Smart Metering. Success depends on selecting the right information and communication technology

Smart meters will be deployed in Germany and other European countries. Various scenarios for the rollout have been and will continue to be discussed. Smart meters offer transparent energy consumption in homes and businesses and enable targeted energy savings. These benefits can also be exploited by energy providers in order to create dynamic billing rates structured around individual user profiles containing data such as energy consumption and time frames. Against this background, finding the right underlying communication technology for the smart grid is an extremely complex challenge. A new process model helps structure the decision process and thus creates transparency. The article describes this new process model and its application with special focus on the situation in Germany.