How can we keep track of our energy consumption?

Energy invoices: improved consumer experience with new technologies

„Thanks to the automated measurement system developed by CASON (DIWICON SimSim AMI) the electricity, water and gas meters equipped with smart measurement units are finally also capable of raising conscious consumers, who may continuously monitor and at the same time control their energy consumption, and who may do all this in a user friendly manner: through a smart phone or a digital image frame.” – this was mentioned in the course of a lecture of CASON Zrt held in Budapest, where the company introduced its most recent user experience improving developments, held in the framework of the Hungarian presentation of the Microsoft Visual 2010 platform.

The task of the DIWICON SimSim AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) developed by CASON is to monitor all consumptions in each minute of the day, and it has to do this in a user friendly manner. Consumer feedback may be multifaceted: for example it is possible to calculate the ecologic footprint of consumption, the momentary balance of the account, or even the electricity, gas, water consumption consumed by an average (Hungarian) household. The information is forwarded to the consumer through a digital image frame or solutions that operate even on a Windows Phone7 device. „It is already possible to illustrate consumption through unbelievably spectacular graphical solutions, and the achievable savings may be expressed even in the terms of money.” – explained Mr. Szilárd Szakács, the engineer of CASON, who is in charge of the user experience, and according to whom thanks to the above mentioned device the development of consumption may enter the peripheral view of the consumers, and thus "they may be always aware of the momentary situation”.

According to measurements made at different points of the world, the achievable estimated savings is between 5 and 15 percents, when apartments are equipped with smart meters: for example the E.on energy service provider in its pilot program, implemented for 18 months in the Kettering, in England, during 2009-2010, registered a 9 percent consumption decrease, which resulted in a saving of about 109 pounds, that is 33 thousand HUF. „The European spreading of the smart meters may be of key importance in strengthening efficient water and energy utilisation” – pointed out the developer of CASON.

According to Mr. Szilárd Szakács it is not a by-the-way aspect even for the service providers whether instead of investing into increasing the capacities they may invest into environment protecting developments. Since the consumption of each consumer may be tracked, and the energy quantity introduced into the system is also given, it is possible to prepare an accurate balance. On the last kilometre – where both the energetic and the telecommunication distribution systems are the most complex, since they are branching off at this point to the end users – it is possible to exactly detect the place and extent of losses incurring (theft, sabotage, defects).

With Microsoft technologies

.NET4 and Visual Studio 2010 changed significantly the development process of CASON:

The new version of the Workflow Foundation makes it possible for the developer to transform the business logics and to execute a transparent flow-editing. With the aid of the Entity Framework we may use any database, and our partners may use the database manager software they purchased previously. Moreover, Velocity, the distributed solution of Microsoft, can be extended dynamically, and consequently the narrow cross-sections of the system do not slow down the processing of the data.
CASON is committed to introduce cloud service, the Azure as its standard programming environment. This service was launched in Hungary as well by Microsoft on 12 April CASON endeavours to make all its developments cloud-compatible, since it believes that the future of IT points into this direction anyway.
On the client side Silverlight 4 allows rich visual presentations, browser and platform independently, with high speed. And such new functions as e.g. the Managed Extensibility Framework and the Silverlight Navigation make development efficient through supporting modularity.
Expression Blend Sketch Flow, the so-called revolutionary new solution of the software world allows the client to see the dynamic prototype of the application even before programming, and it also assists the parallel work of designers and developers. In this work environment it is possible to save lots of time and it is possible to avoid needless conciliations, moreover, the clients may enter comments and make proposals for changes through the interface that is provided for feedbacks.
Finally Cason uses Microsoft Tag for linking the information and the real world, which unites the possibilities that are offered by bar codes and mobile phones. The camera of the mobile device reads the bar code and directs it to a web page, where the consumer may check his or her consumption and also the operation of the system itself.