With almost 4.4 million inhabitants Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city has experienced one of the highest growth rates of any city in Africa and it is estimated that Nairobi's population will reach 5 million in 2025. Due to this development Tatu City, a 5,000-acre, mixed-use area with homes, schools, offices, a shopping district, medical clinics, nature areas, a sport and entertainment complex and manufacturing, was realized outside of the city in order to decentralize the urban environment. Our customer Tatu Connect Power, a private entity at Tatu City is improving the efficiency of power usage and quality of service to consumers in Tatu city by investing in an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system that is fully integrated to the customer ERP (enterprise resource planning) system as well as to an online payment platform. The aim is to operate smart metering devices remotely. About 500 meters and 5 data concentrators from Landis+Gyr have been installed to date of the projected 40 000 meters and 80 concentrators in the next 3 – 5 years.
Our customer Enedis is a public service company that manages the public electricity distribution network for 95% of continental France. Their goal: to modernize the network for the Energy Transition. In 2007, we launched the “Linky project” to upgrade all 35 million residential meters in France with smart meters – the so-called Linky meters in prominent green colour. This cooperation is still in full swing with our company supplying approximately 20% of the volume (with potential for further expansion) in the planned rollout of the next of Linky meters until the end of 2021. Our state-of the-art manufacturing site in Montluçon has been key to this success.
The selection of the most suitable communications technology for a smart metering solution is an important step when building a smart metering infrastructure. Communication technology has evolved dramatically since the first installations of ‘smart’ meters, and so did the expectation regarding data availability, and functionality around smart metering. For a long time it was sufficient to read out data once a day for monthly invoicing, but today expectations are often moving in the direction of near real-time availability - for example, to enable DSO to provide load profile and consumption data in a customer portal, have power quality data available for analysis at short intervals, or use the smart meter infrastructure as replacement for ripple control load management.
The data collected from smart metering are opening up a whole new world of opportunities for utilities. Of course, you need the data for billing, but a lot more is possible today – and even more so in the future. With the E360 we have built an intelligent endpoint with enhanced communication and measurement capabilities. And as part of our end-to-end solution Gridstream® Connect, it accompanies our customers on their way towards more data-driven use cases.
Increasing amounts of data, interconnected utility infrastructures, regulation and a general awareness of security and privacy issues raise the pressure also on smart metering security. E360 is our response to the most stringent security requirements.
Alison Jeffers, who is Landis+Gyr’s Vice President of Customer Delivery for the EMEA region, says collaboration between all stakeholders is key to delivering successful smart meter rollout projects on time and on budget.
