Gentrack helps utilities cut meter data processing time by 25% on AWS

The global utilities industry is undergoing a major transformation today. According to Gentrack, which provides software and services for the global utilities sector, utilities are facing growing pressure to reduce costs, become more profitable, and offer a better customer experience. At the same time, smart meters are rolling out worldwide, frequently recording and sending electricity usage data from millions of homes to utilities.

For example, the New Zealand Electricity Authority reports that 7 out of 10 New Zealand households now have smart meters. In addition, the Five Minute Settlement (5MS) programs in Australia will reduce the time interval for financial settlement in the national electricity market from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. This will lead to an expected increase in data volumes from 48 to 288 data points per meter every day.

Great Britain’s Market Wide Half Hourly Settlement (MHHS) program aims to transition 30 million electricity meterpoints to settle at half hourly (HH) intervals, with an estimated 60% currently capable of recording HH consumption data. MHHS, live in 2025, aims to enable a more flexible GB energy market so that demand can increasingly be met with renewable energy generation.

Gentrack is working to help utilities across the globe manage these challenges. “The amount of data available retailers, and other market operators will increase by several magnitudes,” says Mark Rees, Chief Technology Officer at Gentrack. “With the 5MS program, for example, you can imagine the sheer amount of data processed and aggregated every five minutes, to be used by billing systems and invoice settlement systems in near real time. Traditional on-premises business applications won’t be able to scale to meet this significant increase in data volume, and we wanted to help utilities upgrade their technology in response.”

Developing meter data services solution on AWS

Gentrack has been developing cloud-based solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for several years. Rees says, “By using the AWS cloud services together with Gentrack’s cleantech products, we’ve created a cloud-first solutions portfolio. We address the need for innovation and rapid time to market, enhance the customer experience, and lower cost to serve, resulting in optimal business profitability.”

For example, Gentrack’s Meter Data Services (MDS) is a cloud service for storing and querying large volumes of data from smart and traditional meters. MDS uses Amazon API Gateway to ingest and store data from meters for querying and exporting. The platform uses AWS Lambda serverless functions to support applications that query raw meter data and perform calculations. AWS Step Functions orchestrate Lambda functions for data extracts and reports, and Amazon Dynamo DB and Amazon S3 store all meter data.

Although Gentrack customers in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are currently using MDS, the solution is available globally.

Reducing meter data processing time by 25% in Australia

According to Gentrack, Australian utility companies using MDS are improving billing speeds, cutting processing time by 25%, and achieving 60% faster invoicing run times. These companies are also reducing ingestion duration for meter data by 80%.

“Ingesting meter data is complex today. It involves feeding data into an engine to process the information and subscription to systems that control energy devices on the ground, at the right frequency to optimize energy use,” says Rees. “Companies need to make sure they manage the network load while minimizing carbon footprint and lowering energy costs. Overall, there’s an increasing data load to be processed, and MDS on AWS sits at the center of that.”

Scaling to support data growth related to new regulations

Using MDS on AWS, Gentrack customers can scale to support anticipated increases in data volume. “Our utility customers need to manage exponential growth in meter data. AWS gives us the scalability, reliability, and performance we need to help our customers meet that growth,” says Rees. “Also, because of the way serverless infrastructure scales dynamically, MDS has proven cost-effective given the unpredictability of workloads.”

In addition, AWS helps Gentrack innovate instead of spending time on IT tasks. “By having fewer operational tasks like capacity management and planning and system patching, our team can focus on building products and measuring customer outcomes,” says Rees.

Gentrack is also growing its business on AWS. “We’re participating in several rapid prototyping initiatives where AWS experts help us accelerate innovation,” says Rees. “We’re planning to conduct our software development on a native AWS platform over the next few years as we continue to grow.”