Metering.com - Metering International Edition 4

European Utility Awards

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:25:59 +0100

:NODATE: THE 2008 EUROPEAN UTILITY AWARDS

The winners of the European Utility Awards 2008 were announced at the 10th Metering, Billing/CRM Europe in Amsterdam in September.

The awards acknowledge excellence within the industry with recognition of key projects from utilities and their service providors that have applied practical metering, billing and CRM to achieve improvements in performance. The awards were announced by Maikel van Verseveld, Partner of Accenture, who were sponsors of the awards.

Metering International Edition 4, 2008

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:21:55 +0100

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Current Affairs

Association News

Iberdrola Prime Project - above PHY layer

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:04:19 +0100

:NODATE:As outlined in this year’s issue #2 article on PRIME, prototypes are beginning to be tested on field. A Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, and a whole set of different convergence layers (CL) to cover related industry applications have been produced.

Iberdrola is deeply involved in a project that gives a solution to a remote meter management mandate on its whole electric meter installed base. The Spanish Ministerial Order ITC/3860/2007 sets the obligation for all utilities operating in Spain to replace all their meters below 15 kW with new smart meters by 2018. This implies the rollout of around 10 million new units in the case of Iberdrola. The consortium formed by Iberdrola along with Advanced Digital Design, CURRENT Group, Landis+Gyr, STMicroelectronics, uSysCom and ZIV Medida has been working hard to produce a set of specifications that may get the best result out of the previously designed physical layer, and with the constraints imposed by the different low voltage networks targeted within this effort.

Linyang Electronics sincere and innovative

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:01:34 +0100

:NODATE:Jiangsu Linyang Electronics Co., Ltd., founded in 1995, is a national high-tech enterprise specializing in R&D, production and sale of electronic products for utilities. It is one of the largest manufacturers of electronic electricity meters in China.

There are over 2 200 employees and Linyang’s annual sales revenue has reached RMB 1.32 billion (US$ 0.19 billion) in 2007. Linyang develops and distributes the following serials meters to the market:

Interview with Lalit Jalan, CEO Reliance Energy

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:55:03 +0100

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What is the structure of Reliance Energy and Reliance Infrastructure?

Reliance Infrastructure Ltd is not only India’s largest private sector enterprise in power utility but also the largest private sector player in many other infrastructure sectors of India. In the power sector the company is involved in generation, transmission, distribution and trading of electricity and constructing power plants as EPC partners. In the infrastructure space the company is focused on roads, urban infrastructure and real estate.

Prepayment system for irrigation purposes

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:42:41 +0100

:NODATE: Nowadays, prepayment products and systems have been put to use in many impressive ways, covering not only traditional residential users, but also industrial and commercial users; not only the electricity meter system, but also the water meter and gas meter system; not only the smart integrated meter system with one key (card), but also the multi-meter system.

The prepaid method can either be the contact type IC card, or the non-contact type IC card – or the CPU card, or Keypad import, or network, and so on. As a leading meter provider, Wasion has had considerable experience in prepayment products and systems. We have had success with an IC card residential prepayment system in Africa, a power consumption management system in a Taiwanese high school, a network prepayment system in Singapore and a prepayment irrigation system in Bangladesh.The following case study describes the Wasion-BMDA project in Bangladesh.

Do it yourself metering - a case study

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:34:21 +0100

:NODATE: With the slowness of UK regulators to agree on a standard for smart metering in the UK, and subsequent roll-out, a niche has formed to provide smart metering to end users who do not wish to wait for regulation to do so. This is the case study of the design and development of such a meter.

Our passion as a team was to reduce national energy consumption and in particular domestic energy reduction. When first coming together we brainstormed ideas for a product to help individuals to use less energy. Would it be an efficient kettle, a more sustainable fridge or some kind of smart thermostat? To aid our design efforts we conducted a large amount of user research, discussing with people their attitudes, habits and behaviours regarding their energy use. The overriding response we received from this was that people a) had no idea how much different appliances used and b) expressed an interest in knowing. It then became clear that the product we should develop should inform people of their energy use in a continual manner. It was also clear that precise metering was not required, and that energy ‘monitoring’ would be sufficient to create behaviour change.

Multi energy metering for extreme cost efficiency and better energy management

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:32:08 +0100

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Advanced Metering Management (AMM) systems have been making significant developments in response to advances in technology and economic developments. Now, an AMM system and communications infrastructure can be used for electricity meter reading and large scale multi energy readings such as district heating, gas and water.

“By integrating multiple energy forms into just one system, a utility can enjoy savings of up to 50%,” said Kari Huttunen, Portfolio Manager, Landis+Gyr. “Besides reading one’s own customers’ energy data information, it’s now possible to provide services for other heating and water companies that operate in the same area. Savings are also achieved through streamlining logistics, resulting in less operational costs.”

