Setting up a network of smart meters is not a straightforward business venture, and that alone can be enough of a disincentive for utilities to do so – despite the many advantages that smart metering can provide. Verizon has seized an opportunity this week, and is taking on the specialist metering companies, with the launch of its Grid Wide Utility Services platform – a meter-to-cloud hosted smart metering and analysis platform.
As Greentech Media notes, the platform was first announced two years ago, with the promise of an imminent launch. The delay might have been due to the general slowdown in the North American market for smart meters, but Verizon notes that there are currently 147m smart meters in the US, and it will undoubtedly be hoping to poach some of those.
The Grid Wide platform will also be providing the cloud-based applications and data management services that are required to handle and process all the data that the meters collect. By the looks of things, Grid Wide is also able to connect to utility-owned meters, meaning that it has the potential to be retrofitted to pre-existing installations.
The system will use Verizon’s cellular network, although the MNO doesn’t specify whether it will cater for 2G, 3G, or LTE. Verizon was the first company to certify a LTE Cat 1 module, developed by Sequans, which is the new implementation of LTE that targets the M2M market – forsaking the high bandwidths (and consequent power consumptions) of previous LTE releases, in favor of more efficient hardware.
Verizon argues that, historically, utilities have constructed communications networks and installed the necessary meters, servers and base stations at their own expense. It’s a valid argument, and evidently Verizon believes that it is well-placed to serve those utilities that want to enter the smart metering arena, and who either want to avoid the hassle of building their own networks, or would prefer to let a familiar name such as Verizon tackle the process on their behalf – for a fee of course.
But Verizon isn’t alone in the space, and is now a rival to the likes of Silver Spring Networks, Landis+Gyr, and Sensus – which tend to use their own proprietary mesh networking protocols to backhaul data from the meter to the cloud. Cellular rival AT&T is also competing in the space, and has a deal with General Electric to develop smart grid applications.
Verizon is banking on backhauling directly from the meter using cellular, and will be leveraging its national cellular and LTE network to do so. As far as we know, the scheme is currently being piloted with a few unnamed utilities, using meters manufactured by General Electric, although other vendors will be added in the future.
With the focus on smaller utilities, Verizon says it is bringing the price of its cellular offering down to a price competitive with the rival mesh implementations. It hopes to win customers with niche network architectures that aren’t well-suited to mesh networking, such as those who want to deploy low-numbers of meters at critical locations, which might be too far away from the rest of the network to make the required hop in the mesh network to the backhaul point. Mostly, we think, Verizon is banking on scooping up customers who are reluctant to try something new, like these meshes, and would prefer to stick with the comfortably familiar cellular option.
In addition, Verizon claims that the utility industry “has since realized that the coverage, reliability and security of public wireless networks have evolved well beyond anything that they can construct on their own efficiently and with scale.” As such, Verizon is singing the praises of its new platform, and gunning for utility customers that have yet to adopt an automated metering infrastructure (AMI) platform.
“What is really cool about our smart grid technology – and very disruptive – is that we have pre-built Grid Wide as an as-a-service model, which removes the complexities, time and cost for utilities with having to build their own solution. As a result, utilities don’t have to swap out their entire meter population, they can start to solve the problem areas right now on a per-month, per-meter cost basis,” said Jay Olearain, Verizon’s director of business development for energy and utilities.