Acknowledging the eventual incursion of ‘smart grid’ into electricity systems, utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) takes another pioneering effort in integrating “intelligent meters” into its power distribution network.

Intelligent meters, being component of latest technology advancements in power systems, offer two-way communications capabilities between the meters and the utility as well as through the entire electricity grid, thus, enabling the utility to monitor processes or signals in the network more efficiently. Typically, in the emerging ‘smart grid concept’, this integrates smart metering technology with the customer information system (CIS) of a power utility.

In the case of the country’s largest distribution utility, Meralco vice president and chief information officer Martin L. Lopez said they are currently piloting automated meter reading (AMR) in various areas, as initial step into pushing the company’s distribution network to become an intelligent utility.

AMR, which is considered a sub-set of smart metering or advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), sets in place a system where the meter reader no longer needs to manually enter the numbers from the meter.

Meralco is expecting that its ‘smart grid pilot’ project will aid it in collating comprehensive data that will become its guide in the planned modernization of its distribution system.

“The nice thing about smart grid as compared to the traditional system is that there’s integration of IT into the system – there’s a back-end capability, so there is some sort of intelligence in the system because of the data you can gather at the back-end that can be pushed into the meters or into the network,” Lopez explained.

The data that can be captured may include those that have eventual bearing on load forecasting, load growth, asset management, outage management and other operational efficiencies that can be instituted both at the consumer level and/or in the utility’s network.

Lopez qualified that the company’s crucial first step “is really for Meralco to modernize our electric grid, and then whatever we can derive from that, like the broadband over power lines, will just be value-added later on.”

For the consumer, one obvious advantage would be the information that may be provided in intelligent meters that will guide them in managing their electricity consumption – especially if real-time pricing or the time-of-use rates already reach household levels.

Lopez said they have been trying various technologies lent by several foreign vendors, and will evaluate later which one works best for the Meralco system.

“For the smart grid, we’re hoping to get some data out of our pilot by the end of the year, so we’ll see by then if that would be effective,” he stressed.

For now, the company has not rolled any numbers yet as to the magnitude of investments needed to turn its system into smart grid.

“The cost simulations would be our next step, the vendors have been willing to lend their equipment as we are still on trial phases. The real cost will come when we hit commercial operations for the system,” Lopez said.