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In the European Union, increasing attention is already being paid not only to the development of renewable energy sources, but also to the establishment of solutions to achieve local energy self-sufficiency while increasing the role of citizens in managing the energy they generate. This approach is expected both to have a positive impact on the environment and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and to enhance energy security—both in economic and civic terms by, i.a., combating energy poverty. The development of local energy communities promoted in the EU is supported i.a. by energy cooperatives. These contribute to the efficient harnessing of renewable energy potential in rural and urban-rural areas, and have been developing in Poland for several years now. In their previous studies, the authors of this research paper attempted to verify the generation (number, type and capacity of installed sources) and consumption (energy demand) configurations in which an energy cooperative would be a viable solution for prosumers who might establish it. However, over the past few years, the conditions for prosumers and the method of their accounting with the electricity seller have changed radically in Poland (shift from net metering to net billing). This situation has opened up space for further research and encouraged the authors to revisit the problem of analyzing the viability of establishing energy cooperatives in relation to the rules of operation of individual prosumers. This research was carried out for three scenarios, and the horizon of the analyses conducted and described extends to 2045. The comparative analysis included energy consumers without their own generation sources, prosumers with a photovoltaic generation installation covered by the net billing model, as well as a scenario involving prosumers' cooperation within an energy cooperative, which by law is settled in the net metering model. Conclusions from the research and simulations made it possible to confirm the claim that, despite changes in the rules of prosumer billing, developing energy independence in the energy community formula results in a significant reduction in the cost of purchasing electricity (even several times lower purchase costs in the timeframe analyzed) and can lead to a reduction in the payback time of investments in generation sources even by a factor of two. The results presented in this research paper open up space for further research. The outcomes allow us to assume that energy cooperatives—in the organizational and institutional model in Poland—are a good tool for reducing the phenomenon of energy poverty on a local scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction to this theme issue discusses a series of papers examining the increasing marketisation of social reproduction and its effects on systems that sustain human and social life. This is done by examining the frontiers, framings, and frictions that arise when market systems are constructed to enable capital accumulation in the realm of social reproduction. Frontiers identify the expansion of market logic into new areas, framings explore how financial actors attempt to bring the logic of social reproduction within the purview of market competition, and frictions highlight the various tensions that generate resistance to the roll out of market logics. Through establishing these three areas, we argue that both market structures and systems of social reproduction should be understood as geographically variegated and, at times, uncertain. This variegation necessitates an understanding of marketised social reproduction as forged through complex articulations of market and non-market logics. Using cases from surrogacy to smart electricity meters, the papers in this theme issue illustrate that while these articulations may generate benefits for some individuals, households and communities, such processes of marketisation can introduce new layers of inequity and undermine the ethical relations and social commitments that sustain life—in the service of enabling accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with an energy metering system for electricity monitoring for each and every household that is different from the conventional energy meter. This proposed design is meant to be a better alternative for an efficient and more secure line for energy usage by the consumer without any illegal access to their connections so that they don't have to pay for something they aren't accountable for in the first place and protect the supplier/provider, which is the government, from incurring any losses from the theft as well as from customers who tamper with the meter values. These things are vital in today's world. So, we are taking this into account and designing a smart meter with the IoT technology for monitoring data values at the tip of our fingers, readily available at any moment. It serves many purposes, from the monitoring of energy consumption to easily using mobile phones to work on managing the energy usage according to their budget. It is also easy for the supplier to monitor without manually inspecting the location. The WiFi module ESP8266 is used for the purpose of transmitting the energy data to the server. This paper also deals with a smart grid system in which energy meters are used as a two-way communication system as opposed to conventional meters with one-way communication, which will be a more efficient system. This IoT is good in terms of its development towards an easy and advanced metering infrastructure, which also needs secure communication between the supplier and consumer to protect that data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of the information age, smart meters play an important role in the smart grid. However, there are more and more attacks on smart meters, which mainly focus on the identity authentication of smart meters and the security protection of electricity consumption data. In this paper, an efficient lightweight smart meter authentication scheme is proposed based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT), which can realize the revocation of a single smart meter user by publishing a secret random value bound to the smart meter identity. The proposed scheme not only protects the security of smart meter electricity consumption data by using encryption, but also resists identity attacks from both internal and external adversaries by using hash functions and timestamps. Experiment shows that the proposed scheme has lower computation overhead and communication overhead than other authentication schemes and is more suitable for smart meter authentication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy efficiency is an important issue in industry, especially with the ever-increasing consumption of electrical energy. The power quality and the traceability of metering devices are essential when integrating energy metering systems for energy efficiency. This management requires an understanding of electrical current events such as pulse and transient currents. Current transducers are widely used to measure these electrical current events up to a few megahertz. Their use makes it possible to measure not only the main current flowing through the transducer, but also the bypass current that affects electrical equipment. Calibration of these sensors up to a few megahertz then becomes an essential step. Currently, most calibration methods are limited to 100 kHz frequency for a current of 10 A. This paper presents an improvement of a traceable calibration methodology for current transducers up to 10 A and 1 MHz, thus increasing, by 10 times, the current level for such high frequency applications. This calibration methodology is based on a metrological traceability