11-1 DLMS/COSEM for smart metering
DLMS/COSEM for smart metering: new developments
The Smart Metering Standardization Mandate M/441 has been issued by the European Commission in March 2009 and accepted by the European ESOs – CEN, CENELEC and ETSI - in the same year. In June 2011, the Smart Metering Co-ordination Group has completed the first part of its work issuing the Technical Report on Communication. This document specifies, among others, the functional reference architecture, the functional elements, the interfaces, the list of available and future standards and high-level use cases. It also covers aspects of data security, privacy, interoperability and the link to smart grids. The DLMS UA and its members play an important role in the work of the SM-CG and amending the existing standards as well as developing new ones in close co-operation with IEC TC13 WG14, CENELEC TC13 WG02 and CEN TC TC294.
This work benefits from the European OPEN meter research project where the DLMS UA also contrib-uted. This project was running in parallel with the Mandate and closed on 30th June 2011. The project confirmed DLMS/COSEM as the leading standard for smart metering: supporting all energy types, all interfaces and all communication media.
The most immediate result is the specification of two new DLMS/COSEM communication profiles for PLC OFDM Type 1 (AKA PLC PRIME) and OFDM Type 2 (AKA PLC G3), released for comments as draft CENELEC Technical Specifications: prCLC/TS 50567-1, 50567-2, 52056-84 and 52056-8-5.
Green Book Edition 9, published in December 2009 and Blue Book Edition 10, published in August 2010 have been transferred to IEC TC13 WG14 for global standardization. Edition 3 of the IEC 62056 DLMS/COSEM suite has passed the CDV stage and the new standards should be published early 2012.
To meet new requirements, the DLMS UA works on further extending the specification while maintaining stability and backwards compatibility. These new elements include management objects for the new PLC media, push operation, an extended data security suite with public key cryptography, modelling payment metering, a more efficient encoding scheme and many more. They will be included in the next edition of the DLMS UA Books, expected also early 2012, together with a new version of the Conformance Test Tool. DLMS/COSEM facilitates interoperability by using a single object-oriented data model, while its architecture is open to accommodate new messaging and data transport mechanisms.
The DLMS/COSEM user community has grown by more than 20% last year and counts more than 200 members now. The number of certified meters types has grown even faster and approaches 200.
To support its Asian members, making up more than 1/3d of the membership, the DLMS UA has participated at the Metering Asia event in May. It was a big success with many exhibitors and papers featuring DLMS/COSEM. The training seminar was attended by more than 30 people. The DLMS UA is also present at Metering Europe 2011 in Amsterdam proposing its training seminar for the 10th times linked to this event.