Transmission & Distribution Technology
Europe invests in smart metering
Throughout Europe, smart metering legislation is driving utilities to optimise their grids. Eugene McCarthy reports.
Por toda Europa, la legislación de contadores inteligentes impulsa a los servicios públicos a mejorar sus redes eléctricas. Informa Eugene McCarthy.
In ganz Europa werden Versorger durch die Gesetze zur Verwendung intelligenter Messtechnik gezwungen, ihre Netze zu optimieren. Eugene McCarthy berichtet.
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Fig. 1. Kamstrup’s OMNIA Smart Grid meter will help with Danish grid optimisation.
ith many European countries requiring smart metering to be in place by 2020, utilities are now turning to suppliers of smart
meters and other smart grid hardware in order to achieve the necessary goals. In Denmark, a consortium of eight Danish utilities, the MV Group, has commissioned Kamstrup to deliver 153,000 smart meters over a three-year period. Kamstrup, also a Danish company, is a leading manufacturer of smart energy solutions.
Te upgrade to smart meters is expected to make the utility group ready for the smart grid by enabling crucial optimisations of grid management and administration. Spokesman for the MV Group Per Nielsen, said: “With these meter replacements, we are looking forward to offering the most modern technology on the market to our
customers, who will be able to follow their energy usage in detail and decrease it accordingly.” For the utilities,
the investment means a rewarding pay-off: “Tere is no doubt that our new smart metering system will give all companies a lower total cost per year, and we expect a payback time of just seven to ten years,” he added.
Te system to be
delivered is Kamstrup’s OMNIA Smart Grid suite that will comprise all supply forms in the areas including electricity, heat and water meters. All meters will be connected to the same system, delivering big
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data to the utilities, who can benefit from a fine grained picture of supply and consumption – the most needed prerequisites of a strong customer service and grid optimisation (Fig. 1). Te order follows in the wake of the long- awaited announcement of the Danish Energy Agency that all electricity meters must be remotely read by the end of 2020, allowing consumers to track their consumption hour by hour. Moving to Austria, Echelon and its partner
Kapsch Smart Energy have won several smart metering pilots with leading Austrian utilities Wien Energie, IKB and Steiermark. Te pilots, which together represent potential future orders of nearly 3.5 million smart meters and networked energy services (NES) software platform licenses, are being prompted by a new energy edict in Austria that requires utilities to achieve specific grid modernisation goals by 2019. “As Austrian utilities work towards compliance with the new energy law, Echelon is winning important pilots by offering products that enable utility companies to not only meet the new mandates, but also improve the overall safety, efficiency and reliability of their energy grid,” said Michael Anderson, Echelon’s senior vice president and general manager, grid modernisation.
Future developments With an eye on future developments, he added, “Tese pilots represent early traction in a crucial phase of this growing market. With our continued success in demonstrating the value that NES offers to our customers, Echelon is well positioned to compete for large-scale deployment tenders once that process begins.” Te pilots are scheduled to take place through 2014 and utility companies are expected to begin rolling out smart meters throughout Austria in high volume beginning in 2015. In Germany, Siemens Smart Grid division is expanding its smart-grid platform EnergyIP with the addition of application software components for the German smart metering market. Siemens says the move will provide power supply companies with a central IT solution for the administration of smart-meter gateways
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