1 billion smart-meter reads per hour? No problem, Oracle says

Oracle says in-house testing has shown its smart meter data management systems can handle one billion meter reads per hour.

Running its utilities meter data management software through its database machine and cloud platform, Oracle says it was able to process the equivalent of four consumption measurements per hour coming from 250 million advanced energy meters. Within one hour, the combination of technologies was also able to calculate four different bill determinants for each of 19.3 million electricity bills.

While noting that real-life performance results “may vary,” Oracle claims those levels of number-crunching “far exceed today’s typical utility requirements.”

“In combination with other tests we are running in this series, this illustrates Oracle’s outstanding ability to help utilities conquer the smart metering ‘data deluge,’ ” said Linda Jackman, group vice president of industry strategy for Oracle Utilities.

The tests examined the performance of Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management 2.0.1, running with Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud X2-2. Oracle details the results of those tests in a new paper titled, “Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management 2.0.1.”

“New utilities technologies are bringing with them huge increases in data volumes,” the report’s introduction states. “Residential smart meters alone will increase the consumption data processed for billing purposes from 12 meter reads per year to 35,000 or more. As a consequence, utility business managers and executives are asking:

• “Does hardware and software technology currently exist that is capable of handling the large quantity of data from smart meters?
• “Can today’s technology process the data and produce the results needed to drive the meter-to-cash process in a timely manner?”

Based on the results of its tests, Oracle concluded, the answer to both those questions was, “Yes.”