By Greentech Lead America: AMI managed services (AMS)
market will experience healthy growth over the next several years and about
91.2 million AMI endpoints will be covered by managed services contracts
worldwide, up from 25.2 million endpoints in 2012.
AMS are deployments of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)
systems in which a third party other than the utility operates the AMI system
on a day-to-day basis. Many current AMS offerings are delivered via cloud
computing infrastructures to help utilities avoid many of the costs and
complexities of traditional smart meter deployments.
“Managed smart metering may be the best kept secret
in the smart grid market. AMS already has noticeable activity around the world,
with plans afoot for quite a bit more. It is a new market today, but not for
much longer,” said senior analyst Bob Lockhart, Pike Research.
AMS can be deployed without the substantial capital
investment that smaller utilities are often unable to make. Small utilities are
increasingly considering an AMS offering due to lack of size or staff to
operate an AMI system in-house. AMS has also attracted a few larger utilities
that would rather outsource the complexity than deal with it in-house.
Countries where energy distribution is a state-owned
monopoly are unlikely to use AMS. By contrast, more liberalized markets may
portend greater adoption of AMS, though there are exceptions to this
generalization. The most active AMS regions of the world today are North
America and Northern Europe.