the fifth and final part of Copper’s blog series about how an AMx framework can help energy utilities accelerate decarbonization.

 

Transitioning to a net-zero or carbon-free energy system will be complex and expensive for electric and gas utilities, requiring significant upfront capital investments, expanded research and development initiatives, and rapid growth of demand-side management (DSM) programs including energy efficiency, load flexibility, and electrification. To meet the moment, utilities will need to explore new approaches to funding and implementing these kinds of initiatives. As part of a broad strategic shift in mindset, an AMx approach to metering can help utilities get more value out of their existing metering investments to support decarbonization initiatives immediately, make DSM programs more cost-effective, and strategically support more affordable infrastructure investments that can free up funds for critical emerging needs.

Energy efficiency is a key area that will need to be expanded in order to meet deep decarbonization targets going forward. In particular, efficiency is essential in helping to:

  • Help slow growth of electricity and gas consumption to enable a successful build-out of new low-carbon generation or gaseous fuels that can fully meet demand—something that’s more critical than ever with the recent surge of electricity consumption due to the rise of AI and ongoing data center growth
  • Provide a hedge against high customer bills stemming from potential rate increases (by reducing customer consumption)
  • Reduce business and residential customer vulnerability to potential disruptions to electricity and gas supplies

Unsurprisingly, energy efficiency is a critical part of the various decarbonization pathways described by such organizations as the Department of Energy, the International Energy Agency, the American Gas Association, and Princeton University. Utilities are well-suited to meeting decarbonization-driven efficiency targets by expanding existing DSM program offerings, but maximizing the scale, impact, and equity of these initiatives will require improved program targeting to help drive cost-effectiveness—particularly for larger measures like building shell retrofits and deep energy retrofits that can be more expensive and may impact multiple fuel sources. The good news is that better consumption data can help—particularly if it comes primarily from existing infrastructure investments—and our previous blog article on DSM programs describes some of the opportunities. The story is similar for load flexibility (both electric and gas) and electrification offerings, which will likely need to reach unprecedented scales in the coming decades to support decarbonization efforts and maintain service reliability. AMx can uniquely drive the kinds of cost-effectiveness improvements that will help these initiatives scale successfully while minimizing utility (and customer) costs.

More broadly, the utility costs of new advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) deployments are growing in expense, frequently rising to hundreds of millions of dollars per utility, and most often are directly funded by customers through rate increases. Those capital expenditures may reduce utilities’ abilities to focus on other investment priorities that could support decarbonization and reliability in the face of extreme weather, such as utility-scale distributed energy resources (DERs), renewable energy integration, transmission and distribution system expansion and hardening, or transformer upgrades in areas where EV adoption is accelerating. To help alleviate this challenge, an AMx framework allows utilities to get more out of their existing metering infrastructure, for example by unlocking granular grid-edge visibility and real-time data-driven use cases. By providing true meter interoperability, it also enables mixed-meter portfolios that support more agile and staggered meter replacements; allow the newest and most advanced meters to be strategically deployed in the places where they’re most needed; help to mitigate supply chain risks; and promote competition that can drive down costs and accelerate innovation.

In an environment where utilities are increasingly being challenged to spend investment dollars ever more strategically to maximize decarbonization and reliability benefits while maintaining affordability for customers, an AMx framework is a compelling yet pragmatic new tool that shouldn’t be overlooked. Want to learn more? Take a look at our AMx white paper or contact us to talk further!