Time is a great leveler and determination, consistency and patience always pays off in the long run. These could be the best describers of what happened over the last 6-7 years in India, and which culminated in the month of November 2008, where there were hectic parleys which resulted in an expert committee formed by the Ministry of Power In India, formally deciding to recommend to adopt the IEC 62056 / DLMS COSEM Series as India's national metering protocol standard, with India specific companion standard to cater to country specific requirements.
It would not have been too far from truth, if one were to worry even 6 months ago, whether India will ever have a meter communication protocol standard. The metering lobby has been all along pushing for an API based proprietary metering mechanism, with data export to a standard XML format as their version of a communication standard. The fact that this was not a metering communication protocol standard in the first place, and was inflexible to build good AMR and AMI architectures and had limited profile support all were in the end it's biggest short-comings. Even after proposing this standard called MIOS 3-4 years back, the detailed specification of the same, in a standard format and completeness to the same, took a long time to be formulated by meter manufacturers, considering the complexity of the register based naming and lack of homogenity. The fact that this standard itself was becoming a problem for meter manufacturer's to maintain, upgrade and implement might be the hidden truth.
DLMS/COSEM has always been seen suspiciously by the major meter manufacturer's in India, even though all had DLMS/COSEM compliant meters for International market was something many experts in this field cannot digest. It has to be believed that the CPRI DLMS/COSEM conformance testing center, together with Kalkitech's DLMS/COSEM Server and Client Source Code Library, gave a lot of confidence in the community that, if one were to implement the same, they still could do it in a short time, and once they all started implementing, their own confidence in the protocol all would have played a major role in taking the entire community to gravitate and finally accept a DLMS/COSEM Metering standard for India.
It would be right to state that the intervening 5-7 years, were really accrimonious times for the remote metering space in India, and the major problem that used to get thrown out at people supporting DLMS/COSEM was the Indian requirement of supporting vast amount of tamper conditions, and the seemingly general statement that Indian conditions cannot be captured fully under DLMS COSEM. This has been one of the major planks that we have been trying to expose, and with kalkitech's report on a companion specification under DLMS COSEM to handle India specific tampers, and the new event object's that were introduced by DLMS UA, went a long way to reduce the opposition to DLMS and help enable capture country specific conditions and incorporate in a generic fashion within DLMS/COSEM.
Finally in November 2008, Indian Power Ministry decided, India will have a standard set of communication protocols for metering, AMR and AMI and will also have it's own set of companion standard that captures India specific conditions. This decision historic in many senses, also requires us to appreciate and understand that metering protocols are not a closed chapter, but an always evolving area and India will need to consistently spend time and effort in actively participating in making it work for the Indian conditions, as well as for AMR and AMI applications that get's conceived in the future.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Status of DLMS COSEM Adoption in India
DLMS COSEM adoption in India, has been a hotly debated subject for many years. After the CPRI organized National Conference on Metering Protocols and DLMS and setup the DLMS/COSEM 3rd Party Certification Laboratory, the adoption of DLMS / COSEM has been gaining momentum. Today DLMS COSEM has many supporters and the major Indian meter manufacturer's have implemented DLMS/COSEM for their export requirements. In the 12 months DLMS COSEM and standardization in protocols have got more impetus with many utilities facing problems in implementing AMR / AMI solution using proprietary protocols. A recent report by Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai to Distribution Company of the state of Maharashtra has recommended the adoption of DLMS COSEM in MSEDCL projects.
IEEMA, the Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturer's Association has been at the forefront of opposing the adoption of DLMS COSEM in India and proposed an alternate protocol standard called MIOS (Meter Interoperability Standard). They have till date only one implementation of their standard in India and that too has many issues. Indian Standard's Body, the BIS (Beaureau of Indian Standards) has an ongoing effort at standardizing DLMS/COSEM as well as MIOS, however the progress has been delayed due to meter manufacturer opposition to DLMS.
Considering the difficulties faced by the utilities to have successful remote metering deployments, and the heavy loss of more than 30% of AT&C (Aggregate technical and commercial) losses in Indian Power Distribution Sector and the non-viability of additional government subsidies to make these utilities viable, the Central government has been forced to think broadly for a solution. The CEA, the Central Electricity Authority, started a process of consultation and arrive at a consensus to implement a standard protocol in India. The CEA started the process in February 2008 to discuss this issue. There were different view point's raised, for and against DLMS/COSEM and MIOS. Mr. Murugesan (formerly of CPRI) presented the advantages of DLMS / COSEM and Kalkitech and CPRI and several utilities stressed the need for a standard open protocols, adoption of DLMS in India as a national standard. However this meeting also did not proceed further, and the recommendation and action items at this meeting were not acted upon seriously.
