Archive for the ‘Services’ Category

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78b0z8lcQVE

Enerway met Fredrik Löfvendahl the Sales and Marketing Manager at Rejlers Energitjänster AB, in Copenhagen during the Smart Metering Conference.

Rejlers Energitjänster is a service provider and they are operating on the Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish market. Rejlers provides a lot of services, for example they collect metering values, perform Balance settlements and provide web portals where end customers can follow their consumption. One of the services that they provide is helping end customers to reduce the consumption costs by installing Smart Meters that collects meter values more frequently than conventional meters. In Sweden most meters used to be read once a year, today they are read once a month or once an hour.

What is Smart Metering from Rejlers point of view?
For Rejlers, Smart meters give them the chance to make better analysis. For example in the Balance settlement where they can achieve improved calculations in the net, become aware of disturbances and make sure that the net is doing ok.

Its important for Rejlers to attend at the Smart Metering Conference for the reason that it gives them a chance to follow the movements in the energy business. Interesting areas are for example Smart Metering, Smart Grid and Smart Living. They believe that Smart Living will become an interesting business for the future where meters, grids and peoples homes will be integrated and working together.

For more information about Rejlers Energitjänster, please visit www.rejlers.com

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6l0nHXSakM

Enerway met Knut Gustavsen, Director of Energy Tieto in Norway at the Smart Metering 2010 Scandinavia in Copenhagen.

This interview covers a short presentation of Tieto and what they are planning for the future within the Smart Metering area. In opposite to many utilities and companies working with Smart Metering, Tieto believes that the end customers won’t be very active on saving energy themselves by using In-home displays et cetera. According to research made by Tieto experts, the future consumers needs services, third party vendors or suppliers and IT systems that can guide and help the energy consumers to save energy and to use the energy in a smart and effective way.

Tieto thinks that households and offices in the future will become Prosumers which means that they will produce energy as well as they will consume energy. The Prosumers will need systems that can help them to produce and consume as smart as possible as well as they need systems that can monitor and control their buildings.

For more information about Tieto, visit www.tieto.com

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX9w2ecKzso

This is a short version of the interview with Rachel Bennett, the International Sales director. The interview was made at the Smart Metering 2010 Scandinavia in Copenhagen.
The interview covers a short presentation of the company geo – Green Energy Options and presents some of their products that help consumers to make energy visible. For example the Minim, the Solo, the Duet, the Trio and the Energy hub for homes and businesses that can monitor the consumption and display it on your PC.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB6qCUKmRuU

Follow this link for the longer version

Visit Green Energy Options

Andreas Berthold-van der Molen is responsible for Utilities at Microsoft EMEA which operates in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Microsoft helps their customers in the utilities to optimize their environments.

Andreas was invited as a speaker to the Smart Metering Conference in Copenhagen and Microsoft’s approach was to highlight how we can change consumer behavior by helping them to adapt to new technology. The feedback from the project with Yello Strom was that it’s nice for consumers to have a dashboard that shows the consumption in real-time but after a week or two the interest decreases.

The research made by Microsoft shows that if we can help consumers to increase their living comfort, e.g. by controlling their heating or cooling, we can change the consumer behavior as well.

Together with partners Microsoft offers end-to-end solutions based on technological possibilities that will increase the living comfort and also gives the consumers the ability to control the consumption from a distance.

In the smart grid, Microsoft’s focus is to connect and build bridges between existing applications so that they can talk to each other. If the utilities integrate existing assets, they will be able to solve a lot of ongoing challenges.

Microsoft also supports partners to create solutions for the whole utility value chain from generation, transmission and distribution to the retailers.

Andreas explains that by attending to conferences like the Smart Metering 2010 Scandinavia he has the possibility to talk to a lot of vendors and utilities from different countries during the breaks between the sessions. It is very time efficient to have dialogs in a very short timeframe.

For more information about Microsoft EMEA Utility activities, please visit
www.microsoft.com/utilities

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krPrS12Bmyc

Enerway met Saul Nurtman, Managing Director at Junifer Systems at the Smart Metering 2010 Scandinavia in Copenhagen.

The interview covers a short presentation of the company Junifer Systems. Junifer Systems has a strong background in the complex Telecoms billing sector to provide highly efficient, flexible and cost effective back-office solutions for the utilities and telco markets.

