In the second half of the 1980s, severalelectricity companies in developed countries incorporatedthe automation of the reads of the consumption metersinstalled in their customers' premises. Adoption ofthat approach was driven in all the cases by the need tolower the significant costs of in-site reading, reflectinghigh labor costs in rich countries. There are several AMIoptions potentially viable for each of the automated meterreading (AMI) applications, covering a wide range in termsof technical and functional specifications of hardware andsoftware. However, the technical and economic feasibility ofa specific option crucially depends on the currentoperational and financial performance of the involvedutilities, as well as on other key characteristics(institutional, regulatory, development of communicationsinfrastructure) of the environment in which they operate. Itis very clear that, in AMI, one size does not fit all. Theapplicability and options for applying AMI or smart meterstechnology to a variety of customer management issuescommonly found in public service utilities, in particular inelectricity distribution companies, are described andanalyzed in this report.
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