Cuculus and Elvaco bring water and district heat smart metering to the next level

Many smart water and district heating meters are not as smart as electricity meters. These meters lack the ability for flexible scheduling of meter reads. Handling of events and alarms is very limited and advanced security standards are not supported. In most cases, these meters communicate with a gateway through cable using the M-Bus protocol or wirelessly through the wM-Bus protocol.

Cuculus and Elvaco have designed and implemented a concept which allows adding missing functionality by equipping the gateway with the DLMS protocol widely used in electricity smart metering projects.

One of the major benefits is that the infrastructure can be secured by using the very high security standards of DLMS (authenticated, authorized and encrypted communication). Customers can reuse their DLMS infrastructure which may have been set up for electricity meters already.

The gateway implements each meter as a virtual meter. This enables buffering of meter reads and events. From a system point of view, these virtual meters can be queried as if they were DLMS meters. Meter reads stored in profiles can be pushed by the gateway automatically to decrease the load of the ZONOS platform.

Next to the meters also the gateway itself can be managed making use of the DLMS protocol.

The whole end-to-end setup has been designed in a way that new meter types can be added without the need for firmware updates or further configurations for the gateway. All necessary configurations are managed centrally in the ZONOS platform.

Kjartan V. Skaugvoll, CEO of Cuculus, commented: “Our clients operate several thousand Elvaco gateways with their ZONOS smart metering systems. The possibility of making use of DLMS for new installations is an attractive option that will improve operations and ensure investment security.”

David Vonasek, CEO of Elvaco, said: “With DLMS - the latest addition to our portfolio of integration options - we have taken our M-Bus Metering Gateways one step further in becoming the industry benchmark for large-scale, flexible and secure metering infrastructure.”

Cuculus provides software solutions for the energy sector and beyond since 2007. Our ZONOS platform and the supporting optional ZONOS modules form the basis for our solutions in the area of smart metering and energy management. ZONOS can be integrated into existing system environments in a quick and efficient manner. The solution adapts to the technical, commercial and procedural requirements of our customers. The support of various meter vendors and technologies, the multi-utility support (electricity, gas, water and heat) combined with smart modular design principles allow a maximum of flexibility. Our solutions ensure short time-to-market and easy operation regardless whether the objective is a small pilot project as a cloud solution or full scale roll-out.

Kerstin Gräfe
Management Assistant

Cuculus GmbH
Ehrenbergstraße 11
98693 Ilmenau
Deutschland / Germany
Telefon: +49 3677 6860000
Fax: +49 3677 6860009
E-Mail: office@cuculus.net
Internet: http://www.cuculus.net

This release was published on openPR.