# The Role of Smart Meters in Enabling Real-Time Energy Services for Households: The Italian Case
## 2 Smart Meter Overview
### A Review of Energy Metering Deployment Strategies
In Italy, the distribution company of the Enel group started in 2001 to replace its 30 million conventional meters (85% of the country) with an infrastructure comprising the same amount of SMsable to be remotely read and controlled; the Enel roll-out was completed in 2006 and is by far the largest application of a single utility around the world. The Enel project \"Telegestore\" was concluded before the retail market full liberalization (which started mid-2007), and thus is outdated; back then, DSOs fitted the whole process, from meter reading to billing, to their own captive customers. The goal of the Enel \"Telegestore\" project was originally to substitute the personnel previously in charge of reading the old mechanical meters door to door with an automated system able to protect the point of delivery from frauds and energy theft, reducing the costs for interventions and improving the accuracy and efficiency of the billing process. Additionally, the increased number of measurements allowed the activation of new services for customers such as the exploitation of ToU pricing regime with three time bands for households and small business customers [25], invoices on real consumption, remote contract management, together with network management (e.g., loss reduction) whose benefits can pass to the final customers thanks to the regulation. The new system was so successful that, in 2006, the Italian Regulatory Authority (AEEGSI) issued a decision (292/2006) that forced all the DSOs of the country to adopt AMM within 2011. This first generation of SM was able to collect four incremental energy totalizers in different time bands of the day. The data concentrator collected metering data from SMs on a monthly basis. Data concentrators were able to manage the communications in both directions: to/from the DSO's HES (via the public telecommunications network) and to/from SMs (via a private distribution line carrier communications band A [26], half-duplex mode, net speed rate of 2400 bit/s). In addition, 400,000 data concentrators were installed in secondary substations for managing more than 30 million SMs. Communications is guaranteed by the Telegestore protocol, which was recently standardized with the name of \"SMITP\" [27] and has been adopted for the current Spanish SM roll-out managed by Endesa (Ponferrada, Spain). In a pilot project [8] conducted in 2012 by the Enel group's DSO \"e-distribuzione\", around 5000 households received an IHD kit called \"_Smart info +_\" including a data collector, a full color, touch screen display, and software for smartphones and laptops. The kit enabled the possibility to collect real-time metering data receiving information directly from the SM and let customers control their daily energy curves. Moreover, they received customized tips, based on their consumption, directly on the same device. After two years, 94% of study participants declared they had increased their consumption awareness, while 60% modified their common habits with the scope of reducing peak-hours consumption and, thus, saving money.