Automated reading of gas, water and electricity consumption levels for age-appropriate living

Practical example and current challenges

• Currently, most of a household's gas, water and electricity consumption levels are still read out manually and the data is initially only available in physical and not digital form. In addition, demographic change is challenging cities in new ways. Particularly in old age, reading these consumption levels proves to be cumbersome and, in some cases, impossible to implement.
  
• The use of so-called smart meters offers the possibility to replace conventional gas, water and electricity meters and enables to continuously monitor the consumption levels of a household. If an exceptional development is identified in the consumption data, the intelligent sensors report this to the user. In the example of age-appropriate living, this means that appropriate action can be taken once an anomaly has been detected: The resident receives a notification on his/her smartphone, or a care service is automatically contacted to provide assistance to the affected person.
  
• For example, people with dementia may, due to their illness, inadvertently fail to switch off kitchen appliances or heating systems properly. In the worst case scenario, this can lead to very dangerous situations (e.g. house fire). By using a smart meter, such risks can be quickly detected, and contact persons can be notified immediately. In addition, real-time monitoring of energy consumption makes it possible to shift energy use to more favorable times of day, thus significantly reducing consumption and costs. Smart meters are read out via so-called smart meter gateways. These allow the readout interval to be individually adapted to the purpose of use.
  
• In summary, the introduction of smart meters can improve the living conditions of elderly people and reduce their dependence on primary health care and family doctor services. In addition, the number of apartments in which age-appropriate living is possible can be increased and the challenges of demographic change can be counteracted.

What added value does the "Gaia-X project" offer?

• Gaia-X is the basis for building a platform for organizing, orchestrating and optimizing smart meter data, which can also be used for other use cases (and not exclusively for the specific use case "Smart Metering - Age-Appropriate Living").
• Gaia-X enables to offer an open-source interface to discover new cross-functional use cases for smart meters. Other participants can adopt the concept and adapt it to their own requirements without significant effort. Thus, the use case can not only be deployed across Europe, but also offers a way to address the challenges of demographic change in Europe.
• Gaia-X allows smart meter data to be stored historically, creating a new standard for future storage and processing of smart meter data.
• Gaia-X offers the possibility of using interactions and services in a scalable manner and at all levels of the value creation pyramid. For reasons of confidentiality or regulation, data and services must also be accessible locally ("on premise") or "on device".
• Gaia-X offers the operators of smart meters / SMEs / municipal utilities the added value of autonomously choosing the location of data storage and processing.

Use Case Team

• Sebastian Schmidt – rku.it GmbH
• Florian Klasen – rku.it GmbH
• Timo Dell – rku.it GmbH
• Martin Fabian – rku.it GmbH