Taking another step to preventing power theft

BY PATRICIA SEIFERT, PhD, Itron

For many years, industries have long leveraged analysis tools to predict customer-purchasing behavior, potential buying power, and customer product selection. Interpreting the information available can give an organization a profound advantage in increasingly competitive markets.

The utility industry is taking its first steps toward realizing the potential of interpreting the years of accumulated data in existing systems, such as meter data management (MDM), customer information systems (CIS), and work order and inventory management systems. Many utilities have upgraded from automated meter reading (AMR) systems where meters are read once a month to advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), processing nearly 1,000 times the volume of data.