New Release of Kamstrup's Smart Grid Head-End

Feb. 27, 2012 - PRLog -- Kamstrup UtiliDriver® ( http://kamstrup.com ) makes interoperability come live. Utilities worldwide use Kamstrup UtiliDriver for smooth system integration of smart meters, communication systems and meter data management systems from different vendors. New features of version 2.6 give a substantial lift to interoperability and performance.

Kamstrup UtiliDriver® is the heart of Kamstrup’s open and interoperable Advanced Metering Infrastructure/Smart Grid system. UtiliDriver® manages the data communication between Smart Meters and Meter Data Management system (MDM).

UtiliDriver® is used in many different types of deployments. It’s used as the interface between Kamstrup Smart Meters and Kamstrup’s own MDM system for a number of fully-deployed and pilot installations in Scandinavia, Central Europe and Africa, where the meter communication is based on RF Mesh or GPRS/IP; and System Integrators are using UtiliDriver as the interface between their own MDM systems and Kamstrup’s Smart Meters.

UtiliDriver® Product Manager at Kamstrup, Palle Toftegaard Jensen says: “with the new features of version 2.6 and several performance and scalability improvements, we are sure that Kamstrup UtiliDriver is the right software platform for even the largest deployments, which has also been demonstrated through several fully-live installations”.  

Smart Grid Product Manager, Henrik Bæk Jørgensen adds: “UtiliDriver is an important component in Kamstrup’s Smart Grid strategy as it on top of the basic Advanced Metering Infrastructure functionality also serves as the communication engine ensuring that e.g. alarms from Smart Meters are made available in a utility’s Distribution Management System. The benefits from this kind of integration are 1) substantially enhanced low voltage interruption management and 2) improved customer service including better and faster communication in case of outages and better monitoring of voltage quality”.

UtiliDriver® basically exposes all the Smart Meter functionality to other IT systems via web services and at the same time, it “hides” the communication and Smart Meter complexity for other business systems, which do not have any need for knowing which communication method, is used (e.g. RF Mesh or point to point), or which Smart Meter types they are communicating with. This e.g. makes it possible to add new meter types without changing software.

Important new features of Kamstrup UtiliDriver® version 2.6 are:
•   RESTful Service Technology for Improved interoperability. REST is based on the http protocol and “anything” that can talk http can use the services without much effort, i.e. JavaScript, C#, Java, etc.
•   Performance optimization via enhanced architecture making it possible to parallelize more jobs and hereby better utilize state-of-the-art multi-threaded, multi-core servers.
•   Support for high-priority jobs, where all work-in-progress jobs will be paused allowing an on-demand high-priority job to execute and complete as fast as possible. Paused jobs will automatically resume from where they stopped, when the high-priority job has completed.
•   Alarm Server functionality is now part of the UtiliDriver® head-end. Instant push alarms from Smart Meters are now received by a dedicated Alarm Server process for optimum performance. The Alarm Server process can forward alarms as e-mails or web services can be used for integrating alarms from Kamstrup Smart Meters with a utility’s Distribution Management System.

More information:
Product Manager – UtiliDriver, Palle Toftegaard Jensen
E-mail: ptj@kamstrup.dk
Phone: +45 8993 1303

Senior Product Manager – Smart Grid, Henrik Bæk Jørgensen
E-mail: hbj@kamstrup.dk
Phone: +45 8993 1468

Kamstrup A/S
Industrivej 28
DK - 8660 Skanderborg
Web: http://www.kamstrup.com

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Kamstrup A/S serves energy companies and utilities with metering solutions for electricity, heat, cooling water and natural gas. Our solutions include Smart Grid applications, Smart Metering systems, energy meters and water meters. Today almost 10,000,000 energy and water meters from Kamstrup are installed in homes worldwide securing fair billing and an efficient use of energy.