Press Release: Joint ESMIG-Eurelectric Interoperability workshop

16 November 2011 - Brussels ESMIG in cooperation with Eurelectric held a workshop yesterday on Interoperability at the Eurelectric meeting centre. The workshop was well-attended by utilities representatives, regulators, as well as other stakeholders.

The high-level speakers, among whom Marielle Liikanen (CEER), Neil Avery (ANEC), Ralf Sporer (Chairman of SG-CG), Ralf Hoffmann (ESMIG Vice-President) and Rogelio Segovia (DG INFSO), presented the current status of standardisation regarding the Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMI), and exchanged views on the additional steps that are needed to reach an interoperable infrastructure.

"Interoperability is the ability of a system to exchange data with other systems of different types and/or from different manufacturers. Reaching interoperability takes more than just selecting standards. Options have to be configured and behavior has to be modelled by Use Cases. The focus of standardisation organisations should be on defining a framework of standards, with a unified datamodel on top", said ESMIG Managing Director, Willem Strabbing.

In order to ease the roll-out of Smart Meters in Europe, ESMIG strongly supports initiatives, the purpose of which is to improve the interoperability of components in AMI. It is an ESMIG objective to provide a full end-to-end working solution between components of the AMI up to and including Business Systems in a multi-vendor environment. Complying to open standards is a basic condition, however not sufficient to reach real interoperability among AMI components.

“The process of standardisation in the Home and Building Information is on its way. Ontology and datamodels are being developed.  This world has to get together with the utility world to discuss the interfaces between their architectures“, pointed out Rogelio Segovia, Project Officer ICT for Sustainable Growth  from DG INFSO.

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