Changes

As digital communications is and will inevitably related to current and future smart energy industries, the available standards do in fact focus on all levels of communication from generation over distribution to consumers. That includes general and generic methods for protection (encryption) and verification (electronic signatures) in a Public Key Infrastructure or PKI of national scale to communication protocols for the specific interchange of information within business processes in energy industries, like (for example) transferring a meter’s value for invoicing through a Metered Services Consumption report message (UN/CEFACT BDEW MSCONS PID 13017).

So you live in an apartment or house and use electricity. Big deal! And it really is. Let us see why. All the electric energy delivered for your convenience goes through at least one measuring device – the meter. That will be in our digitized world an electronic device called in Germany for unknown reasons a '''smart-meter''' or moderne Messeinrichtung ('''mME'''). This thing in its initial configuration is not “smart” at all, given the idea "smart" means also: able to communicate. It’s not. It is an electronic counter with no ability to communicate. The meter resides logically in a '''market-locatio'''n or '''MaLo''' (address of the building or apartment), which is associated with your invoicing details (customer name & address). The meter itself or multiple meters represent the '''measuring-location''' or '''MeLo'''. Ant this is bound to a '''meter-ID''' which is then associated with the physical meter, which again has a '''serial number'''.

[[File:MaLo2SN.png|thumb]]

The Format of a Market Location MaLo consist out of a 11-digit code:

1st Digit = authorizing body (1-3: DVGW; 4-9: BDEW)

2nd to 10th = (9 digits) ID provided by the grid provider / measurement device provider

11th digit = checksum

Example: 012345678901

1,2 digit = country code

3-9 digit = distribution grid provider

10-14 digit = postcode

15-33 digit = “counting point number” / Zählpunktnummer

Example: DE012345678901234567890

Consumption of electricity is measured in kWh which is kilowatt-hours or 1.000 watts per hour. With a price of 35 to 45 eurocent per kWh, this is a commodity worth to think a moment on how to organize the value chain to ensure money can be collected from consumers (Endverbraucher) and distributed to the contributors in the energy industry. The “bottom” end if this value chain is the “electricity bill” (invoice) you are receiving from a supplier (Lieferant). As Germany is an open market for electricity, this supplier buys the electric energy for your future consumption from an exchange-like market and/or has means to produce electricity themselves. But this will be covered later in more detail. For the moment we just reduce it to the fact that the supplier estimates your individual consumption of electricity based on a standardized load profile (SLP) and if everything is normal, it will be there to power whatever electric appliances you might have.

In order to “smartify” the situation, communication must be enabled. Therefore an communication interface needs to be added to the smart-meter. Furthermore a smart-meter-gateway (SMGW) needs to be added and accessible from the meters communication interface. These two devices can now communicate and are called in Germany an intelligent measuring system or iMSys - and yes, this communication is already protected (encrypted). The protocol used here is a COSEM (Companion Specification for Energy Metering) / OBIS (Object Identification System) / OMS (Operation Management System) protocol based on RS485 which can be either by wire or wireless, defined in TR-03109:

https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/Publikationen/TechnischeRichtlinien/TR03109/TR-03109-1_Detailspezifikation.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4

As the central communication component, the smart meter gateway must implement secure means for communication with two additional networks:

In the HAN you will find all the Controllable Local Systems (CLS). These are switches controlled by the SMGW and can be turned on or off or put into a “reduced power mode”. This is the sole purpose of the HAN to have access to one or more CLS. Pictures are often shown with including the consumers smart-home components and proprietary in-home-displays (IHD), but this is just obfuscation. The truth is all consumers will connect their smart home components in their home WLAN and in one way or another directly to the meters for readout or in the case of a power generating situation (photovoltaic, wind, generators) to the inverters / regulators of that generation unit. The CLS sole purpose is reduce the risk of instability for the grid in energy shortage situations and to enable the grid operators to shut down high consumption appliances like professional grade electric heaters, air conditioning, washer and dryers, kitchen ovens, stove, furnaces, wall boxes for e-mobility, instantaneous water heaters and heat pumps. The owner of a house will effectively loose the final control over these appliances if they have been connected through an CLS. As of now, consumers and house owners are tricked into the CLS acceptance process by offering discounts on the price of the kWh. But the national institute for electrical engineering (VDE) is working on standards making it mandatory to connect anything with an electrical power of more than a thousand Watts to a CLS. Making it illegal to constantly operate those without an CLS.

It does not connect or need to connect to your home’s WiFi. It can be wired of course.

This network carries the communication from the grid operator (Gateway-Administrator) to and from the intelligent measuring System. The gateway administrator is a role. This role is controlled by the grid operator and his rules for redispatch (rules to control frequency in the power grid at a acceptable stable level). That is a very important role and numerous apocalyptic movies do build their plot on the idea of something going wrong here. This role is the true divers’ seat in this orchestra. With CLS the ability to reduce the impact of medium or larger stability incidents to a desired audience of maximum suffering tolerable individuals, the possibilities have substantially increased. Of course, it is up the German government and the minister of energy, to decide how this audience should be exactly composed of.

Please note, routing is not available between these networks: LMN, HAN and WAN trough the smart meter gateway. It purely acts as a “bridge”, receiving messages from one network and sending different messages but accordingly to the purpose, to another attached network.