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Deutsche Telekom plans smart meter trial
24 August 2010
The German city of Emden is to try out smart electricity and gas metering in a project with Deutsche Telekom
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Deutsche Telekom
smart metering
Emden
Stadtwerke Emden
electricity
gas
Deutsche Telekom is to carry out a trial of smart gas and electricity meters in a new housing development in the city of Emden. The trial, due to start in the next few weeks, involves 100 houses in a new development.
The operator will provide the data connection, install a communications box in the 100 households and transmit the data via DSL to Stadtwerke Emden, the municipal energy utility.
The utility plans to provide householders with details of current energy usage on a secure internet portal.
Remmer Edzards, managing director of Stadtwerke Emden, said: “We are now conducting a customer survey to assess the general interest in this new technology. Initial results from discussions apparently show that a large number of electricity and gas customers want to know how they can actively reduce their energy consumption using intelligent meters.”
The utility will query the electricity consumption via a DT box every 15 minutes and the gas consumption every hour, paying a fixed monthly fee to the operator, which will pay for the infrastructure. For the end customer, this service is free of charge during the pilot phase.
Helge Meyer, smart metering expert at Deutsche Telekom, said: “We do not use the customers’ DSL lines for the data transfer but set up a separate, independent infrastructure and operate this. Only in this way can we guarantee the security of data and the availability of the read-out services.” GTB