Voltage reduction strategies are not without their challenges. One of the most common is visibility. Historically, Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) and methods have been manual, requiring system operators to monitor the process at all times with very little visible data to help drive decision-making. This lack of visibility makes it difficult for operators to push voltage reduction beyond one or two percent without fear of violating American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards or causing lots of customer support calls.

However, in recent years, CVR has received new attention as metering, communications, and control technologies have advanced. To increase the impact of voltage reduction initiatives, some utilities have begun to use data from end-of-line Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) to measure meter-level voltage. This has given system operators observability of end of line service voltage and the ability to effectively push their voltage reduction as much as four to five percent, without worrying about violating ANSI standards.

Utilities can realize these results, with or without an AMI, using OATI webCVR — a cloud-deployed, subscription-based voltage reduction solution that is incredibly easy to deploy, maintain, and use.