EVB supports smart metering project in South Africa

South Africa's electricity prices continuously rise. Smart meters are an essential step forward towards an efficient way to use electricity. A controlled power management with a transparent representation of the consumption data and data on potential savings is essential.

From 2015 onwards experts expect an increase of the South African energy market. Then city-grid providers will successively start to modernise their distribution systems and new power plants will be constructed. For the coming years South Africa alone has allocated for the expansion and modernisation of its energy infrastructure, an amount of approximately 55 billion euros. Till the year 2030 the electrical power needs to be uploaded with an additional 50.000 MW. The existing infrastructure is not able to provide in an adequate or affordable way the energy needed by the private consumer and industry. At the same time, South Africa is the largest energy consumer and the largest producer on this continent.

With this knowledge as background, implementations such as transparent monitoring and visualisation and logging of power consumption are become more important. A key-stone for the South African economy are smart metering systems. South Africa gets support here from the EVB Energy Solutions. It offers the South African smart metering market hard-, software and expertise.EVB is an affiliate from the worldwide operating Diehl Metering Group.

Mid-2011 the South African company Remote Metering Solutions (RMS) based in Johannesburg contacted EVB for support in the development of a suitable smart metering solution adapted to the South African power network.

Early 2012 RMS started with the installation of the infrastructure. The developed smart metering solution includes electricity meters, data concentrators (DCs) for bundling and forwarding the metering data to EVB’s server infrastructure and the Smart Metering middleware METERUS. An extension of the system, the integration of water meters is currently under discussion. In 2012 more than 12.000 electricity meters and approximately 440 data concentrators will be installed. RMS will take over the billing management based on the data it will receive from EVB. The metering data will be collected and stored in the EVB headquarters in Velbert (Germany), the METERUS middleware will convert these data for billing purposes before it will be transferred to RMS in Johannesburg.

The key-issue in South Africa is: „Progression of the energy prise“

The developed smart metering solution will be rolled out in the Johannesburg area, the largest city in South Africa. Complete residential and development areas will be equipped in the same way as the major shopping malls. Entire communities and schools will be equipped with smart electricity meters.

The reason why just in South Africa smart meters will be installed in large quantities explains Björn De Wever, head of EVB Business Development: "The current driving force is the progression of the electricity price here in South Africa. The possibility to create transparency in the electricity consumption and the possibility to show where and how energy can be saved play also an important role." Monitoring the individual electricity consumption encourages the implementation of smart meters.

"Also billing management is an interesting subject. Especially the RMS customers like; shopping malls, residential compounds, local authorities and schools, are grateful. Because RMS provides them a complete breakdown of their electricity consumption including billing," stated De Wever.

Cooperation should be intensified

The current installation of smart meters in the Johannesburg area is a first step. EVB is willing to expand its cooperation in the near future. "South Africa has great potential. RMS is continually launching new smart metering orders. Furthermore this company has a wide business network, as it has branch offices throughout the country from which they support their customers” explains De Wever. "EVB’s smart metering easily integrates other communication media. Therefore it is possible to integrate water meters in the near future.

 Facts and Figures

 Remote Metering Solutions Ltd. (RMS) from Pretoria

• RMS is a medium-sized company specialised in energy services for commercial customers and municipalities. In additional it offers asset management services. 25 years ago RMS started with metering and billing services, the last 12 years it added energy efficiency support to their activities and the last 7 years they are also active in the power supply operations.
• RMS has more than 100 employees at locations in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and generating an annual turnover of 19 million Euros.

Projectdata

• Start 2012: Installation of 11.600 NES electricity meters and 436 data concentrators in the Johannesburg area in shopping malls, residential compounds as well as development areas, municipalities and schools.
• Installation and application of the Smart Metering Middleware METERUS, hosted by EVB in Germany. METERUS offers RMS a direct, secure and scalable access to the respective values and functions of the smart energy meter.

Next Steps

• With the use of METERUS and the NES electricity meters RMS uses a solid platform of which it can build a complete multi-utility solution.
• In 2012 a test project ,to link watermeters ("water meter Hydus" Hydrometer GmbH) to the Smart Metering infrastructure, will start.