Weißachtal Power Plant - Remote reading of electricity meters and alarm indicators
Category
Industry
Reading Time
All metering date available in a fraction of seconds. National roaming is a great advantage for transmission from remote locations.
Why Weissachtal Power Plants chose A1 Digital
Secure data transfer
The electricity meter data is transferred via a highly secure VPN tunnel from A1 Digital.
National roaming
A major advantage of the Managed Connectivity solution from A1 Digital for the Weißachtal power plants is the national roaming capability of the SIM cards used.
Good coverage in remote regions
Virtually any available mobile phone network can be used for data transmission, which guarantees network coverage even in remote regions.
“In the past, we had to collect all the data manually. Now we can retrieve all data remotely with the M2M SIM cards from A1, can unlock our SIM cards independently, have much faster response times and save unnecessary service trips.”
The Customer:
For almost 100 years, far-sighted and progressive thinking and acting has shaped the work of Weißachtal-Kraftwerke eG in Oberstaufen. As a reliable energy supplier, the Weißachtal power plants supply around 8,500 households and companies in Oberstaufen, Stiefenhofen, Thalkirchdorf, Schönau and Heimhofen. They are also cooperation partners in the Allgäu electricity network. In addition to its own network of almost 165 km² in size and almost 550 km in length, Weißachtal-Kraftewerke also operates two of its own hydroelectric power stations with an output of 2,262 kW.
The Challenge:
Although the Weißachtal power plants produce their own electricity, most of the electricity they supply to their reference points is bought in. Weißachtal power plants access the so-called load profiles of their customers for planning and forecasting the purchase of electricity. In order to create these load profiles, if the consumption exceeds 100,000 KW per year, according to the regulations of the German regulatory authority, the data on the electricity consumption of the relevant reference points must be collected daily.
The data from the relevant reference points were read out by electronic readout devices, which transmitted their data to the Weißachtal power plants via an analogue modem. In the event of poor reception, this led to considerable delays in the transmission of the data. Sometimes employees had to drive to the reference points to collect the data. In order to comply with the safety standards and to be prepared for the technological requirements of the future, the Weißachtal power plants decided to switch to IP-based reading of the electricity meters. In the search for a competent partner to support the changeover to a managed connectivity solution, the choice fell on A1 Digital International GmbH.
The Solution:
The IoT solution implemented by A1 Digital consists of the bulk SIM management platform SIMplify and robust M2M SIM cards that are installed in the meters. The SIMplify cloud-based management platform can be used to manage the complete lifecycle of the SIM cards and monitor data communication.