Partnerships with utilities or municipalities

Did a quick search, but didn’t see anything so I thought I’d ask.

Does Sense have any partnerships with municipalities, towns, or utility providers to get Sense meters installed?

Our town is considering TOU rates and thats great to help shift demand but would be more powerful coupled with real-time feedback to help people understand their consumption.

This would seem to play to senses strengths.

The Sense website now has a Utilities section, here. About midway down, there’s a banner that invites Utilities, including municipal ones (towns, cities, etc.), to talk to Sense about partnering.

I would imagine Sense has a dedicated team working with interested Utilities.

Thanks Kevin. Hadn’t managed to find that. I’ve filled out the form online. If anyone has more info how these partnerships work I’d be curious.

Ie does it involve installing Sense hardware or more applying Sense analysis digital tech to expose Smart Meter data more real time to customers.

We’re talking TOU here but without knowing what you’re using and when, the rates really only address 1/2 of the issue.

Thanks

1 Like

@davidduran, you missed one key point. Two smart meter manufacturers now make Sense-enabled meters, that use the same back-end and phone/we apps as other Sense users. So the focus is on meter replacement, to give far greater visibility.

Landis & Gyr

Itron

BTW - I agree on TOU. People do need a real-time app to make them aware of costs of their habits.

Yea I saw that reference but wasn’t sure:

  1. If that’s the extent of the capability today (I.e., only works with 2 kinds of smart meters) and if so
  2. What the penetration is of those meters

My town uses Honeywell something or another and has done a big push in last couple years to replace everything with these bidirectional wireless versions. But not sure they’re Sense capable.

I don’t really know the market breakdown of the smart meter market, but I’ve been able to glean a couple of things.

  • Itron and Landis+Gyr are the largest publicly traded suppliers.
  • The market for the first generation of smart-meters is tailing off and the ramp of second-generation meters / network monitors is just starting.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) claims to answer the question, “How many smart meters are installed in the United States, and who has them?” To save you the trouble of following the link, 69% of residences are considered to have advanced metering infrastructure as of 2021. This definition of “smart” simply means that usage data is transmitted at least hourly.

Beyond that low bar, what is the next generation of smart meter? A brief google search found conflicting claims, so I can’t tell you. However, we do know what is in the smart meters linked by @kevin1 , because they license Sense technology. I don’t think those models are shipping yet, so the market share for such technology = zero.

2 Likes

@davidduran ,
I actually didn’t look closely enough at the market report summary I posted, thinking that one would need to buy the report for the data you asked for. But it’s in the summary !

The market in North America is dominated by international players such as AcIara, Itron and Landis+Gyr that all have managed to establish a major presence in the region. Itron and Landis+Gyr have a 32 percent market share each of the installed base of smart electricity meters in North America. Aclaris is in third place with a market share of 23 percent and the remaining 13 percent is predominately shared between Honeywell and Sensus.

A couple of other hightlights that are germane:

The original reason I posted the summary.

Several major utilities in these regions are thus now preparing for a second wave of deployments to take off, driven by new smart meter functionalities and smart energy use cases.

The penetration of smart electricity meters in the region (North America) was 73.5 percent in 2021 and expected to increase to 93.2 percent in 2027, primarily driven by large investor-owned utility projects in the US as the relatively mature market in Canada is only expected to see moderate growth. In terms of total shipments of smart electricity meters, second-wave rollouts for early adopters are ramping up and will grow their share of annual shipment volumes from around 12 percent in 2021 to 75 percent by 2027.

Thanks for the insights folks. I fear we may have upgraded to tech that is already falling behind the curve and probably not sense ready.

If not built into our local meters I’d love to see the utility offer some incentives to get customers to install Sense themselves. Town pays a demand surcharge that possibly could be reduced through demand shifting and general awareness so could be a win win.

1 Like