chain (uninterrupted link to the International System of Units) with respect to a calculable current shunt and is currently the only traceable method for calibrating current transducers at 10 A and up to 1 MHz. The uncertainty obtained for the transimpedance ratio is less than 0.2%, which is considerably reduced with respect to the existing capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metrological characterisation of static energy meters under realistic low power quality conditions is a basic requirement for proper grid control and fair energy billing. The paper reports about a new proposed methodology, where the meters are tested under conditions directly recorded at installation sites. The waveforms of voltages and currents are sampled using a portable instrument; they are reproduced in laboratory conditions with a phantom power generator, with a bandwidth covering up to the 40th harmonic. The recording site is a photovoltaic energy production facility, having a a nominal power of 50 kW, at the coupling section to the grid. These waveforms were then reproduced in the laboratory, and tested on different models of single- and three-phase commercial static energy meters; the models chosen represent both energy meters used by energy providers at the point of common-coupling, and also meters typically used for in-line monitoring by end users. The quantity of interest is the reading error of the measured energy, when tested with the conditions reproduced from the on-field measurements, in comparison with a reference meter. All tested energy meter models comply with the present international documentary standards, which require tests under low power quality conditions; nevertheless, there are models that show unacceptable errors (up to 25%) in the measurement of active energy when tested with the on-field recorded waveforms. This suggests that the standardised testing waveforms might, in some cases, be not fully representative of the actual conditions encountered in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metering mode is gradually changing from volumetric metering to energy metering under the open-access operation of gas pipelines. The gas component tracking by operating simulation is an effective method to realize the energy metering of gas networks. In this paper, coupling and decoupling transient component tracking models of gas networks are proposed. The pipeline governing equations, compressor equations, valve equations, and node relationship equations are considered in the proposed models. The implicit central difference method and the damped Newtonian method are adopted to solve the models. The coupling model considers the component tracking part and hydraulic-thermal simulation as a whole, while the decoupling model splits the whole process into the gas component tracking part, the parameters calculation part, and the hydraulic-thermal simulation part. In the component tracking part, the spatiotemporal variation of the gas mass fraction and density can be obtained through the input velocity of each node. Then, the parameters in the gas state equation can be solved, the hydraulic-thermal simulation can be performed, and the new velocity of each node can be calculated. The iteration for each time step ends if the deviation of flow velocity in the component tracking process and the hydraulic-thermal process satisfies the requirements. Two cases are studied to verify the effectiveness of the proposed models, and the boundary condition adaptability of the transient simulation models is analyzed. The proposed models can efficiently simulate the spatiotemporal variation of the operating variables and gas components, providing a reference in the operation of natural gas pipeline networks. [Display omitted] • The most accurate gas state equation with 11 parameters is chosen in the models. • A coupling model integrating the T-H process and the GCT process is proposed. • The T-H and GCT sub-models are decoupled to establish the decoupling model. • The proposed models are applied to different boundary conditions combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuous improvement of the energy and sustainability performances of buildings is stimulated by mandatory rules, economic incentives and voluntary sustainability pathway of which energy efficiency is one of the most important components. The tools to evaluate the energy, sustainability, automation and energy metering performances of buildings, to check the status and lead the investments, are often complex, slow, expensive and related to the specific Countries, making difficult the job for the facility management departments of national or international organizations in EU. The present paper wants to give a contribute to existing literature by providing a new energy, sustainability, automation and energy metering label system to quickly, simply and economically evaluate the performances of office buildings in Europe. This tool has been tested on a case study, a research center of the European Space Agency (ESA-ESRIN) in Rome, Italy. The results of the test show that the tool has been successfully applied on the buildings of the research center using the data provided by the facility management department of ESA-ESRIN and the energy audit of the center. The labels can correctly represent the state of the buildings in a more cost-effective way if compared to the national energy certification and to international sustainability protocols. This study provides the facility management departments of public and private companies in EU - especially if they manage buildings in different EU nations - a reliable tool to quicky evaluate the energy, sustainability, automation and energy metering performances of their buildings. [Display omitted] • Energy and sustainability performances of buildings are evaluated through protocols. • Facility managers need quick tools: the proposed labeling tool for offices can help. • It labels energy, sustainability, automation and energy metering performances. • This tool considers Trans-national European Union differences (primary energy, CO 2). • The first application has been on the European Space Agency Italian research center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Design of a smart low-cost energy meter as an internet of energy (IoE) device. • How to measure energy performance on distributed and heterogeneous computers. • Energy consumption in parallel programming must be considered as a design parameter. This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-cost system oriented to the synchronised and real-time surveillance and monitoring of electrical parameters of different computer devices. To measure energy consumption in a computer system, it is proposed to use, instead of a general-purpose wattmeter, one designed ad-hoc and synchronously collects the energy consumption of its various nodes or devices. The implementation of the devised system is based on the confluence of several technologies or tools widely used in the Internet of Things. Thus, this article the intelligent objects are the power meters, whose connections are based on the low-cost ESP32 microcontroller. The message transmission between devices is carried out with the standard message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol, the measurements are grouped in a database on an InfluxDB server that store the sensor data as time series, and Grafana is used as a graphical user interface. The efficiency of the proposed energy monitoring system is demonstrated by the experimental results of a real application that successfully and synchronously records the voltage, current, active power and cumulative energy consumption of a distributed cluster that includes a total of 60 cores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]