Efficiently sufficient

Klaus Heimann talks to Power & Energy about the importance of AMI integration and the difficulties facing the utilities industry.

PE. How important is it to SAP to provide developments that support AMI, smart grid and energy efficiency?
KH. In the last 20 years SAP has grown to become the undisputed market leader for business applications in utilities. One way of explaining this is the number of supply contracts utilities have licensed at SAP for service and billing of customers; that number has reached an impressive 650 million and it is growing yearly by about 50 million. Energy efficiency is a concern of every single consumer, and forcing the utilities media to communicate energy efficient products, services, related costs and regulatory rules to the consumer is the Customer Relationship and Billing (CRB) application. AMI technology enables the customer to become more energy efficient, it enables the utility to support, educate or even manipulate the customer to become more energy efficient. If, and only if AMI and CRB work together, can we significantly improve energy efficiency.

It was very clear to SAP that we need to be in the driving seat and proactively develop this in cooperation with our customers and AMI/MDM partners, rather than to wait for the requirements to drop in one by one.

SAP recently issued a press release on your cooperation with customers and partners for the development of the AMI integration. This cooperation seems to be a North American initiative. How do you make it a solution that meets global requirements?
KH. Energy efficiency is a global concern and every market and local administration is taking it seriously. It is fair to say that the speed of rolling AMI out of the premises and to the customers is currently higher in North America compared to the European or the Asian markets. This explains why the AMI Lighthouse Council was founded in the US. But the Lighthouse Council does not just consider North American requirements, nor does it only lead to a solution restricted to North America.

In the first meeting of the Lighthouse Council, when we asked the question whether or not to consider full market deregulation in our solution, the clear answer from all Lighthouse members was ‘yes.’ This was not an obvious answer for US utilities, since deregulation is currently more of a topic for European markets, but it is certainly the right answer. In addition, the AMI Workgroup of the Utilities Customer Advisory Council, a global association of 20 leading SAP Utility customers, works closely together with the Lighthouse Council. SAP’s strong relationship with many European, as well as Asian Pacific, utilities ensures that all aspects of global markets are considered in our solution, and we share that same interest with all of our AMI/MDM partners.

PE. You mentioned deregulation before. As Europe is accelerating the rollout of deregulation, how does this impact AMI and vice versa?
KH. The way AMI is rolled out in a regulated and in a deregulated market is very different. This finding applies to all aspects: financing models are different, regulatory rules are different, and the software solutions have to work differently. What is not different is the political pressure on the industry to act.

In a regulated market you take it for granted that the utility that owns the meter is the one that also owns the customer. That is usually not the case in a deregulated market. As a consequence of the unbundling process that separates generation, grid, meter operation and energy retail, the AMI use case has to be unbundled too and subsequently the whole System Architecture. This is a huge problem if the data you scatter over various tiers contradict the unbundling. Managing very large volumes of basic internal data on the side of the retailer is a very important aspect in our project, and we are in the great position to have large utilities in Europe working with us on this scenario.

Klaus Heimann currently works at SAP AG’s board area Product and Technology Unit (PTU) in the role of a Senior Industry Advisor. According to his professional career at SAP, his activities concentrate on solutions and services of SAP for the Utilities industry. Since July 2007, Heimann has been coordinating a strategic development project integrating the SAP for Utilities solution to Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Systems.