“The most powerful infrastructure is not the technology we replace, but the intelligence, safety, and possibility we build into what comes next.” – MJ Martin
Meter Exchange Is Part of Running a Gas System
Across Canada, natural gas operators routinely remove and replace meters. To a homeowner, the meter may appear to be a permanent fixture attached to the side of a building. To a gas operator, however, it is a regulated measurement instrument, much like a commercial scale or fuel pump. Its accuracy cannot simply be assumed forever.
Measurement Canada establishes reverification requirements under the federal Electricity and Gas Inspection Act. Gas meters must either be reverified within prescribed periods or removed from service. For common diaphragm meters, the applicable periods vary according to capacity, meter qualification, and whether the meter is undergoing initial or subsequent reverification. (ISED Canada)
Consequently, meter exchange is not inherently evidence that something is wrong with the existing meter. It is part of maintaining a trustworthy measurement system.
Turning Maintenance Into Modernization
The more interesting question is what operators install when an existing meter reaches its exchange point.
Traditional gas meters are remarkably mature mechanical instruments. They can measure consumption reliably for years, but measurement alone represents only one piece of a modern utility’s requirements. Advanced gas meters can combine accurate measurement with digital communications, automated readings, operational data, alarms, and, depending upon the meter design, remote control capabilities.
Think of the change as replacing an accurate mechanical watch with an equally accurate connected watch. Both tell time, but one can communicate information and participate in a much larger information system.
Advanced metering can eliminate most routine manual meter-reading visits and provide operators with more timely information about system activity. Customers may also gain access to more detailed consumption information rather than waiting for a monthly bill to understand how much gas they have used. (fortisbc.com)
Safety Becomes Part of the Architecture
Modernization can also introduce capabilities that were impossible with conventional mechanical meters. Certain advanced ultrasonic gas meters incorporate remotely operated valves, allowing an operator to stop gas flow under defined circumstances. During emergencies involving fires, floods, earthquakes, or other hazards, remote control can give system operators another tool for managing risk. (fortisbc.com)
The communications technology itself is also governed by Canadian requirements. Health Canada’s Safety Code 6 establishes human exposure limits for radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, including the frequencies used by smart-meter communications. Health Canada reports that measured RF exposure from smart meters is far below Canadian exposure limits because transmissions are low power, intermittent, and normally separated from people by distance. (Canada)
What Customers Experience
For the customer, an exchange is generally straightforward. A qualified technician removes the existing meter, installs the replacement, verifies the installation, and restores service. Gas may need to be temporarily shut off, which can require appliances to be safely relit or checked afterward. (fortisbc.com)
The important distinction is that the meter exchange would often occur eventually as part of normal regulatory and asset-management practices anyway. Advanced metering allows the operator to turn that necessary maintenance event into an infrastructure upgrade.
From Meter Reading to System Intelligence
Canada’s gas-meter modernization is therefore about considerably more than eliminating the person who walks from house to house reading meters. The larger opportunity is to transform millions of isolated measuring devices into connected points within an intelligent gas distribution system.
Questions to Ponder
That raises several important questions.
* Should operators replace meters only when regulation requires it, or accelerate replacement to capture operational benefits sooner?
* How much value should be assigned to remote disconnect capability during emergencies? Should customers receive access to daily or even hourly consumption information?
* And, perhaps most importantly, can advanced metering eventually evolve beyond billing to provide the gas industry with the same kind of real-time situational awareness that intelligent electric grids are beginning to achieve?
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin is a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.