Nathan Ota: Location and Ownership of Devices define ownership of data

Accessibility and ownership of meter data are related aspects. Data ownership may vary depending on market structures. Accessibility to meter data by the consumer and their authorized service providers should be ensured regardless of data ownership.

Often this discussion is presented in the context of near real-time meter data to an in-building display, but the consumer may have several different opportunities to access meter data. Consumer access to meter data and calculated energy usage information are provided at different resolutions and at different time availability depending on where the consumer accesses the meter data. For example, a meter may have up-to-the minute measurements, but an enterprise software application might be limited to 1-hour interval meter data. Technology solutions and policy for meter data access for consumers should span these different access points - near real-time data for up-to-the minute data by a local network connection in the HAN, previous day interval data provided by the AMI head end software, and historical interval data provide by the MDMS.

Meter data access between an in-building device and a meter using a local network connection provides a key type of meter data – the minute-level data used by the consumer to make spontaneous, unplanned behavioral modifications. The tradeoff for this low latency meter data access is potential data discrepancies compared to data available from an MDMS or AMI head end system. However, a smart meter that includes gateway functionality to obtain near real time data from the meter through the AMI network may face challenges providing meter data to consumer, devices, and third-party service providers. The smart meter may receive a large amount of requests from devices, where microprocessor limitations of the smart meter and network bandwidths may present real limitations on the availability of meter data. While the number of devices currently envisioned often ranges between 1-10 devices, it is reasonable to assume much larger device populations per home and an increasing amount of third party applications requesting this data within the lifetime of the smart meter.