Unleashing Smart Cities efficient and sustainable energy policies with IoT based Unbundled Smart Meters

This paper presents a straightforward solution for supporting energy efficiency in Smart Cities, under multi-utility ownership, role-based multi access of metering data, and data privacy and security, by using the Unbundled Smart Meter (USM) concept. Smart meters are placed at the connection point of the customer with the network and is about to become the most abundant equipment in active distribution networks. Currently, the smart meters are usually accessed only by the licensed utility for maintenance purposes, whereas other actors, like the energy supplier and the customer, may have only a later access to the energy information, which makes difficult the use of the smart meters for developing energy efficiency strategies. In order to allow developing the Smart City, the smart meters must be capable of acting as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, to facilitate the citizen have easy and secure access to data, both locally and remote. The USM architecture presented in this paper shows a reliable solution for fulfilling all actor's needs and support developing Smart Cities.