UFD, Naturgy’s electricity distribution subsidiary, closes 2018 with a total of 3,610,346 domestic smart meters installed; i.e., 99% of all such devices owned by the company in Spain, with a contracted power of less than 15 kW. 99% of these meters are fully integrated into the tele-management system, thereby complying with current legislation governing the plan to replace old meters. UFD is therefore taking a decisive step towards smart networks.
To undertake the tele-management of these devices, as well as install the meters, the company invested a total of 86 million euros in adapting more than 36,500 transformer substations (96% of the total). This also allowed improvements to be made to maintenance, network operation and supply quality. The remotely-managed units take more than 500 million hourly readings every day in Spain.
By region, UFD has already installed over 1.5 million meters in Galicia (98.3% of its meters), 1.1 million in the Region of Madrid (99.9% of its meters), more than 609,000 meters in Castile-La Mancha (99.2%) and 321,000 meters in Castile and Leon (99.2%).
Only cases involving difficulty in gaining access to the property or those requiring adaptation and renewal of the installations remain pending.
According to the General Manager of UFD, Raúl Suárez, “power distribution networks are being called on to play a crucial role in the new energy models, contributing to the development of a more flexible and online electricity system in which customer decision independence on when and how much to consume will increase”.
UFD has made a major effort in recent years on innovation and the application of new technologies to make progress in the field of remote measurement and tele-management of supply points, on telecommand and remote sensors for networks, and on making infrastructures more robust and integrating communication networks and systems into the conventional network to streamline operation.
More information and control for customers
The new online meters are, on a domestic level, the pivot around which the development of smart networks revolves. The new devices provide consumers with more information about the energy they consume, thereby fostering efficiency and savings, energy readings based on the time of day to facilitate adaptation to the most advantageous tariffs for the various consumption habits, and a better service and fewer inconveniences because operations being performed remotely (meter readings, connections, disconnections, changes or reconnections) and more swiftly.
Smart meters gather customer consumption data and transmit this data via the electricity cable itself using PLC technology to a data concentrator located at the transformer station. This data concentrator uses wireless technology to send the information to the distribution company’s systems. The distribution companies provide this information to the customer’s supply company for billing purposes and make it available to the user.
