How Smart Meters can Serve Energy Consumers
Smart meters boast a myriad of benefits for consumers, according to a recent paper by the R Street Institute based in Washington, DC: “Leveraging Competitive Markets to Unlock the True Value of AMI.”
One potential benefit of AMI is lowering the existing cost of competitive supply. Costs to serve large commercial industrial (LCI) customers can vary significantly, so they are billed based on actual interval usage data; however, residential consumers often have their usage costs based on average data profiles rather than their own. Shifting away from fixed rates enables customers to respond to price signals. Research done by R Street has found that residential consumers currently on competitive supply could save approximately $250 million per year under smart-meter rates.
