By seeing the mass implementation of smart meters across Europe, we cannot overlook the obstacles for further development. In the webinar, we discussed what has already been done to make the best use of smart metering and try to suggest solutions that will bring us closer to the implementation of smart cities.
In this first part of the webinar, our guests Mr. Roberto Zangrandi, secretary-general of EDSO; Mr. Tomas Llobet, managing director of ESMIG; and Mr. Sergio Lazzarotto, president and executive director of DLMS association talked about compatibility, legislation and multi- utility in Smart Cities.
What do you think, could we achieve device compatibility in smart cities worldwide, and how?
Sergio Lazzarotto: Before I talk a little bit about this topic, I would like to make a small clarification. In this webinar we are talking about smart city strategic infrastructures. We are talking about water, gas and electricity. Smart cities, are a market, which is a much larger domain including home automation, mobility, etc… a much larger domain than strategic infrastructure, it goes beyond the DLMS field of activities. The DLMS/COSEM protocol is really only about strategic infrastructure, which is the most important part of smart cities. This is the lifeblood of the smart city. Without electricity, water, heat and gas, the smartcity dies. This is the world on which DLMS focuses.
If we talk about compatibility, we need to differentiate between communications compatibility and data exchange compatibility. Often, we confuse interoperability between the telecommunication protocol and the data exchange protocol. Often these two things get mixed up and on purpose to make a communication technology looking better then what it is. Sometime in communication media you can have the application layer that are standardized to, take Bluetooth as an example. What’s important is to understand that when you standardize data exchange protocol like we do, thinking that you can do a complete implementation based only on one telecommunication technology it won’t work. Depending where in Strategic Infrastructure devices are used and for which Infrastructure we are talking about, you have to trade-off between different parameters that are fundamentals such as device battery life, communication technology penetration, data bandwidth, processing power, cost, data protocol overheads, communication protocol overheads etc…. This means that believing one can fulfill all the Strategic Infrastructures implementations needs only with one communication technology, it is wishful thinking. Therefore, in term of interoperability the best is to have a data exchange standard used at application level that is communication protocol agnostic which can interface through standardized APIs with as many different communication technologies as possible. However, while until today we have been standardizing the data exchange protocol, we want now to move at a higher level of compatibility by defining standardized devices implementations. By analogy we want to standardize the way your mail client should behave with its mail server and which minimum set of functionalities you mail client should implement. This means that within this level of features set definition two mail clients developed and implemented into two different mobiles will behave exactly in the same way for these standardized functionalities or use cases. This is exactly what DLMS Generic Companion Profiles are, a standardized implementation of DLMS/COSEM to fulfil our recommended use cases, one should implement into a given device at minimum, without forbidding to add proprietary added value to leave the door open to innovation, but without compromising the standardized implementation.
This is a major step to bring the digital convenience to the consumers. Let’s imagine your EV charger connected to your smart meter to operate in a smart way fully integrated into the electricity grid. If both sides implement the same EV Charging Station Generic Companion Profile, within the same communication technology, both are interchangeable among different manufacturers. Today you have one car and you connect your charger to your smart meter. Tomorrow, you change your car and consequently your charger, no problem you connect it to the smart meter, and it is “plug & play”, the same way two WIFI speakers’ devices would connect from two different manufacturers, which do not require you to change your router.
Thanks to the Generic Companion Profiles DLMS is developing ,this is the level of compatibility we want to shoot for. By next fall till end next spring, we will release several Generic Companion Profile, for the Electricity, Water, Heat and Gas Smart Metering, but also for the EV Charging Station, the Remote Display and the Multi-Utility Gateway. This will completely revolutionize the way the electricity, the water and the gas will be consumed by bringing the digital convenience in the hands of the consumers offering the Energy and the Water as a Service.
Roberto Zangrandi: I believe that we will forcefully demand from all developers and all operators alike the plug-and-play. It means a lot of upfront agreements and upfront technical bargaining and negotiations among suppliers and regional equipment manufacturers in our industry. We have seen progress and availability from manufacturers in that direction. The easier and simpler it is, and the more usable frameworks are offered, the wider the market will be.
If we limit this to the smart meter, we cannot leave aside the fact that the flexibility and the role of the active consumers must be also taken into account. That will be one of the most important variables in the near future. There are repeated rollouts of smart meters of different generations and there is not an alignment on the capabilities of the meters altogether, all the same in every country of Europe. We will have to cope, for a certain number of years, with different availability of data coming from the meter beyond the basic data that the meter can provide as far as measuring is concerned. This is one of the difficulties that I see.
The other difficulty will be to bring together quality and quantity and the packages of offers and services that will be available with the distribution networks and to have a suitable approach that can render, on one side plug-and-play and on the other interoperability with different products that in that offer are going to play a role of measurement, of support to the flexibility that is requested.
View from our side, also considering the restrictions that might come from the legislative framework, is not allowing the agreements and cooperation beyond the framework. Otherwise, you can think of having a secondary agreement of commercial nature rather than technological nature. Staying within the boundaries of the anti-trust cartel disposition, I think the big role of the operators will be to be ready to sit down at the table with the manufacturers and depict what will be needed in the next 15 years. And to have a great inventory of the number of devices and localization of the devices that are going to be replaced in the next 15 years and have a detailed mapping of the different rollouts of the successive generations of the smart meters. These are the difficulties as far as a field-related view of smart metering is concerned.
