Most of the smart meters deployed around the world today are being used for little more than collecting power billing data—in other words,they're remote-control cash registers.But smart meters can also help utilities find nested power outages,predict which transformers are about to fail,monitor power quality to identify unexpected grid balancing problems,to name a few options.
Source:
http://smartgrid.testing-blog.com/2012/11/11/the-next-generation-of-meter-data-management/#more-27466