The Indian Government announced the APDRP-II, the accelerated power development and reform program that intends to fund Indian Distribution Sector with upwards of 10 Billion dollar's for Distribution Modernisation in the next 5 years. The central government felt that without the remote metering protocol issue was sorted and settled it was not possible to make this program successful. Hence the Government once again instructed the CEA and an empowered committee to make recommendation to the Government on adoption of an open and standard protocol within a fixed time frame. This committee in it's final report last month is being reported to have recommended DLMS/COSEM as the protocol to be followed for all new metering in India under the APDRP-II program, and essentially all other programs. The committee also is known to have recommended that existing installations may go for a replacement of meters or use protocol converter's to meet the requirement of a common protocol and that the BIS be entrusted with the task of adopting DLMS/COSEM as an Indian standard. CPRI, CEA and BIS will play an active role in defining India specific OBIS or tamper specifications.
With these developments, we believe the standardization discussion is reaching it's final shape. The true shape it will take will be known when the DLMS/COSEM project's for remote metering are rolled out and becomes successful. Also, the specific requirement for reporting, billing and tamper in the Indian context needs to be addressed. We do hope that once we bury our hatchet on which protocol is good for India, all the stakeholders including government, Meter Manufacturer's, System Integrators, Utilities, Standardization Bodies and regulators will work together in addressing the issues of making appropriate modifications as is required to meet the unique tampering and energy trading requirements of ABT in India. Also, we believe the investment in AMR/AMI infrastructure brought out by APDRP-II will result in more of the tampering issues shifting from meter to the IT domain, with advanced software to track usage and detect tampering in real-time and the protocol standardization concerns will revolve more on security, reading effectiveness, cost's, maintenance, deployment efficiency, last-mile reading, adoption for residential applications etc.,
IEEMA, the Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturer's Association has been at the forefront of opposing the adoption of DLMS COSEM in India and proposed an alternate protocol standard called MIOS (Meter Interoperability Standard). They have till date only one implementation of their standard in India and that too has many issues. Indian Standard's Body, the BIS (Beaureau of Indian Standards) has an ongoing effort at standardizing DLMS/COSEM as well as MIOS, however the progress has been delayed due to meter manufacturer opposition to DLMS.
Considering the difficulties faced by the utilities to have successful remote metering deployments, and the heavy loss of more than 30% of AT&C (Aggregate technical and commercial) losses in Indian Power Distribution Sector and the non-viability of additional government subsidies to make these utilities viable, the Central government has been forced to think broadly for a solution. The CEA, the Central Electricity Authority, started a process of consultation and arrive at a consensus to implement a standard protocol in India. The CEA started the process in February 2008 to discuss this issue. There were different view point's raised, for and against DLMS/COSEM and MIOS. Mr. Murugesan (formerly of CPRI) presented the advantages of DLMS / COSEM and Kalkitech and CPRI and several utilities stressed the need for a standard open protocols, adoption of DLMS in India as a national standard. However this meeting also did not proceed further, and the recommendation and action items at this meeting were not acted upon seriously.
The Indian Government announced the APDRP-II, the accelerated power development and reform program that intends to fund Indian Distribution Sector with upwards of 10 Billion dollar's for Distribution Modernisation in the next 5 years. The central government felt that without the remote metering protocol issue was sorted and settled it was not possible to make this program successful. Hence the Government once again instructed the CEA and an empowered committee to make recommendation to the Government on adoption of an open and standard protocol within a fixed time frame. This committee in it's final report last month is being reported to have recommended DLMS/COSEM as the protocol to be followed for all new metering in India under the APDRP-II program, and essentially all other programs. The committee also is known to have recommended that existing installations may go for a replacement of meters or use protocol converter's to meet the requirement of a common protocol and that the BIS be entrusted with the task of adopting DLMS/COSEM as an Indian standard. CPRI, CEA and BIS will play an active role in defining India specific OBIS or tamper specifications.
With these developments, we believe the standardization discussion is reaching it's final shape. The true shape it will take will be known when the DLMS/COSEM project's for remote metering are rolled out and becomes successful. Also, the specific requirement for reporting, billing and tamper in the Indian context needs to be addressed. We do hope that once we bury our hatchet on which protocol is good for India, all the stakeholders including government, Meter Manufacturer's, System Integrators, Utilities, Standardization Bodies and regulators will work together in addressing the issues of making appropriate modifications as is required to meet the unique tampering and energy trading requirements of ABT in India. Also, we believe the investment in AMR/AMI infrastructure brought out by APDRP-II will result in more of the tampering issues shifting from meter to the IT domain, with advanced software to track usage and detect tampering in real-time and the protocol standardization concerns will revolve more on security, reading effectiveness, cost's, maintenance, deployment efficiency, last-mile reading, adoption for residential applications etc.,
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Welcome to DLMS COSEM Metering Protocol Blog
It is the blog authors intent to discuss here technical, deployment, market and competitive issues with respect to the adoption of DLMS COSEM Protocol for metering around the world for electricity, gas and water metering applications.
We hope the information and discussions here would add value to the metering industry at large to make the right decisions and have the right information when the consider which way to go and how in policy decisions driving metering, AMI, DSM and DR projects.
Sincerely,
Prasanth
We hope the information and discussions here would add value to the metering industry at large to make the right decisions and have the right information when the consider which way to go and how in policy decisions driving metering, AMI, DSM and DR projects.
Sincerely,
Prasanth
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