Multymeter.com-Electrical Engineering: Indonesia through the State Electricity Company (PLN) and the State Grid Corporate of China (SGCC) signed a cooperation contract for the Procurement of Managed Services (Sewa Purchase) Advance Metering Infrastructure (AMI). With the signing of this collaboration, the plan to implement PLN’s Smart Meter on customers’ electricity metering devices seems to be getting closer. This was actually planned at the beginning of last year.
In February 2021 the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) had announced that in that year it was targeting as many as one million electricity customers to use PLN’s Smart Meter. Quoting from the official ESDM website, PLN’s Smart Meter will replace the use of conventional electricity meters that are generally used by customers to realize the implementation of Smart Grid. The Smart Grid system is a network system for managing electricity needs digitally.
This system can be realized by one of them applying the PLN Smart Meter. Seeing the implementation plan that is getting closer, what exactly is a PLN Smart Meter? The following is an explanation of the PLN Smart Meter. What is a PLN Smart Meter? Before it is planned to be implemented in Indonesia, several other countries such as India or China have actually started using Smart Meters to manage customers’ electricity consumption.
The Smart Meter system performs similarly to an ordinary electricity meter, which measures and records the power consumption that has been used. However, Smart Meter has the advantage of being able to digitally provide information on power consumption to the customer’s devices. So by using the Smart Meter system, customers can get information about electricity consumption and bills more easily and accurately.
By using a Smart Meter, customers can also manage their electricity consumption to make it more efficient. However, to carry out this capability, a Smart Meter does not stand alone. Smart Meter is one part of the advanced electricity meter infrastructure or AMI, as held by PLN and SGCC.
The AMI function is the main pillar of the Smart Grid. AMI itself is the entire infrastructure of the electricity meter that makes it possible to collect and transfer electricity consumption information to customers directly. Apart from Smart Meters, AMI is supported by several devices, one of which is a communication network system for transferring information from meters to consumers and electricity producers.
Then, there is also a data management system that functions as a container for managing that information. That is a general description of the new Smart Meter or electricity meter that PLN will implement. While the technical description of its implementation has not been announced, we are waiting for developments from the PLN Smart Meter.***
