Archive for the ‘AMR/AMM/AMI’ Category

Gothenburg, Sweden: New research from the analyst firm Berg Insight says that the worldwide installed base of smart electricity meters will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 31.1 percent between 2009 and 2015 to reach 302.5 million at the end of the period. During the next five years, penetration rates for smart metering technology are projected to increase from around 15–20 percent today to nearly 50 percent in Europe and North America, while Asia-Pacific is projected to soar from less than 1 percent to 25 percent by 2015. By the mid-2010s, the majority of all electricity meters shipped in the world’s leading economies is expected to have advanced functionalities and networking capabilities. Berg Insight anticipates that growth will continue in the second half of this decade, with many markets approaching 100 percent penetration by 2020.

Berg Insight has identified a number of common drivers behind the development in all regions. These range from increasing efficiency demands on the electricity sector to the implementation of energy policies related to power conservation, renewable generation and the security of supply. National governments play a key role in the adoption of smart meters through new future-oriented energy policies, addressing these issues. Several European countries have passed legislation that require nationwide rollouts before the end of this decade and in the US, federal grants for smart grid projects constitute one of the main initiatives aimed at the energy sector in the Obama administration’s economic stimuli package. In East Asia, governments directly influence developments through state-controlled national utilities. China’s State Grid Corporation and South Korea’s KEPCO have both announced their intentions to construct smart grids featuring smart meters before 2020.

“Smart metering is now a globally accepted mature mainstream technology”, said Tobias Ryberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight and author of the report. “All over the world we can see how IT and telecommunication has transformed the metering industry from a business of mechanical devices and manual labor to an arena for state-of-the-art technology in everything from wireless networking to data warehousing and complex system integration.” Looking ahead he predicts that the current wave of adoption will pave the way for an even greater transformation of the electricity sector where the access to detailed information in real-time will fundamentally change how power is generated, distributed and consumed.

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Gothenburg, Sweden: According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the installed base of smart electricity meters in Europe will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17.9 percent between 2009 and 2015 to reach 111.4 million at the end of the period. Providing consumers with detailed information about their electricity consumption the new generation of meters give customers control over energy costs and create financial incentives for energy savings. Moreover smart meters constitute the core building blocks in future smart grids that will incorporate a wide range of technologies related to renewable generation, distribution network optimisation and energy conservation.

The report identifies France, Spain and the UK as the next countries in Europe where smart metering will become introduced, following major rollouts in Italy and the Nordic region. “In the past year, EDF, Endesa and Iberdrola – three of the absolutely largest electricity network operators in Europe – have launched large-scale pilots in France and Spain, respectively. Next year, these deployments will evolve into nationwide rollouts in these countries”, said Tobias Ryberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “On top of that, the UK’s largest electricity and gas retailer British Gas has launched the first major smart metering project for residential customers in the country. These developments in combination with rollouts in several other European countries will drive strong market growth over the next five years.”

For additional information, please contact:
Johan Fagerberg, CEO
E-mail: johan.fagerberg@berginsight.com
Phone: +46 31 711 30 91

Flexible solutions for the transforming energy industry

CIBER, one of the world’s thirty largest IT consulting companies, has initiated the collaboration with Junifer Systems on the launch of a new customer information system (CIS) in the Nordic market. The new system has taken the market by storm with a much lower entry-level pricing and greater flexibility than competing solutions.

According to the agreement, CIBER will be responsible for marketing, customization, integration, operation, as well as user training and support for Junifer in the Nordic countries.

“Primarily, we will be focusing on Swedish energy companies,” says Johan Barwén, Regional Manager at CIBER, who will be heading the new initiative.

“We have significant experience from systems integration and major project implementation. Some of our consultants have been actively working with electricity industry deregulation since 1996 and many others have over twenty years of industry experience. In addition, we add a proven project methodology that leads to minimized project risks”.

“We are excited about our partnership with CIBER. Their skills, experience and understanding of the local electricity market is unparalleled,” says Paul FitzGerald, Sales Director at Junifer Systems Ltd.

UK based Junifer Systems develops industry-specific business systems for electricity and telecommunications, but also for gas, water, waste management, and other utilities.

Unlike the majority of utility companies’ ageing existing applications, Junifer provides unprecedented opportunities to address the rapidly changing needs of an industry characterized by restructuring, increased competition, deregulation, and increasingly stringent regulatory compliance requirements.

