The role of smart meters in enabling real-time energy services for households

Pitì, Alessandro; Verticale, Giacomo; Rottondi, Cristina; Capone, Antonio; Lo Schiavo, Luca

doi:10.3390/en10020199

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Journal article

The role of smart meters in enabling real-time energy services for households : the Italian case

Pitì, Alessandro Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy
Verticale, Giacomo Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy
Rottondi, Cristina Istituto Dalle Molle di studi sull'intelligenza artificiale (IDSIA), Facoltà di scienze informatiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
Capone, Antonio Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy
Lo Schiavo, Luca Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity Gas and Water (AEEGSI), 20121 Milano, Italy

10.02.2017

Published in:

Energies. - 2017, vol. 10, no. 2, p. 199

Distribution system operator (DSO)

English The Smart Meter (SM) is an essential tool for successful balancing the demand-offer energy curve. It allows the linking of the consumption and production measurements with the time information and the customer’s identity, enabling the substitution of flat-price billing with smarter solutions, such as Time-of-Use or Real-Time Pricing. In addition to sending data to the energy operators for billing and monitoring purposes, Smart Meters must be able to send the same data to customer devices in near-real-time conditions, enabling new services such as instant energy awareness and home automation. In this article, we review the ongoing situation in Europe regarding real-time services for the final customers. Then, we review the architectural and technological options that have been considered for the roll-out phase of the Italian second generation of Smart Meters. Finally, we identify a collection of use cases, along with their functional and performance requirements, and discuss what architectures and communications technologies can meet these requirements.

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