Article
The smart meter roll-out is a huge task for all concerned. Both economically and also organisationally: the imposition of upper price limits and demands for a secure supply chain pose major challenges for energy suppliers and municipal utility companies. However, the roll-out simultaneously represents a huge opportunity.
With the aid of the smart meter roll-out and the secure infrastructure of the smart meter gateway, the energy and housing industries can achieve a great digitisation leap forward, involving synergies of processes and new, digital applications, thereby opening up new economic opportunities.
Our subsidiaries KALO and SMARVIS demonstrated two specific solutions at the E-world trade fair. In the “selbermachenlassen” (“doing it yourself vs. having it done for you”) trade fair duel they showed how municipal utilities, using the smart meter gateway infrastructure which is or will already be installed, could open up a new line of business: submetering.
KALO argues here for “machen lassen” (“having it done”), offering the submetering solution as a full-service, white-label product. Meanwhile, SMARVIS proposed the “selber machen” (“doing it yourself”) option, using suitable hardware and software. A new business model is thereby created for energy suppliers using an infrastructure which has already been paid for.
Paul-Vincent Abs, the CEO of E.ON Metering, sums up the debate accurately as follows: “The energy industry has a great opportunity to work together with the housing industry on bringing together the topics of metering and submetering.”
Further highlights of the trade fair; a joint podium discussion with Günther H. Oettinger, former European Commissioner and Ingo Schönberg, managing director of the noventic affiliate PPC. During the subsequent tour of the trade fair the former European Commissioner for Digitisation confirmed these thoughts with regard to multi-metering: “Low-investment measures create investment security, particularly in the real estate sector. This makes it easy, using the existing infrastructure, to exploit the opportunities opened up by digitisation.”
The tour proceeded past the stands of the firms robotron, TEAG and Bosch.IO, and demonstrated that we can only master the challenges posed by digitisation when we work together. Günther H. Oettinger summed this up: “Real estate companies and energy suppliers must learn about the opportunities offered by digitisation in order to exploit the full potential benefit for their properties.” Because multi-metering is the incubator for the digitisation of real estate and therefore the key to cutting costs and achieving climate protection through increased efficiency.