And the separation between telecommunication on one side and the intrinsic value of metering on the other side that implies a matter of series of communication protocols is extremely important. In this respect, we should be able to reach a common high standard as far as the communication is concerned and in an interoperable way have the possibility to connect that standard to the values of telecommunication. In my opinion, that is one of the biggest challenges that we have.
These are the two loopholes we should overcome. Managing the existing is not difficult, because everybody does it. Transiting the current legislative framework and regulatory framework for the next 15 years can be imagined.
Tomas Llobet: I think we are still at the point where we need to reach interoperability. It has not yet been achieved to its full potential. We will be talking about smart cities a lot today, so I think it’s important to explain what a smart city is: it is a place where everything, including traditional networks and infrastructure, are made more resilient and efficient thanks to the use of digital solutions. Ultimately, smart cities are for the benefit of the businesses and the consumers.
We need to start with infrastructure and we need the full deployment of smart meters. We were supposed to reach 80% deployment of smart meters for electricity by 2020, but will most likely reach it by the end of 2025, and gas meters will probably be between 40 and 45% by that time. We need to modernize and deploy the hardware. Some countries in Europe have already done this, but not all.
At ESMIG, we have a multi-utility metering approach. Electricity, heat, gas and water meters need to work together to reach interoperability. They need to work together and need the same standard for the interface so that everything can connect and speak the same language. All the devices need to work together regardless of the fact that their characteristics and applications are different.
What organizations should collaborate in order to accomplish forward-thinking legislation and regulation in the smart cities field?
Roberto Zangrandi: What Tomas mentioned is extremely important. Because what is a smart city? It’s not just energy. Think of the European water crisis, the gas limitations that will be imposed maybe even for cooking and heating… A smart city is a system of interoperable devices that allocate the best amount of resources where they are needed. They take care to manage it in order to prevent or limit the stress of distribution of different commodities for the cities.
Different system distributors that are operating in big, urban areas should be on the same page. We still question the specificity of those distribution system operators that manage either electricity or gas or both. But it is not enough. We need to reach interoperability with the water system, heating etc. It’s not just a cross or inter-sectoral integration of the different sources of energy. It is the management and the ability to shift from one to another according to their development. This is probably what is in front of the collective work of the system operators.
As EDSO, I question whether it was legitimate that we handle just the electricity. Of course, the framework requires that we specialize in electricity but we should not lose sight of the other system operators and we should move one step forward and advance in different approaches and reach a common way to tackle problems. We need a more open mind.
Tomas Llobet: I agree with Roberto, we need more of a system approach and need to look at a wider picture. DSOs are key if you look at smart cities, digitalization in energy, and the integration of renewables.
Every organization which is part of an ecosystem should be able to work together. Every organization has their own interests and these interests may be more aligned with some organizations than others, but we all need to work altogether. We have 3 organizations here with different characteristics and nature but from ESMIG’s perspective we consider both EDSO and DLMS as some of our closest partners. Ultimately, it’s not just us, we need to make sure that legislators and regulators are implementing with a bit more speed. In Europe, that is one of the biggest issues. Europe is great at reaching consensus, but that happens at the cost of speedy implementation.
Sergio Lazzarotto: What I think is lacking today is to make things running in parallel. Often what we have seen in the past is that you have the legislation that is defining the legislative framework; then after you have the industry that is aggregating players together to establish the standardization body; then after that, you have the standardization body which should do its own standardization work. If every step takes several years, by the time you have the standardized device hitting the market it will take what ? 10-15 years ……. Nowadays this doesn’t work anymore, it is no more aligned with the technology renewal and the consumers’ expectations change.
The standardization needs to run in parallel with the legislation while manufacturers are developing early stage standardized devices. At the same time, the industry lobby or the entities that are representing the industry should be part of this game as well. And need to work in parallel.
If we are at the given point capable of having the early stage standardization that is the one that is used by the legislative body to build the legislative framework, while the manufacturer can develop the first generation products ahead of the legislation becoming effective and bring them to the market, by the time the legislation framework become effective, early adopter will have already in hands standardized devices complying with the legislation and the manufacturers working already on their second device generation development.
These parallel tracks must be managed together. Failing to achieve this we are risking to have devices deployed in the market which later on will not comply anymore with the legislation and creating two major issues: a legacy installed base to deal with and consumers unsatisfaction for having to spend money on products which are not compliant anymore which is the worse situation to deal with to standardize a market.
Conclusion:
Multi-utility, as a part of Smart Cities, is a system of interoperable devices that, in addition to electricity management, also manage water distribution, district heating, etc. It is necessary to achieve the compatibility of these devices, if not at the level of a single communication protocol, then at the application level.
Often in the past we could see that legislation lags behind market needs, because technology advances faster than the adoption of standards. Therefore, it is necessary that the processes of standardization and legislation take place in parallel.
ESMIG, EDSO and DLMS association, although the organizations of a different nature, together with legislators and regulators, have to build an ecosystem in which they work together in order to accelerate the implementation of standards.