Manually passing on meter readings belongs to the past with the new generation of smart gas and electricity meters. The complete process, from collecting data to processing meter assignments, takes place automatically and from a distance with the data collection system that Technolution developed.
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Passing on data
The consumer receives an electricity meter with a built-in GPRS modem for wireless communication. The data collection system (DCS) uses this modem to call up data from the gas and electricity meter by means of Automatic Meter Reading (AMR).
The data collection system
While designing the DCS flexibility and scalability of the application were taken into account. Flexibility, because several meter suppliers and communication media (such as sms, PowerLine, MESH, Wi-Fi en GPRS) have to be supported. Scalability, because possibly millions of meters have to be attended to.
The technologies applied are:
- Services in the DCS are hosted within a J2EE container
- Communication with ‘smart meters' via a GPRS and ISDN
- Apache and Tomcat for web hosting
- Java Server Pages, AJAX and CCS combined with JavaScript
- Cross browser compatible (Firefox 2.x and IE 5.5 or higher)
- SOAP and WE-* web services
- Opened up database with the aid of JDBC and SQL92
- Redhat Enterprise Linux 4