Welcome to the second part of the interview with Mr. Dieter Brunner, former president of ESMIG and the chairmen of the board of Integra Metering. With Mr. Brunner we discussed the future steps towards Smart cities. If you haven’t read the first part of the interview with Dieter Brunner, read it here.
What do you think, how could a multi-utility help in the development of smart cities?
I believe multi-utilities are a logical step towards smart cities. You consolidate all the different meters and needs in one place. In Smart city you have the converge of Building management system which has all the data about the building (heating, air-conditioning, lighting, etc.) and electricity, water and gas data. With 20 years of experience with smart electricity meters, 10 years of experience with smart gas meters, and 5 years of smart water meters I think that it will be easier to implement this into a Smart cities concept.
It is also important to decide in which part we want the city to be smart and digitalized. Is it the part for controlling the traffic, street lights and similar applications and or is it the part which covers more the utility services?
When you think about the reason to digitalize the city, the reasons are getting more people friction-free process for all the services you need in the smart city, reducing footprint of energy usage and C02 production and giving the better service for the people living there.
Think about a way of getting the data from the meters. Currently in a lot of areas the electricity meter is still read manually, water meter using a drive by solution and you read your gas meter by yourself. There are less and less people doing the leg work and they are costly and because of that you need to think about the new solutions in this area.
Multi-utility is the natural part towards the smart city and it is already well established while traffic guidance, street lighting, parking solutions and waste management, they are at the beginning.
The benefits for the end user are clear. What are the benefits for utilities to use multi-utility?
By using the smart meters the utilities get timely correct information, they can build much better profiles of consumers, they need less service people to read meters and do the work in the field and they can predict their demand.
Utilities will also have a better overview of where the constraints of their network are. The electricity meters are the end points of their networks and if you use those Data in a precise way, you can see where your problematic areas are and get an idea of what to do next and guide your investment in electricity network.
Similar goes for water utilities. If you use the information on water usage and see what goes into the houses, the same concept could be used as in electricity utilities where you have balance meters at the distribution level and you could calculate the losses. If the water meters used have the pressure sensor you can steer your network and see where you have pressure losses.
There is a lot of useful information for utilities that can help them to steer the network and their future network investments.
A mutual multi-utility system could be an issue as every utility would probably like to be that important one. But, the benefits for the smaller utilities which don’t have enough trained people are that they could use the common sources and reduce the operational costs if they are united with the others to make the bigger one.
If one utility has already setup their communication network system it could sell that service to other utilities. Also, the other utilities could lower their investments by using the infrastructure of other utility and not installing their own communication network.
What is the future of multi-utilities since some electricity utilities have abandoned this multi-utility strategy and decided to go the energy route?
Well, everything which has to do with utilities is taking its time. They function as separate island with separate responsibilities and it will take some time for them to work together.
It is similar like it was with the use of smart meters before. In 2009 the CEO of a big city utility said to me: “Why should we do smart metering? As long as I can put the cheap meters and get my money, I see no need.” There will always be those people who won’t see the benefits at first.
Sweden already finishes the second rollout because they did it before the legislation. They learned about the positive impacts and they would like to be upfront. Their impression after the first rollout is that they should have done much more during the first rollout because they could get more information, concise data, better service, etc.
So there are always those who will sit back and won’t do anything until someone tells them that they have to and there will be those who will want to move and do things proactively.
It’s not going to be easy. It’s not an easy pitch, that is clear. But I believe it is the future. It should be done because it is positive for society. If it brings a better service, lowers the cost, it will lower the emissions and by this using fewer natural resources.
What is something that you didn’t work on until now and you would like to work in the future?
What I promote everywhere is the concept of smart city. Make use out of all data from Multi utility meters including Heat and Cooling meters. As well as how to solve problems by guidance of traffic, show availability of parking, avoiding the extra mileage, etc. For me, that is smart traffic. That is something that I would like to work in.
There is also a lot of possibilities with green energy, too. There is solar energy, wind energy, etc. and there are new problems that emerge: how to balance the network, how can I become the energy producer, what can I do with the extra energy I produce and how I can make the whole more sustainable.
I would also like to tackle the issue of water challenges: how can you make a more intelligent use of water, how to split the fresh water from sanitary water, etc.
And if you look into all the exiting stories about hydrogen which goes together with heating, etc. there is a big field in front of me. It is an exciting time for those topics.
Conclusion:
Multi-utility is a logical first step towards Smart cities because smart meters are well established, while traffic guidance, street lighting, parking solutions and waste management are, just at the beginning.
Besides useful data that utility gets using multi-utility, the other benefits of joining different utilities are lower communication network investments, more trained manpower available and operational costs reduction.
The implementation of multi-utility is not going to be easy, but it should be done because it brings positive things for the society and it makes sense to do it.
Question for the audience
What do you think, are the benefits that a multi-utility brings to customers and utilities enough to be the main driving force behind it’s development?