Junifer Systems utility products consists of Junifer AMR, Junifer Utility Rating, Junifer Utility CCB, Junifer Analytics and Junifer Web Portal.

Watch the interview right here and visit www.junifersystems.com for more information about the company and their products.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqGnsfjbSKw

Building the Automated Meter Infrastructure involves a lot more than just installing a Smart Meter. You have to analyse the existing grid infrastructure and topography. The right solution for one grid is not necessary the best one for all grids. There are a lot of communication techniques to choose from and the best choice depends on where the delivery site is located. It’s also wise to think about your employees. Will they be able to handle all meter- and terminal changes etc. by themselves or do you need to hire an entrepreneur to do the job?

Before you start you need to find at least one lawyer or consultant that will help you with the contract text just in case if something goes wrong during the rollout project. There are a lot of good consultants with experience from other rollout projects that will be able to help you.

PLANNING THE ROLLOUT
It takes more time than you expect!
When you set up the schedule for your project it is best not to be too time optimistic. There will always be certain metering points that just don’t want to communicate. You will find problems you didn’t expect or think of when you started. So add some extra time in the project schedule from the start.

WHAT DO YOU NEED AND WHAT DO YOU WANT?
It can be wise to sit down in a group and discuss why you need to upgrade your grid in the first place. I suggest that you learn about the User Story technique that briefly works like this:

On the front page of a card, continue these 3 sentences.

As a …
I want to …
In order to …

On the back of the card you write down the confirmations, explaining how to validate that the user story has been implemented correctly.

Example 1:

As an end customer
I want my utility to report my households meter readings as hour values.
In order to analyse my consumption and save energy.

Confirmation

The end customer receives hour values on invoice.
If customer uses the Utility website, hour values are presented for the customer when values are quality assured.

Example 2:

As a grid owner
I want to be informed about a grid blackout as soon as possible
In order to locate the source of error and fix it

Confirmation

In case of blackout, the source of error will be displayed on a digital map.
In case of blackout, we will get information about delivery sites affected.

All user stories should be prioritized from Low, Medium and High.

When you have discussed all User Stories together in a group you have created a good study of what you are looking for which will make it easier for you to start searching for solutions.

SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE
It’s important to analyse the metering process when planning the system infrastructure. A normal situation is that the meter reads the consumption; the terminal saves it until the Collector collects them and finally the meter reading systems can save the meter readings/values with included time stamps. Some companies use a Meter value database that holds all meter readings/values for several years.
A Billing and Management system needs the meter readings to be able to create the invoice.
If you for example have lost communication with a meter and the metering system you need to send out a work order which means that you also need a Work Order Management system to create and keep track of the orders. All systems should be integrated so that you don’t have to do certain tasks more then once.
As you can see, it’s important to have an IT-unit with fantastic support working side by side with the project!

INFORMATION
Information is more important than you might think of. You need to inform your customers about the rollout. Why it’s done, how it works and when you will come to their delivery site etc. It’s also important to inform your staff. Not only the ones working in your unit, but the whole company. Make someone responsible for all information inside and outside the company.

Discuss this post by adding a comment!

A commercial video from Capgemini about their Smart Meter Project with Hydro One

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BB11F48qz8

Google has created a new online tool that can help people to start discussions, work on projects and work simultaneously on same documents by using text, videos, maps, photos etc. The Tool is called Google Waves and is still in a preview version.
People that are invited can work in real-time which means that all participants can see what another one writes or edits at the same time as it is done. It is also possible to use a playback function that helps you to understand or follow up what has happened since the “wave” started. By using Google translation tool people who don’t speak the same language can work together on the same wave.

To be honest I need to learn a lot more about this tool but I am really excited about starting a couple of projects with people that are interested in the topics that Enerway is focusing on. Maybe we could build up something valuable together?

Therefore I will give away a couple of invites to people who want to join me and help me get started! All you have to do is send your contact information and describe who you are and why you should get a Google Wave invitation.
Google says: “If you do not have a Google account, you will be prompted to create one” so send me your gmail address if you already have one!
If you have a Google Wave account and would like to add me as your contact, send me your e-mail address and I might add you!

Use the contact form at the bottom of this post.
Here follows a short presentation of Google Wave. I am sure that I will publish more information when I have learned more!

15 Google wave features

More information at:
http://wave.google.com/help/wave/using-wave.html

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