Smart Meter Based on Real Time Pricing

Sudden, unprecedented electric blackouts and outages come as a dampener for a system that thrives on electrical energy. Reliability and efficiency are essential features for any power grid system. The conventional power grid systems are incapable of making use of real-time information from consumer side as well as the supply end for a more efficient transmission. Smart grid system, in which tremendous research has been done and which has been improvised manifold over the past decade, helps in meeting the incessant fluctuations in power demand from a huge consumer population. Smart grid brings about automation in managing the energy requirements using a two way interactive system, i.e. its ability to fetch information from the user and supply ends and utilize it to improve the overall reliability and efficiency of the transmission lines. Incorporating smart energy meters along with smart grid could come a long way in conserving electricity apart from removing manual energy meter reading from the scene. Smart meters supply the required data for the smart grid which helps the grid in providing an automated response. The paper elucidates how smart meters help in digitally tackling the issue of energy conservation in the consumer end and the utility end. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).