Onzo and Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) will team up at Metering Europe in Vienna to deliver their vision of how utilities and smart meter customers will benefit from value-added services.
Colin Sempill, Business Transformation Director of SSE, and Neil Tierney, Research & Development Director of Onzo, will use their experience in developing two projects - Heating and Hot Water Control over the Smart Meter Infrastructure (Project HAWCS) and Project Hydra – to illustrate how non-core services have the potential to maximise the return on investment in the smart metering roll out.
Through Project HAWCS, for which the partners recently received a £795,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board, the partners are developing a low-cost mass market solution to apply smart meter functionality to domestic hot water and heating systems.
Project Hydra is a £2.3m UK government-funded initiative to develop and deliver value-added telehealth services. The technology is expected to decrease the need for patients to visit their clinician or hospital for regular check-ups by providing a secure and wireless method of sending health information such as a person’s weight and blood pressure to their healthcare professional.
Both projects apply smart card technologies from the banking sector to the smart grid. These guarantee banking-level security and privacy to messaging, separate the non-core data from the core consumption data, and manage updates of software and functionality.
Commenting ahead of the conference, Mr Tierney said: “With the roll out of smart meters spreading across Europe, now is the time to maximise the potential of the smart grid communications infrastructure.
“Project HAWCS and Project Hydra are just the tip of the iceberg – applied in the right way, smart card technology will enable a range of unique services to be delivered directly to the consumer home, from heating, hot water and boiler control to telehealth. It has the potential to revolutionise the energy retail industry.”
Mr Sempill added: “We are delighted to be sharing a platform with Onzo. When people read or hear about smart meters, they usually just think about energy management and cutting electricity bills. What they don’t realise is that smart meters offer a whole host of exciting opportunities for improving the way we communicate and share information over the smart grid.”