Interview with John Mogg

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:28:34 +0100

:NODATE:As a former director-general of the European Commission’s DG Markt, John Mogg, current chair of the European Regulators’ Group for Electricity and Gas (ERGEG), is well placed to consider the effects on the market of the third liberalisation package for energy. Despite contrary European Parliament and Council positions, Mogg, also chair of UK energy regulator Ofgem, continues to see no justification for less unbundling in gas than electricity. Appointed a life peer in the UK in April 2008, the former civil servant further admits that legal constraints have made it difficult to give the proposed Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) real powers to take binding decisions.

Do you think EU energy ministers were right to propose three options for both gas and electricity?

Technolog's 'Cello' calls the tune in GSM-based AMR

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:23:52 +0100

:NODATE: Based in the rolling Derbyshire Dales in the very heart of England, Technolog Ltd was founded in 1981 to develop specialised electronic instruments for utility applications. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Technolog supplied tens of thousands of innovative data logging products to gas and water utilities for monitoring distribution networks. Technolog is now a leading supplier of such devices in the UK and several other countries.

Since 2000, Technolog has significantly expanded operations to encompass remote metering solutions through a family of products known as ‘Cello’ and has become expert in the use of low-power GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) technology for retrieval of metered data. The Company operates an international meter data collection service and has created a specialist service division to install and maintain its products. The Technolog group employs some 200 staff in the UK and France and is a division of Roper Industries Inc.

Radio based remote reading system shows fortitude in Greenland

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:21:13 +0100

:NODATE: The Greenland based utility Nukissiorfiit will replace all consumption meters in Greenland with intelligent Kamstrup electricity meters connected to a radio based automated reading system, in a project scheduled for completion in 2012.

The project comprises 46,000 metering points in a combined system for electricity, water and heat consumption. 34,000 of these are electricity meters.

Survey of energy and water metering and monitoring

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:08:12 +0100

:NODATE:European local authorities are collecting data on water, electricity and gas consumption in buildings. Most of this data is gathered by the traditional method of manually reading utility meters, with relatively few authorities collecting data automatically through electronic billing systems or through automatic meter reading systems.

The main reason for collecting this data is to identify potential high levels of consumption, verify utility billing data and to evaluate the success of investment in energy and water reduction measures.

Comfortable indoor climate with district cooling

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:00:11 +0100

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District Cooling tops today’s agenda in many countries around the world, including United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the Middle East, where constant high temperatures call for a tremendous need for district cooling, in commercial as well as residential buildings. A crucial part of such systems, that help control and monitor the amount of chilled water required to cool down a specific structure, is flow meters.

During the past 20 years District Cooling has become more economical, environmentally sound and energy efficient. Combined with the rising concern for climate and environmental issues, global demand for alternatives to individual air-conditioning systems has increased dramatically, creating a renewed interest for district cooling equipment. Although this is a worldwide trend, District Cooling has developed differently from country to country and from region to region. There are several reasons for this:

A smart city project demonstration

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:06:30 +0100

:NODATE:This technology report begins by reviewing the technologies needed to build a secure and energy sustainable city from the standpoint of electrical distribution and ends by presenting a demonstration project of such technology in the city of Jerez de la Frontera currently under development by ENDESA.

The solution adopted is based on the following points:

Business needs: Nowadays, electricity is equivalent to comfort and prosperity. It is therefore necessary to optimise the quality/price ratio and the quality of supply at the minimum price.
Strategy: The network must be reliable, predictive, efficient and safe. To achieve this it is necessary to have generators as close as possible to consumers. This requires providing intelligence to the network through integration.
Tactics: Using emerging technologies. DER, ADA, V2G, AMI ... and especially ICT.

The fundamental key of the concept of a smart grid can be summarised as obtaining a secure, efficient and self-healing grid. This will require the intercommunication of all electrical infrastructures through communications with the appropriate levels of reliability and bandwidth. It is ideal to reuse the existing electrical infrastructure as much as possible, including lines of the distribution grid and associated installations.

Intergrated circuits for advanced metering system solutions

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:34:50 +0100

:NODATE: With the growing pressure on the world’s mineral and energy resources, and the inevitable increase in the cost of energy – along with the growing environmental pressures on ‘clean’ energy generation – the demand for advanced metering systems is surely set to grow. The pressure is thus on meter designers and manufacturers to produce sophisticated metering instruments that provide a host of consumption data that is useful for both the consumer and utility alike and automatically transfers the information. Yet the meters must still provide a cost-effective system solution to utilities.