Use Cases
Smart Meter Technology

With its "Wasserheld" project, RWW Rheinisch-Westfälische Wasserwerksgesellschaft mbH - part of Westenergie - has committed itself to the sustainable and conscious use of water as a resource. The aim of the project is to provide local authorities, industrial and private customers with information on water consumption via an app application and to alert them to possible leaks.

A new customer is now the city of Bottrop, which has successfully implemented further milestones in the optimisation of use by means of digitalisation through intelligent measurement and control systems with the integration of "RWW-Wasserhelden" into municipal properties.

As part of a public tendering process, RWW was awarded the contract to digitalise water meters that are difficult to access. The "RWW Water Hero" now uses suitable sensors in the water meters to automatically record readings at regular intervals, secure them via the SWAN2 NB IoT Gateway from WEPTECH and transfer them to the RWW cloud in compliance with the GDPR. Sudden increases in water consumption, often caused by blocked toilet flushes and burst drinking water pipes, are now automatically recognised by prompt alarm messages and can therefore be resolved at short notice.

Without this technical support, several thousand cubic metres of water were lost every day in some cases in the past, for example because leaks went unnoticed. This could lead to annual costs in the five-figure range for a property.

In the past, two employees from the municipal building yard had to clear the shafts of hazardous gases and climb in to read the meters for regular inspections. This was a time-consuming and cost-intensive process. Now, with the help of RWW technology, the meter readings are transferred digitally from the SWAN2 NB IoT Gateway from WEPTECH to the RWW cloud every minute and can be checked on the web or in the app.

"We are delighted to be able to help the city with our water expertise. With the digital solution, the water hero, we ensure safety and reliability. RWW is increasingly seeing that many of its customers are using the new Wasserhelden technology to identify leaks and burst pipes that would previously have gone undetected. This helps to prevent major damage," says Michael Fech, the responsible product manager at RWW.

The rollout of BSI-certified gateways for the introduction of smart metering systems (iMSys = digital electricity meter + smart meter gateway communication unit) was accelerated when the Act on the Restart of the Energy Transition (GNDEW) came into force.

In connection with the Metering Point Operation Act (in force since May 27, 2023), it was also stipulated that in addition to the electricity segment, another energy segment (e.g. gas, heating or district heating) must also be connectable to the BSI SMGW.

For the gas segment, this means that in future only meter types that meet the technical requirements for communicating with the BSI SMGW via the LMN interface may be installed.

For the large quantities of existing meters installed nationwide, these do not necessarily have to be replaced (subject to the valid calibration period), but can be retrofitted and digitized. The legislator therefore stipulates that older gas meters with a so-called pulse interface can also be integrated into the smart metering system via a retrofittable communication adapter. Together with WEPTECH, Westenergie Metering has developed the gas adapter with the product name ORIOL-"Mehrwertmodul-Gas" for this application and has already had it certified by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt PTB based in Braunschweig with a type examination certificate.

In an extensive, nationwide field test with eight metering point operators, the connection of gas meters with a pulse interface to a BSI SMGW via the " value-added module gas" has now been successfully tested.

Peter Reitz, commercial project manager at Westenergie Metering, summarizes the advantages: "With the value-added module, metering point operators can make their processes more efficient in the future, as they cannot change existing meters and can continue to use them. In addition, the use of the module for gas meters expands the scope for action and offers network operators an additional opportunity to meet the obligations of the Metering Point Operation Act."

The communication unit is produced at WEPTECH in Landau (Palatinate). "As a technology and manufacturing partner, WEPTECH was very happy to take on the development of the 'value-added module gas'," says Wolfgang Esch - Head of Sales & Marketing. "Due to our OMS and radio expertise in smart metering - WEPTECH is also the manufacturer of the BSI SMGW from PPC - many synergy effects were incorporated into this development, which made it possible to successfully implement the project together with Westenergie Metering."

Joint project by Danpower, enercity contracting and Deutsche Telekom

The amended Heating Costs Ordinance (HKVO) came into force on December 1, 2021. The German government has thus ensured that the requirements of the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EED 2012/27/EU) are transposed into national law. In accordance with "Article 9c of the Energy Efficiency Directive", the updated HKVO stipulates, among other things, that all newly installed meters and heat cost allocators must be remotely readable from 25.10.2021 and that devices already installed must be retrofitted or replaced by 01.01.2027.

Against this legal background, the project "Remote readability of heat meters" was initiated as a joint project by Danpower, enercity contracting and Deutsche Telekom, which has now gone live.

The aim of the project was to map a secure, manufacturer-independent and automated remote reading of heat meters via NB IoT Gateway on Deutsche Telekom's Cloud of Things in order to be able to continuously digitize the downstream billing processes due to the current legal requirements (EED, UVI).

WEPTECH, as a project partner of Deutsche Telekom, has realized the connection of the SWAN2 gateway based on the LwM2M protocol for this future-oriented solution, which enables meter data to be received on the Cloud of Things (CoT), decoded (parsed) and thus made available for billing systems of energy service providers. We have also registered LwM2M smart meter objects with the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance). This means that these data can be recognized and processed directly as meter data on platforms, says Wolfgang Esch - Head of Sales & Marketing - at WEPTECH.