Exploring Advanced Metering Infrastructure Deployments for Commercial and Industrial Sites

Abstract

Smart meters have become increasingly common as an approach to benchmark and assess building energy use. In this paper, we explore what type of metering infrastructure may be required to derive value from the application of smart meters in the commercial and industrial sectors. As an example, we find that sole reliance upon a site-level smart meter—which has been the focus of most existing deployment models—provides sufficient data to extract summary statistics about how the energy use of a given site may compare to a typical ‘average’ site, but such installations fail to provide adequate detail about where the energy use is occurring or why any discrepancies might be occurring. To resolve these issues, we install a multi-tier advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) at a mixed use (industrial and commercial) campus. We use this AMI deployment to gain insight at different levels of the consumption hierarchy—from sites to buildings, panels, sub-panels, and end loads. The paper concludes by discussing the trade-offs associated with such augmented metering at each level within the hierarchy, with a view towards providing guidelines for AMI deployment at other industrial and commercial campuses.