ESNA convinces Dutch MPs that the to-day available NES “Smart-Meters” fulfil already their future requirements.


The ESNA board took the initiative to contact the responsible representatives of the Dutch Ministry of Economical and key MP’s of various political parties to present the State-of-the Art specification of the available NES “Smart Meter” and to present ESNA’s experience in commercial rollouts of large AMM infrastructures in various countries.
On Monday the 25th of May, on the evening before the second phase in the tendering of the first commercial roll-out, the energy commission of the Dutch parliament disputed the final legislation of the liberated market model for the Dutch Energy market.
In the discussion with the minister of economical affairs, energy policy belongs to her port-folio, Dutch MP’s showed their concern that this part of the framework in the liberalisation of the Energy Market will fulfils to-day’s requirements. MP’s of the coalition as well as opposition expressed their doubts about the lack in the specification, like reverse metering for decentralised electricity generating, precautions against cyber-crime and possibilities for software updates. The MP’s fear that the future cost of these additional features will be charged on the consumer, when no political interference will be taken.
The conclusion from the debate was simple: The minister declared to postpone the date this legislation comes into force, planned was 01-01-2009, till…an undefined later date.
At the IIR Energy, Metering and Billing conference in Utrecht on June the 11th, Michiel Olij, project director “Smart Meters” of Nuon, stated clearly that Nuon’s grid provider Continuon is prepared and ready to undertake the rollout of AMM infrastructure for their residential electricity and gas network, planned for April 2009. Furthermore he stated that Nuon has decided to put the tender process on hold due to the current uncertain political situation.
ESNA members, as commercial stakeholders in this AMM rollout process, have taken the lead in the transformation process of this law to specify and test AMR and AMM systems including the procedures and implementation for commercial use. The ESNA board, historically heavily involved in the implementation process of AMM in The Netherlands, immediately took action to discuss the new unexpected situation with concerning representatives of the Dutch ministry. The outcome of these discussions was a position paper of the ESNA Board to explain that the concerns and the doubts expressed by the MP’s could be refute with the “Smart Meter” product specification which is part of the Nuon tender. The documentation on which the discussion in Parliament was based upon the common minimum functional specification of these meters as agreed by all market parties. In the minister’s written response of June the 6th to Parliament we found our arguments reflected in the answers on the open questions from the debate. The minister also declared that there is no need to postpone the mandatory rollouts.
Next to the discussions with representatives of the ministry the ESNA board contacted the MP’s of the most important parties; VVD, CDA, PvdA and informed them about the State-of-the-Art situation concerning the “Smart Meter” specification and the experience we have gathered as ESNA in commercial roll-outs of AMM infrastructures.
This experience, with more than 28 million “Smart Meters” is basis of the different offers, made by the various consortia of our members for the Nuon AMM tender.

Our conclusion is that we have taken away their fears and doubts about the future-proofed meter and the ESNA way to come to a successful rollout of an AMM infrastructure. The MP’s conviction is the key that to maintain the introduction date of the legislation with the consequence that the rollouts may effectively start from January 2009 onwards