Alcatel-Lucent and Deutsche Telekom launched a web-based smart metering user interface for the e-metering field trial, to run in the German city of Friedrichshafen.
The service gives consumers and utilities a near-real-time view of energy consumption for each connected household.
About 1,000 smart meters for electricity as well as gas are planned to be supplied to 700 households until mid 2009.
Smart metering helps consumers to use electricity more efficiently and reduce energy costs and carbon emissions into the environment. Local utilities profit from the service with an exact overview of the actual energy consumption in all parts of their network.
This enables better forecasting and offers a lever to give incentives to consumers to control demand to a certain extent. Utility providers also have a remote view of the smart meters.
Since the metering service updates data on energy consumption every 15 minutes, utilities can react very quickly and for example, propose incentives to consumers to consume energy at a certain time. This helps them to reduce their peak loads and better utilize their network assets, which potentially reduces network investments.