ENERGY METERING

The Elsag solution

for monitoring electric
power consumption
Energy m
ENERGY METERING needs to be installed and no specific training is
required. Access protection is provided by
Elsag has more than twenty
usernames and passwords assigned individually
years experience working in
to customers. Each username is associated with
the energy sector, with an
a profile that allows customers to view only the
offering that covers monitor-
data from the sites they manage.
ing and control systems for electricity, gas and
water distribution networks, automatic meter
reading services and user assistance/call centre
management. CONSUMPTION DATA
To satisfy the new requirements of the liberalised
Every day, quarter hourly consumption
energy market, Elsag has developed specific
information is automatically downloaded from
solutions both forpower producers, traders and
remote sites over public switched or cellular
eligible customers (Energy Trading platform), as
phone networks. After checking data integrity, the
well as for distributors (Retail Area platform).
information is loaded into a high performance
Specifically, to allow operators to prepare detailed
relational database (Oracle).
forecasts rapidly and implement pro-active
Information updated to midnight is published on
monitoring strategies (adjusting forecasts
the website every 24 hours. For annual totals and
speedily, or taking action to modify consumption
period comparisons, data for the whole current
patterns, limit deviations from forecasts and
reduce the relative financial charges), Elsag has
developed Energy Metering, the outsourced
electric power consumption monitoring service.
Energy Metering offers automatic meter reading
services, database management and web
publication of consumption profiles collected on
a daily basis, giving customers a wide choice of
graphical and tabular reports for data analysis.
Energy metering can be integrated with Energy
Trading, the IT platform created by Elsag to
manage electric power market trading processes,
by transferring consumption data to the suites
and previous year is also available online, while
consumption forecast module (Energy Forecast).
data from previous periods is archived and
Energy Metering can also be integrated with the
available on request.
Retail Area platform to manage the process of
For complex organisations, the various points of
selling energy on to final customers.
delivery and any sub-metering points (to measure
consumption in sections of a customers network)
are organised in a hierarchical tree, drawn up on
ACCESS TO SERVICE
a joint basis with the customer during service
The Energy Metering service has been carefully configuration, to group sites according to
designed to be simple to use and to assure high functional or geographical criteria.
data security and access protection. Access is Consumption data is available for each individual
through a standard browser from any computer monitoring point and in aggregate form.
with an internet connection. No special software The profile assigned to each user in the
metering
organisation can be configured to permit access
to data relating to the entire organisation or just
a part of it.
REPORTS
Reports to display and analyse data combine
graphic and tabular representations on the same
web page. These easy to interpret summaries are
generated simply by selecting the consumption
site (single or aggregate), the date and the type
of report required.
Reports can be accessed over the web or sent
by e-mail, either in response to an online request
from a user, or automatically on a periodic basis.
Customers can either choose from a large library
of standard reports (fixed or variable period) or
alternatively discuss the development of new
ones with Elsag based on their own specific
requirements.
The following types of report are available:
 consumption profile and statistics (consump-
tion in graphical form, comparison between
current and historical data)
 consumption analysis (comparison of actual
metered consumption against forecast con-
sumption schedules)
 simulation (assessment of the cost of power
generation, transmission and despatching ser-
vices)
 alarms.
ALARMS
The system provides interactive tools for users
to set specific alarm thresholds on a site-by-site
basis, linked to parameters like daily
consumption, maximum power or power factor.
Every 24 hours the consumption data is verified
against set thresholds and the customer sent
an alarm message via email if exceeded. By
combining these functions, energy managers
can avoid performing routine consumption
checks, because as well as receiving weekly or
monthly summaries, they know that they will be
alerted if any anomaly occurs.
EXTERNAL AMR SYSTEMS
As well as acquiring consumption data directly
from metering equipment over a telephone link,
Energy Metering can also import consumption
data files from other AMR (Automatic Meter
Reading) systems.
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE side and the web server on the other. The
capacity of the database and the server has

The Energy Metering service has been designed been sized to provide excellent expandability.

for scalability, expandability and ease of Communications with the remote metering

maintenance. The basic features of the client- equipment take place over the public switched

server architecture, which runs in a Microsoft (PSTN) or cellular (GSM) phone networks.

environment, are an Oracle database connected The architecture is illustrated in schematic form

to the communication client (front-end) on one in the figure below.

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

CUSTOMER

Web Internet BROWSER

server Profiles
Analysis
Simulation
Alarm/report e-mail
Data Scheduler MAILBOX
base
Consumption
aggregation
Consumption
forecast

External AMR
systems

Data logger Meter

AMR = Automatic Meter Reading

Via Puccini, 2 - 16154 Genova - Italy - Tel. +39 01065821 - Fax +39 0106582898

www.elsag.it

A Finmeccanica Company