Vodafone Germany and Alcatel-Lucent have entered into a partnership to develop smart metering for the German market, which it claims to make smarter use of energy by enabling consumers to access real-time information about their energy usage and make informed decisions about their energy consumption of electricity, gas and water.
Under the partnership, both German subsidiaries will be marketing the smart metering as a managed service through their respective sales organisations.
The companies said that the smart metering managed service will enable German utilities to adhere to European Union’s rules and will be implemented for the first time by Stadtwerke Pasewalk, a municipal utility that operates in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
In this engagement, Alcatel-Lucent through its German subsidiary is providing its smart metering management system SMM 8617 as well as its services expertise to integrate components of the planned smart metering service into an offering, including the connection to the operational management systems of energy suppliers (Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP and Energy Data Management – EDM).
In addition, Vodafone Germany will provide connection between the intelligent meters, installed in consumer households and the smart metering management system.
The subsidiaries intend to develop their cooperation beyond the energy supplier market and are working closely on smart metering offerings that would apply to the health care field, specifically in patient monitoring or for applications in the development of electric cars.
Thomas Strehl, senior business development manager industry & new business at Vodafone Germany, said: “The machine-to-machine communications market is expanding and smart metering is one of the most promising segments in the future, not alone because of EU rules. We are present in this segment in Germany with strong partners like Alcatel-Lucent and our specialised M2M product portfolio.”
