Robotic Process Automation for Automated Energy Meter Reading Submissions

There is a lot of hype about at the moment about what is known as “Robotic Process Automation” or RPA. So much so, that the Economist (April 17th edition) recently ran an article about the rise of some unknown software businesses in this area that are seriously challenging the normal Silicon Valley incumbents.

In brief, RPA relates to an area of software development which is about automating repetitive tasks & processes that may be seen as boring and not necessarily of value to a human undertaking the tasks. In addition, due to the repetitive nature, implementing RPA can reduce errors significantly whilst automating the audit trail to ensure nothing is missed when something needs to be investigated.

RPA is also about connecting disconnected systems that would otherwise require someone to connect them through a manual moving of the data from the first site / database to the next.

At Argand Solutions, our Client Data Services provision is a form of RPA in the sense that we can create any automated analytical / value processes for any client anywhere in the World.

In the energy world, an example of this is the requirement for many customers to submit their meter readings manually through an energy supplier website. This manual submission is often because the installation of “smart meters” has so far not scaled to the levels that were promised - meaning that even though meter readings can be collected remotely they are typically done by 3rd party businesses who then require their clients to manually submit those readings to their chosen energy supplier for either payment of generation revenues e.g. feed-in-tariff in the UK, export income and / or import tariff calculation.

An example of this is shown in this short 2 minute video

In response to this requirement, we have developed our own RPA in relation to energy data and automated meter reading inputs. An example is shown by our service for one of our clients, Plymouth Energy Community (PEC).

Each quarter PEC have to submit the generation meter readings for their various community renewable assets to their different suppliers. This takes time, is boring and can lead to simple errors. As such, PEC came to Argand to ask if we could automate their meter submissions which we have now done via our Client Data Services platform, allowing PEC full autonomy to determine when and how they wish the meter readings to be submitted & managed.

So how have Argand Solutions enabled this to happen? What’s going on behind the scenes?

In brief, our Client Data Services solution has leveraged the ability for a computer or “bot” to automatically load up the required website, collect the required data from our database (or the client’s) and then automatically navigate the website to enter the required data in the required elements on each page => all without

Moreover, every time our system “submits” or clicks the equivalent of a “next page” button we store an image of the entries and create an audit file of everything that has been submitted to, and received by, the website with appropriate timestamps..

And when the process has been completed, the client will receive an email with all the submission images / values so they can reference against their income / payments at the end of each week, month, quarter.

This is just one example and we’d love to hear from anyone who would like us to see how our platform can enable greater automation of the actions that are too tedious and error-prone.

Thanks for reading !

Fraser Durham, Commercial Director