New electricity, water and hydrogen smart meters, DLMS and LoRa standards developments, and new studies on circularity and IoT are on the week’s technology radar.
Enlit Europe 2023 is setting a new record with the number of new technology developments being launched, including new meters, multiple new standards demonstrations and new insights on circularity and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Water Flow Indicator
Gridspertise, Enel’s joint owned innovation company, is launching a new electricity smart meter offering multiple communication options to enable the most appropriate to be selected in the field by DSOs.
Among these are Hybrid PLC and RF, Cellular LTE and Cellular NB-IoT. The new smart meter also is interoperable with third-party vendor solutions, allowing backward compatibility and integration with existing installations.
The offer also includes head end and meter data management systems as well as a pool of technical services and support activities in a metering-as-a-service approach.
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The Italgas group is unveiling a new hydrogen ready next generation smart meter – more details of which are to follow.
Janz, a company in Italy’s SIT group, is introducing the SmartIO ultrasonic water meter using patented technology with multi-protocol LoRaWAN and wMBus for walk-by or drive-by applications and offering a measurement accuracy up to R1000.
The meter, which is intended for residential applications, is aimed initially at the Italian market, where new developments are emerging with water losses approaching 40% as the infrastructure ages. Recent analysis by SIT company MeteRSit found that in one year in Italy there were 29 tenders with a total value of approximately €250 million ($273 million).
Via the eREGISTER and MyWater application, the new meter offers demand alarms for leaks, bursts, backflows, etc.
Staying with water metering, SM Factory is presenting adaptable smart electronic heads as a fast and easy to implement option to transform mechanical water meters into smart devices.
The heads use Sigfox technology for communication and are adaptable to different water meter types.
The DLMS User Association has been particularly active of late with new agreements with EPRI and the National Electrical Manufacturing Association (NEMA) in the US to advance the adoption of the DLMS protocol in that country, and with the PRIME Alliance to align the PRIME companion profile with DLMS specifications.
Extending these activities at Enlit Europe 2023, the DLMS UA is launching Generic Companion Profiles (GCPs) as standardised solutions to provide seamless data exchange between specific devices such as smart meters, remote displays and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations – these use cases mark the initial phase, with additional GCPs under development for gas and water metering and grid edge computing.
The GCPs are agnostic to hardware devices, communication technologies, cloud solutions and consumer data exchange protocols.
Among the DLMS demonstrations taking place, Wirepas and Meter&Control are showcasing Wirepas 5G Mesh technology and DLMS interoperability.
The combination is aimed to enable utilities to benefit both from DLMS’s security and bidirectional support to push and receive messages as well as from the security of network transmissions enabled by Wirepas 5G Mesh based on the publicly available spectrum around 1.9GHz in Europe.
The LoRA Alliance also has been active with updates to the LoRaWAN standard in the utilities market.
Among these is the validation by the European Committee of Normalization (CEN) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) of LoRaWAN for smart metering for electricity, water, heat and gas.
Specifically, the CEN has standardised the M-Bus adaptation layer for LPWAN especially M-Bus over LoRaWAN under series EN13757-8, while the IEC has standardised the DLMS profile for LPWAN under new part IEC 62056-8-12.
Among demonstrations at Enlit Europe 2023, the LoRa Alliance will have a device wall with more than 30 gateways and LoRaWAN-certified end-devices and sensors from member companies designed for use in metering and utilities.
Last but not least ABB is releasing new industry reports on two key topics of interest currently – the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and circularity.
ABB has found that the majority of industrial organisations have started their digitalisation journeys to improve their operational and energy efficiencies but most are still in the early stages and have yet to experience the long-term benefits.
The second report is intended as a guide for companies to embrace circular economics in today’s throw away culture, which is expected to be a key focus for global businesses in 2024.
For power distribution assets the approach could be particularly useful as when maintained, upgraded and eventually decommissioned, significant cost savings can result alongside helping to minimise the environmental impact by avoiding emissions.
Clarion Energy, Synergy BV, part of Clarion Events Group PO Box 1021, 3600 BA Maarssen, The Netherlands Main switchboard: +31 346 590 901
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