Welcome to the first part of the interview with Dieter Brunner, former president of ESMIG and
the chairmen of the board of Integra Metering. With his years of experience in the field of
electrical and electronic manufacturing industry, he shared his thoughts on multi-utilities so far.

What are your personal experiences in implementing Multi-utility so far? Can you tell us a little
more about work in general and that related to Multi-utility in your company?

I am the chairman of the supervisory board at Integra and, as you may know, Integra is a company that produces smart water meters, as well as heat meters, specifically on a distribution level. A lot of companies and factories are equipped with these meters that are then communicating with the building management system. The water meters as such are a part of the smart water meter networks and sometimes are part of a multi-utility networks.

Regarding my experience with multi-utility at Iskraemeco, I have worked with Dutch customers for many years, and they use multi-utility. They call it “Dual Fuel” – an electricity meter connected with a gas meter. The electricity meter is the hub and the gas meter delivers the information via wired MBus or wireless MBus into the electricity meter. From there, the data goes to the system database.

There have been several millions of meters and the experience so far has been quite good, both on our side and the utility side.

It is always interesting to see the difference between the electricity and the gas meters. Electricity meter by nature is powered from the electricity network and all the other ones are normally powered by batteries. So that makes it exciting to see how their connection will work, in terms of data access, data transport, etc.

Lately, we are involved in a project in Belgium where there will be water, gas, and electricity meters. Integra will deliver smart water meters which will be connected to the network with the gas and electricity meters. It is a pilot project that has just started, and that should prove the compatibility of the systems and the meters.

There are also some other situations where city utilities work together. Some 15 years ago it started in Finland with smart electricity meters and heat meters, but eventually they separated again because the ownership of the meters was not the same and shareholders had different goals. So you can see that there are both sides. I believe that in the future we will see more of multi-utilities with the smart meter rollouts and gateway rollouts.

Are there any standards, any legislation and regulations in the area of Multi-utility?

No really. Not that I know. That is one of the challenges. The communication part and what data should be transferred should be regulated together. On the other side, there is a question of the ownership of the data and data privacy, and we still have a long way to go.

What organizations should collaborate to further develop legislation and regulation in Multi-
utility? With which organizations your organization cooperates regarding this?

I think one of the organizations is the association of meter companies, ESMIG, Farecogaz, Aqua and such. They should work together and give input to the European Commission so that the EU can have a unified regulation and process. The commission should have  certain demands that should be fulfilled for all utilities – gas, water, electricity, etc.

We should also think of the C02 levels, it’s not just electricity, it is also gas that is responsible. And with the current energy crises, it is something we should have in mind. Water is not about C02 footprint, but we should think about the usage of water, availability of fresh water due to climate changes, etc.

One part of regulation is the European Commission supported by the associations that I mentioned. On the other side, there are the utility associations, and they need to come together. There are fewer electricity utilities than the water ones. The water utilities are more fragmented and thus it is harder to get them grouped and segmented. The number of gas utilities is about the same as electricity utilities. We also have heat distribution companies that should also be included in this.

We will see a bigger need for coordination in communication and we need some regulation in terms of legislation about data privacy, about who is allowed to work with data and how it should all work to lower emissions, to lower water and gas usage, etc.

Could they propose a multi-utility solution for collecting data through one system?

Yes. European Commission could give at least some recommendations towards consolidated approach to the members. The aim should be to reduce the number of systems you need to get the consolidated information on energy, water, gas and heat usage to the home owners. That will help to get the clearer picture on general usage of energy and CO2 production.

What about standards? Do we have them, are you satisfied with them? How do you see their
development?

I don’t see too much standardization in the field of multi-utility. When it comes to electricity meters, water, gas meters, and such there are standards available regarding communication. Things like PLC, GPRS, LTE, NBIoT, RF communication are standardized as means of communication.

You have the protocols like DLMS that is making its way into multi-utilities by creating DLMS specification for electricity and gas meters but they are looking to expand to other areas, as well.

However, I think that’s mostly it when it comes to standardization.

My point of view is that there should be some kind of recommendation for utilities on how they should work. They need to see what the positive things for the utilities and the end users are, then cut around it and give a recommendation on how it should work and some regulation based on data privacy and security.

Data privacy and security is an important thing. When you put everything into one system you are making it easier for cybercriminals to attack just one system instead of multiple. There must be some thoughts put into data security and the communication security.

We are only scratching the surface with this. The multi-utility is the one part, and the next step is going towards smart city. We should think about the overall concept and then break it down to smaller pieces to se where and what kind of regulation is needed.

There are two options. The first one is using the smart electricity meter as a hub, since the electricity meter has been deployed for the past 20 years. There is also the option of water or gas meter communicating over RF networks or cellular networks (meter communication via NBIoT), directly into the system. There are multiple ways we could go. What DLMS is doing now is specifying leaned down protocols for gas meters and water meters, since they are battery powered and have limited energy for communication.

One thing we should consider is the communication, the other is the protocol which you need to standardize so that things can work together.  Another is the overall concept. How should the data flow? Where should it be consolidated? How does it go from the data management system into the utility for water, gas, heat, electricity?

Conclusion:

It seems that European Commission together with utility and vendor associations should work
on regulation in terms of multi-utility and data consolidation.

There should be some kind of recommendation for utilities on use cases that should be
implemented in the field of multi-utility.

Special attention should be paid to regulation regarding data privacy and security.

Question for the audience

What do you think, should European Commission get involved to reach the implementation and
standardization in the field of multi-utility?