Wheatley Associates and Junifer Systems collaborate on vital back office systems for smart meter operators

The collaboration will see Wheatley Associates and Junifer Systems pool their extensive expertise and industry knowledge of large volume, high throughput MAM and customer information environments to link their complementary JUMBO and Junifer Utility CIS software tools. It will equip smart meter operators with a combined meter asset / data flow management and customer information / billing solution capable of simultaneously supporting multiple data feeds from multiple meter types and formats, regardless of the manufacturer. The solution will be jointly marketed by both Wheatley Associates and Junifer Systems to all companies involved in smart meter operations including existing energy suppliers, meter operators and the new wave of emergent smart meter operators.

“The UK smart meter roll-out is a massive undertaking. Both the asset and data volumes associated with it are daunting,” said Jeremy Goulding, CEO of Wheatley Associates. “It is not just the number of new smart meters that will be installed but also the larger volumes of data that will be generated. Smart meter operators need the back office systems capable of supporting it all. Our collaboration with Junifer Systems is intended to provide the building blocks they need to achieve it.”

The UK smart meter programme is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the European Union. By 2019, it is intended that 50+ million new smart meters will be installed in 30+ million premises. In just the first two hours of operation, a smart meter will generate the same amount of consumption data on a customer that a standard meter would record in a year. In 10 days it will generate more data than would have been collected in the previous 100 years.

“So far, utility suppliers and meter operators have been focusing on the hardware and communications aspects of the smart meter roll-out programme,” added Paul FitzGerald, Sales and Marketing Director of Junifer Systems. “Now the emphasis is moving towards how to deal with the large volumes of data streaming in from the millions of new meters that will be installed. Naturally, questions are being asked about how best to turn this data into meaningful information to gain greater operational intelligence, maximise business potential and achieve market leadership. By working together with Wheatley we can provide smart meters operators with the systems capable of supporting the new smart meter infrastructure.”

Wheatley Associates’ JUMBO software enables smart meter operators to effectively manage their meter assets holding information for all the metering systems managed by the host company. It also processes the resultant data flows, automatically receiving, transmitting and validating both RGMA and DTC Data Transfer Network data flows for the day-to-day running of electricity and gas metering operations. It also supports the Electricity Central Online Enquiry Service, a mandatory requirement under the Master Registration Agreement, and its automatic audit trailing complies with UK data legislation. It also generates industry-standard PARMS-compliant reports.