Smart metering gets a boost

A collaboration has been agreed between ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and the European Smart Metering Industry Group (ESMIG) that is expected to accelerate the deployment of 'smart meters' in Europe.

The move is expected to bring many benefits to utilities and users, including greater accuracy, reduced costs, improved consumer choice and ecological benefits through better management of natural resources.

The metering market is currently undergoing considerable change and as smarter metering systems become available they are being viewed as the future for utility metering.

The commitment of the two organisations is backed by a European Commission standardisation mandate (Mandate M/441) related to the development of an open system architecture for utility meters involving communication protocols.

Various technological solutions are foreseen. They include technologies that are the subject of established and evolving work within ETSI, such as wireless short-range communications, power line communications, mobile communications and communications on wireless sensors networks.

ETSI's experience in specifying communication protocols for many different types of network, serving diverse types of data and security criteria, is also relevant to this initiative.

ETSI will also draw on its role in defining radio spectrum requirements for new communication applications within Europe, since a need for more spectrum for short-range radio devices to support metering has already been identified.