Smart grid |
allows data transmission via the same cables that bring power to the customer premises, avoiding any need to modify the home installation for handling consumption data. Thanks to power-line communications, smart meters can also communicate with smart “in-home- devices” connected to the customer’s electrical installation, allowing the acquisition of different energy data parameters in near real-time conditions.
Any electronic device manufacturer can easily include built-in data exchange capabilities, thus opening a new market for electronics and allowing end-users to develop their own smart- home ecosystem.
What lessons have been learned? The Italian first-generation smart metering system achieved great success very quickly. The payback time was within four years while the technology was guaranteed for 15 years.
The technology proved to be highly reliable, with no replacements due to faults (15 years of operational experience has demonstrated that static meters assure high reliability in terms of metrology performance and durability). Thanks to the new devices, the Italian DSOs managed more than 97% of the served customers remotely, leading to a significant reduction in operational costs. For the remaining 3%, the telecommunications technologies were not able to collect metering data, implying intervention by in-field personnel (when needed). The first-generation architecture was based on a two-step data acquisition process: first, data stored in the meters were gathered locally thanks to an intermediate device called a concentrator. Second, the concentrator forwarded the gathered data to the head end systems (HES) of the DSO using cellular technologies.
Such architecture has achieved very good results in terms of efficiency (data concentrators represent a distributed intelligence that can optimise management processes) and effectiveness (data is stored by the in-field devices and transferred when the communication channel is available).
Nevertheless, scope for improving the communication technologies has been identified. Despite the success achieved, in the 15-years of experience some drawbacks were revealed. The most important was the lack of a standard interface and a dedicated communication channel to promptly inform the customer about near real-time electricity consumption and production, as required by Recommendation n. 2012/148/EU. According to settlement regulation in Italy, energy registers were collected on a monthly basis by DSOs, validated and forwarded to retailers for the billing process.
Another limitation was the slow reconfiguration process required to update the devices’ firmware, due to the traditional architecture employed in the HES that was not able to assure a high level of parallelisation for update activities. Regarding service quality, the information available in terms of voltage (interruptions and variations) could not be fully leveraged due to events buffer limitations.
From a market point of view, retailers and 3rd party service providers developed a wide range of new services and offers, thanks to which the energy market has gained strong competitive dynamism (with millions of energy customers migrating to the free market). Nevertheless, some improvements were identified in terms of information availability that enabled even stronger offers in a scenario where distributed generation, demand-response and electric mobility represent the next generation applications to be served by the energy market. Enel’s Open Meter technology builds on these lessons learned. Some other key conclusions to be drawn from Enel smart meter experience can be
summarised as follows: ● Smart meter technology needs to be adopted at large scale to assure maximum benefits to the energy system and to the community and to enable customers to access the same level of services.
● A massive roll-out needs to be implemented as quickly as possible, minimising the inefficiencies arising from simultaneous management of traditional and smart metering systems.
● The community is the best ally of smart meter technology. It is important to engage customers in the adoption the technology since it ensures that the full benefits are achieved in terms of market flexibility, new tariff adoption, etc.
● Smart meter technology needs to take into account the important role played by the customers’ understanding of energy efficiency. Smart meters need to incorporate specific features that facilitate the sharing with customers of key information about energy consumption so that they can adopt improved behaviour in line with more sustainable energy use.
The evolving role of smart meters The new generation smart meter has been designed to become a true network sensor, able to collect detailed information in the case of network events (eg, voltage interruption, voltage restoration, fault conditions etc), reducing the time to intervention in the event of outages and ensuring efficient network operation. In Italy, the ongoing replacement of 32 million first-generation smart meters with new ones is establishing a sort of “nervous system” for electric network 2.0, a smart grid in which customer smart metering systems are increasingly interconnected with distribution grid devices, allowing remote control and network automation enhancement. Thanks to this integration and the evolution of grid management algorithms as well as grid edge computational power, the infrastructure will be increasingly resilient, and capable of guaranteeing efficient operation in all conditions, providing high-quality services to all our end-users. That’s why smart meters can fast forward the energy future and help build more resilient, participatory and sustainable grids.
Current projects
In terms of smart metering technologies, Enel’s current ongoing projects are:
32 | October 2021 |
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● Italy: ongoing large scale roll-out of the Open Meter project. More than 21 million Open Meters installed to date. The roll-out of 32 million meters will be completed in 2024.
● Romania: ongoing large scale roll-out of smart meters. More than 900 000 smart meters installed to date. The roll-out of 2.4 million smart meters will be completed in 2026.
● Brazil: ongoing JOBI smart meter pilot project. More than 100 000 smart meters installed to date. The pilot project (300 000 units) will be completed in 2022. Also in 2022, the large scale roll-out will start, envisaging replacement of more than 7 million meters by 2026.
● Chile: large scale roll-out to be started in 2022 according to current legislation.
Next steps?
A major goal for Enel Group is the roll-out of smart meter technology to 100% of customers connected to its distribution networks by 2030. In 2021 Enel also set up a new company called Gridspertise to help electricity distribution companies of any size and geography to upgrade networks by rolling-out integrated sustainable and reliable smart grid technologies to meet the evolving needs of grid users and electricity end-customers. Gridspertise leverages Enel’s 20-years- plus experience in research, innovation and management of grids to offer cutting-edge solutions in three main transformation areas across the entire value chain: the digitalisation of metering and grid edge (including smart meters); network infrastructure; and field operations. Through this new company, Enel aims to extend the impact of its knowledge and best practices, sharing them with other stakeholders, creating a new platform for innovation that will also accelerate the development and testing of new cutting-edge technologies, and enriching the features and benefits offered via its portfolio of smart meters. Gridspertise targets global markets, starting with Europe and Latin America, where Enel already has extensive business, and expanding in North America and Asia-Pacific, with the mission to be a trusted partner to DSOs both internal and external to the group, designing solutions that are fit for purpose and tailored to the requirements and needs of its customers. In terms of vision (as already mentioned above), smart metering technology will evolve towards an IoT approach, where the meters will increase their role as distributed sensors on the edge, always connected and able to interact with external devices in order to enable new services oriented to flexibility and to the active role of customers in the energy market. Indeed, smart meters enable the integration of new operational and control functionalities for grids (eg, voltage and reactive power management, maintaining system stability, operational security, resilience and quality of service). These will become increasingly important with the rise of distributed energy and increased use of demand-side flexibility measures, as the energy transition picks up pace.
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