Efficient and scalable Automatic Meter Reading

Success case

Bringing hourly metering to household customers is now a legislative requirement in Finland. While this in itself is more advanced than in many other countries, the legislation does not ensure future smart grid functionalities or process infrastructure that are needed to enable new energy ecosystems.

Smart Grids and Energy Markets program (SGEM) has enabled the development of processes that ensure availability of all information and opening of all communication channels between the Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) equipment, the end customer and the energy market participants involved. Currently, these are not in full use as both the market and the technologies are still emerging. What SGEM has made possible is that we now have an understanding of where to direct development and which features and processes to focus on in detail.

In the current economy, developing these kinds of future opportunities is not something that individual companies can budget on. The issues are also greater than national markets and require collaboration beyond company partnerships to create globally competitive solutions. SGEM has enabled cross-disciplinary cooperation by introducing the necessary funding and cooperative forums.

In an efficiently implemented AMR solution, there are predefined operational processes between the market participants and AMR implementation partners. These enable the use of shared system resources that can later provide functionalities like low-voltage fault detection and mapping, demand response activities and accurate reporting solutions. Empower IM has developed these processes while participating in the SGEM program, and is now in the process of implementing distributed demand response implementations with market connectivity.

Fortum has studied interaction between users and smart homes in SGEM and also looked at the information required by end users. Empower IM has developed a networked reporting solution that can make use of smart metering information and deliver it to end users through integration and partner software. SGEM has enabled the combination of independently developed SME innovations and challenging distributed AMR solutions in a novel way.

Previously, it was not feasible to implement new innovations in major corporate environments as integration issues and rigid processes often posed scalability problems for the kind of single problem solution innovations typically created by SMEs. The process understanding, created by studying the AMR environment and identifying the development direction of smart grids in SGEM, has enabled pinpointing the solutions made possible by integrating several small innovations into holistic systems.

In 2013, SGEM will deliver the Demand Response Pilot Implementation results. These results will be based on real data, but will be built on future market structure research in order to validate what has been found in the SGEM program. This implementative research approach gives us a unique opportunity to experience future Smart Energy Market solutions. It will also enable us to work together in order to incorporate our findings into what will one day be our common Smart Energy Market spanning the European Energy Realm.

Efficient and scalable Automatic Meter Reading

For more information: SGEM Program Manager Jani Valtari (ABB), jani.valtari@cleen.fi

10:00 Beginng of an incident > Fuse blown in one phase (somewhere in the feeder)

10:01 Alarms of type one phase missing received from the smart meters in the affected zone

10:03 Power status query sent the quiet smart meters in the feeder

10:05 Replies received > Detection of faulty section finalized > Network connectivity model updated

10:09 The incident identifiend as a fault interruption > START message for the subscribers in the faulty section

11:05 Fault repaired and power restored to the faulty section

11:08 Power restoration verified > END message for the subscribers in the faulty section

Low voLtage fauLt interruption management powered by amr integration