The cooperative's legacy database struggled to ingest 15-minute interval readings from new smart meters. End-of-month meter-to-cash processing required four days of overnight batch computing, resulting in frequent database timeouts and delayed billing statements for customers.
Automating Smart Meter Data Ingestion and Billing Integration for a Regional Electric Utility
A regional electric cooperative serving one hundred twenty thousand customer accounts required a modern telemetry data pipeline to process smart meter interval data.
Challenge
Solution
FlipWorks engineered a cloud-native time-series data ingestion engine built on TimescaleDB and Apache Kafka. The pipeline validates, filters, and stores millions of daily meter readings in real time, delivering verified billing determinants directly to the cooperative's SAP IS-U accounting environment.
Result
- Reduced monthly billing data preparation processing time from four days to under two hours.
- Ingested 100% of daily 15-minute smart meter interval readings without database lockups or data loss.
- Provided customers with real-time daily energy consumption graphs within their online web accounts.