DLMS User Association - Business Report 2006

For the first time in Copenhagen

The DLMS UA holds its General Meeting, as usual, together with the Metering Europe 2006 Conference and Exhibition in Copenhagen, Denmark. Denmark, one of the 10 European countries having declared full electricity market opening (status Sept. 2005) and with the largest capacity in generation through wind (23%) is part of Scandinavia, one of the regions where market liberalisation started. Recently, exciting developments in smart residential metering took place, making the area particularly interesting for the DLMS UA as well.

The General Meeting will take place the evening before opening the Conference and Exhibition, on the 9th October at 19:30 in the Bella Center.

The DLMS UA is present on this exhibition with a booth. On the conference, a paper with the title “Standardisation – the infrastructure of liberalization” will be given by Mr. Győző Kmethy in Session 2, “Communication and infrastructures” chaired by Mr. Ralf Hoffmann of Euro DCS AG, Germany, the company commercialising the Conformance Test Tool. The DLMS UA also offers a pre-conference seminar to be held on the 9th October.

Membership

Membership continued to grow. Today, there are 88 members, from all continents and from 35 countries. Europe is leading with 60 members. A considerable growth came from Asia: the number of members has grown from 9 to 23 in a year. Since our last meeting 20 new members, 14 from outside of Europe, from 9 countries have joined:

  • Atlas Electronics, Serbia and Montenegro;
  • CM Partner Inc., Korean Republic;
  • CPPCEM, China (associated member);
  • DVGW, Germany (associated member);
  • E-Utile S.p.A., Italy,
  • G NET, Serbia and Montenegro;
  • Genus Overseas Electronics Limited, India;
  • Hansuk Tech, Korean Republic;
  • KEPRI, Korean Republic;
  • Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, Korean Republic;
  • MAEC, France;
  • Mikroelektronika A.D., Bosnia-Herzegovina;
  • MS-M, Korean Republic;
  • NAMJUN Co., Ltd., Korean Republic;
  • Omnisystem C. Ltd., Korean Republic;
  • PS-Tec, Korean Republic;
  • Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), Saudi Arabia;
  • Shanghai Metering, China;
  • Shenzhen Holley, China;
  • Wizit, Korean Republic.

Welcome on board!

Two applications are still pending. Two members have terminated their membership.

Standardisation

In 2005, the 5th Edition of the Green Book and the 7th Edition of the Blue Book have been published.

Their contents have been offered for International standardization. The following standards are under final vote (FDIS, deadline 13th October 2006) and should be published this year:

  • IEC 62056-46, Data link layer using HDLC protocol Amendment 1;
  • IEC 62056-47, COSEM transport layer for IP networks, Edition 1.0;
  • IEC 62056-53, COSEM application layer, Edition 2.0;
  • IEC 62056-61, OBIS identification system Edition 2.0;
  • IEC 62056-62: Interface classes, Edition 2.0.

With the revision of the Conformance test process and the tool the Yellow Book is also under revision. It will be officially published when the CTT validation will have been finished.

Management Committee

An extraordinary Management Committee meeting was held in Zurich on 4th May 2006.

Main items were:

  • revision of market situation and future strategies;
  • revision of internal regulations;
  • rules for using the Conformance Test Tool.

Working groups

The WG Maintenance, convened by Gyozo Kmethy was working via emails to discuss mainly issues around the new version of the conformance test tool. A meeting was held on 8th November 2005 in Budapest.

Main subjects were:

  • conformance test plans;
  • push technologies and XML;
  • data security.

Conformance testing

The Conformance Test Tool (CTT) has been sold so far in 14 copies: 8 in Europe, 1 in the Middle East and 4 in Asia.

The conditions of selling the tool and the rules for third party testing have been revised and may require further consideration.

The List of standard OBIS codes is an essential part of the tool. In 2005, the CTT has been improved: the latest version of the OBIS list can be downloaded for testing in the form of a .dat file. Therefore, testing easily follows developments covering new applications.

The 5th Edition of the Green Book and the 7th Edition of the Blue Book, include a number of important changes, including, among others, the TCP-UDP/IP based protocol stack. To be able to test the new features a revision of the CTT has been launched. The new test plans are ready and they are being implemented. The beta version will be available in September 2006 for beta testing.

