MARCH 2021 NEWSLETTER
Videos
With the end of March, we are approaching the end of the first quarter of 2021. The world continues to fight a global pandemic, but NES is not slowing down. We have adapted to the new working conditions and looking back at 2020 – we achieved many milestones despite Covid-19 effects.
Latest News
Networked Energy Services Supports Innovative "Energy Bank" Initiative. NES partnered with CIAC IT (leader of the VERTPOM® consortium in France) to present an innovative solution, which creates a balance between production and consumption of any kind of energy (with VERTPOM-BANK®) leading to a positive energy territory.
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NES Products Unaffected by AMNESIA:33 TCP Vulnerability. NES maintains a high state of vigilance to ensure that its products and solutions provide industry leading cyber-security.
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Networked Energy Services Expands Commitment to Latin America. Industry veterans recently joined NES to further expand its smart grid and smart metering customer base in LATAM.
Whitepapers & Articles
Whitepaper: Headend System
(HES) Integration 2021
Access the joint sponsored whitepaper with the OSGP Alliance to read about this and learn why using open standards and CIM provides the best future oriented and flexible architecture.
Innovative Energy Bank to be Deployed in French Town
Find out more about VERTPOM Energy Bank project using NES smart meters.
Poland AMIplus Smart City Wrocław Project
Looking for a successful model of a smart metering DSO deployment? See how experts do it!
NES Blog
Here are some of the latest NES Blogs available from our website.
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Success Stories
Tauron Distribution’s AMIplus Smart City Wroclaw project has achieved its goals and objectives, and is considered a successful model to use for future projects.
Events NES was present at:
24th of February 2021
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23rd February 2021
Grid Modernization series Enlit Asia, Virtual Event
Speaker: Jon Wells on "Making the Smart Grid Smart".
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1st - 5th March 2021
Africa Energy Indaba,
Cape Town, South Africa
Speaker: Mark Ossel on "Digitisation: Transforming the Energy Sector".
Upcoming OSGP Sponsored Events
Apr 16-17 2021
Smart Grid and Future Energy Distribution Summit
Virtual Summit
June 4-5 2021
ICSG Istanbul 2021
Istanbul, Turkey
Apr 22 2021
Enlit Asia – Demand Side & Customer Management
Online Event
June 8-10 2021
Enlit Africa
Digital Event
Apr 28-30 2021
SMARTGREENS 2021
Prague, Czech Republic
June 14-16 2021
Middle East Energy Dubai
Dubai, UAE
May 18-20 2021
Fundamentals of IEC 61850 Global 2021
Stockholm, Sweden
June 22-23 2021
SPARK, London
UK
May 19-21 2021
Trade Show ELECTRICITY
Warsaw, Poland
Expert Corner
Operations and Maintenance of the Smart Grid, Industry Parallels
Jon Wells
VP Customer Solutions
For many utilities, deployment of the first wave of smart meters into their environment was and is something very new. Before that point, there was no IT deployed into the field – all the infrastructure from the sub-station to the consumer’s premise was entirely passive and electro-mechanical. The smart meter deployment is, effectively, adding many tens or hundreds of thousands of IT enabled devices into their customer’s homes and businesses. Like any form of IT infrastructure, these devices need to be maintained through operational processes. Failure to do so in the short-term leads to a downwards drift in efficiency. Failure to do so in the long-term can lead to the whole ROI for the deployment failing.
Telecommunications went through the same transition when PSTN phones were replaced by cable and DSL wireless routers and smart phones. The response was to develop a set of operational processes to maintain the infrastructure deployed in the field and at the consumer premise; collectively called eTOM (extended Telecommunications Operations Model).
And before that, the IT industry was looking at how to standardise operational processes for corporate IT infrastructure to cope with the increased use of PCs and laptops (and smart phones etc….); the response was ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).
Both these standards address operational issues for event management, problem management, configuration control, release management, SLA management, provisioning/activation, security, proactive and reactive maintenance, planning and accounting as main process areas. And when we step back and think about it, the same needs to be applied to the smart meters – they are, after all, IT devices, connected through a WAN to corporate platforms, and connected through a LAN to consumer devices. Just like Telecommunications and just like the IT industry.
Whilst the detailed procedures for operating and maintaining a smart meter deployment are different, the overall concept is very similar. Even defining a common lexicon describing the processes can help people communicate their ideas for the development, execution, evaluation and improvement of processes.
NES is proud to work with partners and customers that are applying operational and maintenance processes to ensure that the IT and telecommunications aspects of smart meters are well represented. And the positive results in terms of overall availability of the smart meters, the information they provide to the utility and the control they offer to the utility are clear.