“The system is scalable to fit both small and larger businesses. In addition, it is developed using Microsoft .Net, which means cost efficiency, short development times and sustainability,” says Johan Barwén.

For the utility (gas, water, electricty and waste) operator, the Junifer CIS & Billing products enable them to process the significant increase in data volumes (compared with the traditional utility billing estimate model) and also provides the business with a flexible, scalable and cost effective solution on which the business can build it’s unique offering.

For more information, please contact:

Johan Barwén, Business Unit Manager CIBER AB
+46 708-44 10 72
johan.barwen@ciber.com

Paul FitzGerald, Sales Director Junifer Systems Ltd
+353 87 9926723
paul.fitzgerald@junifersystems.com

About Ciber
IT consultancy CIBER Sweden AB, with approximately 150 employees are part of the global oraganisation Ciber Inc., with approximately 8500 employees and 1.2 billion dollars in turnover. Swedish customers are major banks, insurance companies and several telecommunication companies. CIBER also have assignments in the energy industry, government, logistics, trade and manufacturing industries.

CIBER provides specialist competencies in a number of areas, from business strategists to developers and testers / test leader. This means that CIBER can help their clients from strategy, via realization to maintenance.
Headquartered in Stockholm, with regional offices in Malmö and Sundsvall. See www.ciber.se

About Junifer
The Junifer Systems team has utilised it’s strong background in the complex, large transaction volume Telecomms billing sector to provide highly efficient, flexible and cost effective back-office solutions for the utilities market. The Junifer Product suite provides a complete end to end CIS and billing system designed specifically to support the unique challenges encountered both by the legacy utility systems and what Junifer believes will be tomorrow’s “Smart Meter” billing requirements for utilities. For more information on Junifer Systems, please visit www.junifersystems.com
Headquartered in London, UK.

Gothenburg, Sweden – June 14, 2010: According to a new research
report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the installed base of
smart electricity meters in Asia-Pacific will grow at a compound
annual growth rate of 91.0 percent between 2009 and 2015 to reach
116.5 million at the end of the period. Penetration for smart
metering technology is projected to soar from very low levels to 25.0
percent by the end of the period. By the mid-2010s, the majority of
all electricity meters shipped in the region is expected to have
advanced functionalities and networking capabilities. Berg Insight
anticipates that the leading economies in the region will have close
to 100 percent penetration by 2020.

“Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing market for smart metering
solutions in the world”, said Tobias Ryberg, Senior Analyst, Berg
Insight. “South Korea has begun the construction of a nationwide
smart grid where intelligent energy meters constitute the basic
building-block. Japan’s two largest power utilities have announced
plans for full-scale smart meter deployments in this decade and China
is preparing a nationwide rollout within three to five years.”
Altogether the three countries have an installed base of more than
360 million electricity meters today, with an annual growth rate of
3–5 percent.

Australia and New Zealand commenced with massive installations of
smart meters at the end of the last decade. Victoria will become the
first Australian state to achieve full penetration by 2013. Mandatory
rollouts are also being considered in other territories such as New
South Wales. In New Zealand, the adoption of smart metering is driven
by the energy industry. While many other countries have introduced
regulations for the new technology, New Zealand’s government has
decided not to interfere with the process.

Read more at www.berginsight.com/

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 Audhild Kvam who is leading the International Business Development at Powel at the Smart Metering Scandinavia conference in Copenhagen.
Since 1996, Powel has been working together with their customers and with Sintef, the research institute in Norway, to develop innovative products and solutions that are driving the energy sector in Scandinavia.

Powel has identified that network companies that have completed their rollout projects are looking for opportunities to get more out of their infrastructure investments. They want to improve the reliability and reduce costs by utilizing the data they have collected from multiple systems and apply it to the smart grid functionality.
There has been a lot of development and work completed within the Transmission Grid and Residential Metering, therefore a lot of improvements can be realized in the Distributions Grid.

Powel are now working with customers to use their Smart Metering Data together with Scada and Network information to offer customer service representatives and operational staff measurable improvements in energy disturbance analysis and asset utilization.

Powel is a leading supplier of software to the utility sector in the Nordics and they support the Smart Metering Scandinavia conferences from Synergy. Powel wants to share their experiences and support their customers. At the conference they have the chance to demonstrate new smart grid solutions like the Distribution Management System, Business Management tools and new portals that can improve the way power are delivered and it improves the customer experience as well.

For more information about Powel, please visit www.powel.com

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppv_iK12loc

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