The new tool also provides an improved test structure and better test coverage. It also gives a more comprehensive test report including, among others, a full textual name of all objects tested.

Meter implementations

To date, 30 “DLMS Compliant” Certificates have been issued to 9 meter manufacturers. 12 new certificates have been issued.

The list of compliant equipment can be found on our homepage.

Data collection system implementations

Some of the data collection systems available (the list is far from complete):

  • the Saturne system from Asais;
  • the ZTF system from ITF/Froeschl;
  • the Goerlitz EDW system;
  • the Converge system from M2C;
  • the EIServer ® system from Energy ICT.

Market situation

Europe

On 7th June 2006, an agreement has been signed between the DLMS UA and DVGW, the German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water and. According to this agreement, DVGW became an Associated Member of the DLMS UA.

The objectives of this co-operation are summarised below (text kindly provided by DVGW on 14th August 2006):

“During an important phase in ongoing liberalisation process of gas business in Germany a cooperation between DLMS UA and DVGW as associated member could be established.

The objective of DVGW is to apply existing international standards for data exchange and continue development according to new market requirements.

The DVGW working group coordinates inputs from involved utilities, system suppliers and device manufacturers to create proposals, which can be positioned also in the activities area of the DLMS UA.

Based on the decision to apply OBIS numbers as identification system for GAS, the working group discussions result in further demands from the practical point of view. These should also be made available for international application.

Main issues are:

-extension of OBIS numbers gas for data communication with larger stations (e.g. gas quality measurement data for billing purpose);

-enrichment of OBIS code application area directed to commercial data exchange between companies (e.g. OBIS codes electricity in use for EDIFACT messages, EDNA initiative);

-dedicated analysis of available protocols and data transmission technology for appropriate utilisation in various categories of gas measuring stations.”

Initial discussions with Italian gas organizations have also been started on using DLMS/COSEM for residential applications.

Asia

As already mentioned under “Membership”, we have experienced a considerable interest from Asia during the last twelve months.

Among the 23 members from Asia, 2 are from Australia, 6 from China, 2 from India, 1 from Indonesia, 1 from Japan and 11 from the Korean Republic.

For the first time this year the DLMS UA has participated on the Metering Asia event held in Beijing on 4-7th April 2006.

The DLMS UA participated with a booth attracting a considerable interest. A paper was given by Mr. Paul Fuchs with the title: “Meeting new challenges in AMR / AMM with DLMS/COSEM”. A pre-conference seminar has also been organized, and was given by Paul.

On 29th October 2005, an Agreement has been signed between the DLMS UA and the China Productivity Promotion Center for Electrical Measuring Instruments (CPPCEM) to set up a local competence center in China.

The main objectives are:

  • to prepare Chinese versions of the standards;
  • to assign country-specific OBIS codes;
  • to set up a Chinese DLMS UA homepage;
  • to provide local training and support.

According to the information received from our partner, the following events took place:

  • on 17th April 2006, an expert group has been set up;
  • on 21st April 206, a seminar has been held in Nanjing, China, by local experts;
  • an updated information will be given at the General meeting.

In India, following the training seminar held in Bangalore in November 2004, CPRI continued to work on promoting IEC 62056 to be adopted as an Indian standard. They have also performed 10 conformance tests for LS Industrial Systems, Korean Republic.

Global

Electricity Power Resarch Institute (EPRI, the California-based energy research institute launched the IntelliGrid project, its vision for the electric delivery system of the future. One of the activities within this project is the Consumer Portal project, defined as a combination of hardware and software that enables two-way communication between energy service organizations and equipment within the consumer’s premises. In a report “IntelliGrid Consumer Portal Telecommunication Assessment and Specification” various technologies have been evaluated with a view of developing a reference design. Among Consumer Application technologies, five technologies have been evaluated and DLMS/COSEM received the highest rating. An initial contact has been established.

Training

As already mentioned, on 7th April 2006, the General Secretary, Mr. Paul Fuchs, gave a training seminar at the Metering Asia conference. There were 13 participants.

This is the fifth year when the DLMS/COSEM training seminar is organised as a pre-conference event to Metering Europe. Previous training sessions have been held in Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and Barcelona. For this year’s seminar, the training package has been reworked to focus more on the user’s aspect.

