What is Anyplace communication using smart metering platform technology?

Smart metering system play a vital role and act as a backbone in customers satisfaction.

Recent developments under the term Smart Grid change how users consume electricity and interact with the power grid. Smart metering and energy management are developments that transform the yet passive energy consumer to a participant that is actively involved in the energy market by using variable energy tariffs or by demand-response services. But such functionality demands a platform that integrates all smart devices in the users property, connects to external services and electricity providers, and has interfaces that provide information and control to the user. AnyPLACE will develop such platform. Based on the latest legislation in the European member states, it will incorporate smart meters and create links to external service providers. Furthermore, it connects the devices in the property of the end-user in order to be able to fully monitor and control the energy consumption. This paper presents the AnyPLACE idea and the problems that are solved on the communications aspect. It provides an in-depth analysis of current European legislation in the context of smart metering and provides the requirements that need to be realized by the platform. Additionally, it proposes a strategy to create a solution that can be used in any place of Europe. The paper also incorporates the security and privacy requirements in different domains and sketches a solution and architecture to fulfill these by incorporating existing open source implementations as provided by the openHAB project.

Smart metering benefits utilities by improving customer satisfaction with faster interaction, while giving consumers more control of their energy usage to save money and reduce carbon emissions. With power visibility all the way to the meter, utilities can optimize energy distribution and even take action to shift demand loads.

  Smart metering helps utilities to:

• Reduce operating expenses by managing manual operations remotely
• Improve forecasting and streamline power-consumption
• Improve customer service through profiling and segmentation
• Reduce energy theft 
• Simplify micro-generation monitoring and track renewable power 

In addition Smart Meters can enable an array of new smart services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers to better manage their energy usage patterns, reduce overall power consumption and even benefit from new pricing models.   Cellular communications provides a reliable connectivity option for smart metering infrastructure, including full IP infrastructure and low latency in 4G LTE. With the ubiquitous reach of modern cellular networks, and the development of LTE-M (LTE for M2M) providing long range low power cost effective solutions, utilities can connect meters easily and inexpensively virtually anywhere. And they can benefit from a proven, highly reliable communications infrastructure without taking on the costs of deploying and maintaining it themselves. Sierra Wireless has more than a decade of experience helping utilities and OEMs build and deploy smart metering solutions worldwide. We offer industry-leading cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies including industrial-grade embedded modules with long life spans, cloud platforms, expert application development assistance and more.