Smart metering for Stadtwerke Emden

* 100 households start with intelligent electricity and gas meters
* Around 200 meters in the Emden-Wolthusen new housing development area
* Smart metering as a complete service for a monthly fixed price

Deutsche Telekom is equipping a new housing development area with the infrastructure for intelligent gas and electricity meters for Stadtwerke Emden (Emden Municipal Utilities). Over the next few weeks, the municipal utilities will install around 200 smart meters in Emden-Wolthusen. Deutsche Telekom will provide the data connection, install a communications box in the 100 households and transmit the data via DSL to the municipal utilities. The latter will in the future provide its customers with their current usage on a secure Internet portal.

Deutsche Telekom’s communications box is normally located in the building connection room and collects the consumption data of the meters connected to it. The municipal utilities query the power consumption every 15 minutes and the gas consumption every hour. Here the utility company only pays a monthly fixed price for transmitting the data. Deutsche Telekom bears the cost of investment in the communication infrastructure and is responsible for ensuring the operation thereof. For the end customer, this service is free of charge during the pilot phase.

“We compared several providers and decided on Deutsche Telekom because we could receive the entire service from a single source”, says Remmer Edzards, Managing Director of Stadtwerke Emden. “We are now conducting a customer survey to assess the general interest in this new technology. Initial results from discussions apparently show that a large number of electricity and gas customers want to know how they can actively reduce their energy consumption using intelligent meters.” If this assessment is confirmed, Stadtwerke Emden also plan to install smart meters in other residential areas.

Smart metering in an all-inclusive package
Deutsche Telekom is increasingly focusing on services for energy management and wants to be the best partner to industry. Thus the company is offering the smart metering package as a complete service for a fixed monthly price. This includes, in addition to the

* communications box and all the software,
* installation and operation,
* connection to the communications network,
* reading the consumption data,
* data transmission to a highly secure data center and
* forwarding data to energy providers.

The fixed price results from the agreed read-out frequency for the consumption data. All repairs, software updates and the replacement of the box with a new generation device are included in the price.

“We do not use the customers’ DSL lines for the data transfer but set up a separate, independent infrastructure and operate this. Only in this way can we guarantee the security of data and the availability of the read-out services”, Helge Meyer, smart metering expert at Deutsche Telekom, points out. He also explained that it would not be possible to mix telecommunications and energy data. The Stadtwerke Emden customer does not also have to be a Deutsche Telekom customer. As an alternative to sending data over a fixed network connection, the values can also be transferred wirelessly. Meyer: “Our solution corresponds to very high security requirements, is certified according to ISO 27001 and meets the SAS-70 standard.”

About Deutsche Telekom AG
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with over 131 million mobile customers, around 37 million fixed-network lines and nearly 16 million broadband lines (as of June 30, 2010). The Group provides products and services for the fixed network, mobile communications, the Internet and IPTV for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in around 50 countries and has over 251,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenue of EUR 64.6 billion in the 2009 financial year - over half of it outside Germany (as at December 31, 2009).