E-Distribuție Muntenia, Dobrogea and Banat, the Romanian distribution companies of the Enel Group will install over 171,000 new smart meters in 2019 in the areas where they operate, for an investment of over 53 million lei (over 11 million euros). As a result, by the end of 2019, over 671,000 customers of the E-Distributie companies will benefit from the smart meter technology.
“Smart meters will help lay the foundation for future digital grids, which are key to face the challenges posed by the energy transition, promoting the development of clean, sustainable and efficient energy systems,” said Gino Celentano, General Manager E-Distributie Banat, E-Distributie Dobrogea and E-Distributie Muntenia. “We continue to leverage on the vast international experience of the Enel Group in digital technologies to install smart meters in all the regions where E-Distributie companies operate, with the aim of continuing to improve service quality and provide additional benefits to our customers.”
The smart meter installation programme will be rolled-out according to the plan approved by the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE).
The roll out plan follows four previous pilot projects, which involved the installation of 500,000 smart meters and is part of the Enel Group’s strategy to implement smart meter technology among its 2.9 million electricity distribution customers in Romania.
Over 171,000 additional customers will benefit from the advantages brought by the smart meter, such as allowing remote meter readings, which replace the field readings and consumption estimates, and giving customers greater insight into their effective energy consumption profile, promoting their active participation in the evolving energy market and a conscious use of energy. Smart meters can also communicate in real time with the distributor, allowing quicker and easier identification and recovery of network faults, therefore improving grid reliability and service quality. Moreover, the integration and optimisation of distributed renewable energy systems is boosted by the use of smart meters, which can separately record the energy consumed and the energy injected into the network, therefore contributing to the sustainability and decarbonisation of power systems.
E-Distributie Muntenia has scheduled for 2019 the installation of approximately 80,000 smart meters in Giurgiu and Ilfov counties. E-Distribuție Muntenia has deployed in Giurgiu county the largest smart meter installation campaign, so that over 90% of the customers in this county will benefit from a smart metering device by the end of this year. E-Distributie Dobrogea will install over 42,000 smart meters in Calarasi, Constanta, Ialomita and Tulcea counties, while E-Distributie Banat will install meters with the new technology for approximately 50,000 customers in Arad, Caras Severin, Hunedoara and Timis counties.
By the end of 2028, the smart meter penetration rate in the E-Distribuție customer base will exceed 60%. More specifically, E-Distribuție Muntenia will install smart meters for 65% of all its customers, while E-Distribuție Dobrogea and E-Distribuție Banat for 70% and 60% of their total customers respectively.
As a result of investments in grid modernisation, the E-Distributie companies operating in Muntenia Sud, Banat and Dobrogea are the top three performing electricity distribution operators in Romania in terms of service quality. According to ANRE’s official reports for 2017, SAIDI index for E-Distributie Muntenia was 145 minutes, the best in the country, versus a national average of 283.9 minutes. E-Distributie Dobrogea and Banat recorded results under the national average, with a SAIDI of 185 and 259 minutes respectively.