The advent of smart meters – and the metering-related IoT breakthroughs made since – has become integral in residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. Applications abound; monitoring and controlling energy usage (and, with that, improving overall energy efficiencies), lowering total project costs, and sustainably supporting reduced carbon emissions. Smart metering enables the real-time collection of data for energy research, worker safety, reduced downtime, dynamic pricing models and more, so it's no wonder how organizations around the globe utilize this technology. In smart city ventures, for example, experts rely on smart meter systems as a vital infrastructure component; smart city planners utilize it for power grid improvements and for the reduction of waste. When installed in homes, these meters grant homeowners real visibility into their utilities. In offices and retail stores, HVAC systems can be optimized. In factories and various manufacturing facilities, smart meters lend insights of great value into how machinery is operated. Elsewhere, renewable energy systems (e.g. wind turbines and solar panels) can be monitored in ways previously not possible, and the charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) can be custom-scheduled based on demand.
Personally, I absorb IoT info like a wild sponge and I could certainly list more smart-powered use cases, but I suspect we’re on the same page here.
The long story short of this? Entwined with smart meters is a wealth of smarter-living and smarter-working possibilities.
So, let’s lasso this with news shared just this morning, shall we?
Aetheros, developer of an extensive IoT operating system for massive machine-type communications (i.e. M2M), has (as of today) officially entered the U.S. market to power, quote, “the next wave of smart meter deployments with distributed intelligence.” And Aetheros is achieving this via its flagship product, the Aether Operating System (AOS).
AOS is a distributed operating system (based on Linux and other open-source software) designed specifically to enable open, embedded edge computing. This provides a oneM2M-compliant IoT service layer that – as demands for renewable energy, smarter battery storage and EVs grow – will open an ecosystem for secure edge applications and smart meters that can address the U.S.’s changing electricity needs.
Sounds to me like it’s powering real change.
Having first deployed products in Australia, New Zealand and Mexico, the U.S. is next on the Aetheros docket, in terms of reliable smart metering. Already, the replacement of more than 100 million smart meters is underway.
This, as Ray Bell (founder of Aetheros and former CEO of both Silver Spring Networks and Grid Net) describes, is “the only open, proven, and scalable solution.”
“Our smart meter networking software,” Bell explained, “field proven with 15 years of deployment in Australia and New Zealand, has accelerated innovation. It has enabled distributed edge intelligence in the most advanced utility markets in the world. Our customers are able to deploy analytics and control at the edge of their distribution network to detect conditions such as floating neutral, high and low voltage and frequency imbalances, and to implement advanced services like virtual power plants and dynamic Volt-VAR (VVC) control. AOS allows utilities to improve safety and distribution efficiencies, lower operating costs, and raise customer satisfaction.”
By all accounts, it seems the AOS product portfolio will considerably benefit utilities in the U.S.
“Even with today’s complex requirements,” Bell added, “current needs cannot be met with single-vendor, walled garden approaches. There’s an urgent need for what AOS provides so market innovation is allowed to flow freely.”
Once AOS grows in the U.S., utilities and their suppliers will be able to enable a more transactive, distributed energy market, balance power based on distributed resources, advance EV charging infrastructure, and visibly carry smart metering and IIoT at large into the next-gen spaces where, again, real change is achieved.
For those interested, supplemental information about AOS can be found here. As more Aetheros-related news breaks, so will our stories.