Support

The DLMS UA provides support through the website. The website also supports the maintenance process of the specification and the conformance test tool. In addition, questions put via emails are answered.

  • Actarishas developed and made available a software package called COSEM API supporting the DLMS/COSEM services for LN referencing;
  • CPRI provides consultancy and third party testing in India and the region;
  • Euro DCS, the Görlitz company commercialising the conformance test tool, has made available a log-module, providing a complete decoding of all frames and supporting debugging;
  • I-CUBE has developed a number of tools based on XML;
  • KEMA provides consultancy services and third party testing. It has developed a protocol analyser. A demo version is downloadable from their website.

Promotion

The “DLMS news” is a regular feature in the Metering International magazine.

Recent titles:

  • Barcelona – new books – new tasks;
  • Growth is fuelled by need for standards and support for members;
  • The Asian Energy Week – Showcase for AMR/AMM in Beijing – also for the DLMS UA;
  • DLMS for all energy types – and a new Associated member.

The exhibitions on metering conferences have also proven a useful channel of exchanging information.

The DLMS UA Membership page provides a link to the homepage of all members. Brief information on meters certified can be also published; we do encourage all members to exploit these facilities.

Summary

We enjoyed support from many parties during this business year. We will not miss the opportunity to thank all supporters of the DLMS UA. Our colleagues of the DLMS UA office in Geneva did a very good job all year round. Many thanks also to those member companies who sponsored the association in form of human resources.

Four years after publishing the international standards, DLMS/COSEM is widely known and used. The data model and OBIS have a wider potential to be used for data exchange between market participants. Beyond its technical merits, DLMS/COSEM stands out by the level of international standardization and user support.

With spreading awareness, growing membership, a larger choice of metering equipment, data collection systems and communication media, DLMS/COSEM is even better positioned as the Electronic Data Acquisition solution. It is well geared to meet the challenges of today’s metering business environment, and transform the meter to be a real interface between utilities and customers.

May we encourage you all to further co-operate to achieve our objective – to serve the liberalized industry with an efficient tool for meter data exchange.

Győző Kmethy, President,

and

Paul Fuchs, General Secretary

of the DLMS User Association

The General Meeting

It takes place on 9th September at 19:30 at the Bella Center, Copenhagen.

The Metering 2006 Conference and Exhibition is in the same place. The DLMS User Association is on booth # 6.07. The General Meeting starts at 19:30 h and ends about 20:30 h. The agenda is added as a separate document. Main points are the elections (Management Committee and auditor), acceptance of the annual report and accounts and decisions on the budget and membership fees for 2007.

The Coloured Books

The current specification is included in:

  • COSEM Identification System and Interface classes “Blue Book” Edition 7.0;
  • COSEM Architecture and protocols, “Green Book” Edition 5.0;
  • COSEM Conformance Test Process; “Yellow Book”, Edition 2.0;
  • COSEM Glossary of terms “White Book”, Edition 1.0.

These “Coloured Books” are sent to all members as a e-book (on CD), and they can be downloaded from the Internet.

The international standards

The international standards can be purchased from the National committees of the IEC and CEN. Links: IEC Web store ( and On-line Catalogue of European Standards (

Brochure and News

The brochure is available in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, either in paper form or on the Internet (Information). The news is a dated list on the homepage.

Internet

The Internet site is prepared as a tool for a more efficient work. Password protected areas allow access to the most recent documents, mainly the coloured books. This avoids sending around heavy attachments to e-mails and makes it easier for the user of the information, e.g. using it as an archive.

Office

The office is in Geneva, close to the Airport. Mrs. Catherine Petit-Mantilleri and Mrs. Christine Kolb successfully runs the office. The trade marked DLMS logo characterizes the printed matter. Mail must be addressed to DLMS User Association, Pre-de-la-Fontaine 19, CH-1217 Meyrin-Geneva, Switzerland.

Accounts

The treasurer is Mr. Peter Kieffer, who signs financial transactions in the Geneva office. Mrs. Beatrice Nghiem keeps the accounts, settles invoices and releases calls for membership fees. Mr. Jean-Claude Grossiord verified the accounts of 2005 and accepted them.

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