Towards a Combined Energy and Water AMI Smart Metering Framework

The delivery of energy and water meter data, management and control information on separate networks is expensive and defeats the gains of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Smart Grid (SG). In most cases, energy, gas and water services are offered by the same organizational entity, hence the use of different infrastructure for data, service delivery, control and management is expensive and highly illogical. There is a need for a combined energy and water infrastructure to reap the benefits of the AMI SG. Furthermore, combined metering will result in accurate billing, potential cost savings, and improved resource management. This work therefore develops and investigates a combined energy and water AMI smart metering framework. This is possible through a thorough understanding of the AMI technological standards. The implementation of such a system is not trivial, as it depends on many factors: environmental, geographical, technological, economical, regulatory and the existing legacy infrastructure. Optimal technological implementation choices are developed towards an integrated AMI infrastructure. An experimental test bed is developed for delivering energy and water metering data to the utility. The optimal placement results favor the system of separating energy and water actuators at the home area network of the SG while using an integrated communication system. Such a system is feasible, given the different evolution of electricity and water meters and their placement at the home area network, and enables water metering to benefit from the more advanced electrical metering infrastructure.