“Canada’s weather tests everything we build. The quiet triumph of smart metering is that through bitter cold, summer heat, driving rain, ice, snow, and lightning, these small sentinels simply keep measuring, communicating, and doing their job.” – MJ Martin
Canada: The Ultimate Environmental Test Laboratory
Canada may be one of the finest environmental laboratories in the world for testing utility technology. A smart meter can face bitter cold, extreme heat, freezing rain, torrential downpours, lightning, snow, ice, hail, humidity, and rapid temperature changes, sometimes within the same year. Environment and Climate Change Canada reports that hot extremes and heavy precipitation have intensified across Canada, with further increases projected as the climate warms. (Canada)
For utilities, weather is therefore not background scenery. It is an engineering requirement.
Built for Conditions Humans Avoid
Electricity and gas meters commonly spend their working lives outdoors. Unlike consumer electronics, they are rugged industrial instruments expected to operate reliably for decades.
Consider the specifications. Landis+Gyr rates its Revelo electricity meter for operation from -40°C to +85°C under the cover, with a design life exceeding 20 years. (Landis+Gyr) Itron specifies an operating range of -40°C to +70°C for one Gen5 Riva platform, together with impulse-voltage immunity and environmental protection. (Itron)
It is rather like asking your smartphone to spend 20 winters bolted to the outside wall of your house and expecting it to continue measuring electricity accurately.
Gas meters face similar demands. Measurement Canada requires gas meters intended for non-temperature-controlled environments to have an ambient operating range of at least -30°C to +40°C and requires environmental testing across that range. (ISED Canada)
Water Has a Different Enemy
Water meters generally enjoy a more comfortable Canadian existence inside homes and buildings because water introduces an obvious enemy: freezing.
The communications equipment, however, may experience much harsher environments. Badger Meter specifies certain ORION endpoints for operation from -40°C to +60°C and humidity conditions reaching 100 percent condensing, while specifically warning that the water meter itself must not be allowed to freeze. (Badger Meter)
This demonstrates an important systems principle. Reliability is determined not by the strongest component, but by the weakest link.
The AMI Network Takes a Beating Too
The meter is only the beginning. AMI gateways, collectors, antennas, power supplies, connectors, communications equipment, and outdoor enclosures must survive the same environment.
IEC 62052-11 establishes testing for electricity meters that includes climatic, mechanical, electrical, and electromagnetic external influences. (IEC Webstore) NEMA enclosure standards similarly address rain, snow, sleet, windblown dust, ice, water ingress, and, for appropriate classifications, corrosion. (NEMA)
A perfectly functioning meter accomplishes little if a failed connector, compromised seal, damaged antenna, or unprotected power supply takes the communications network offline. Canadian AMI resilience must therefore be engineered as an end-to-end system.
AMI Protects People Too
Weather also changes the business case for AMI.
Traditional mobile AMR requires employees to drive meter-reading routes. In Canada, that can mean snow-covered roads, freezing rain, reduced visibility, extreme cold, or severe summer storms. Fixed-network AMI removes much of that routine driving by bringing the reading to the utility instead of sending the worker to the meter.
That is more than operational efficiency. It is risk reduction.
An Extraordinary Piece of Engineering
Smart meters are easy to overlook because they usually work quietly. Yet consider what we ask of them. Measure revenue-grade consumption accurately, communicate reliably, withstand electrical disturbances, resist moisture, survive thousands of heating and cooling cycles, and continue operating for decades.
They are rather like tiny unmanned weather stations that also happen to run the commercial foundation of the utility.
Canadian utilities should therefore ask some broader questions. Should equipment be specified against yesterday’s climate or tomorrow’s projected extremes? Should environmental resilience receive greater weighting in procurement evaluations? How much communications redundancy should be designed for major storms? And should the safety value of eliminating thousands of kilometres of winter AMR driving be formally included when calculating the business case for AMI?
Canada’s weather is unforgiving. The remarkable part is how routinely our metering infrastructure takes everything the country throws at it, and simply keeps working.
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 traveller, a pilot, a philosophizer, and a most of all, aromantic optimist.