VISE4KMU

The mandatory rollout of smart meters in Germany now provides a critical opportunity to scale up energy-efficiency efforts across Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs): The bill on relaunching the digitisation of the energy transition (German: Gesetz zum Neustart der Digitalisierung der Energiewende) stipulates the nationwide installation of smart meters for consumers using more than 6,000 kWh of electricity per year. Smart meters can record electricity consumption with a resolution of 15 minutes, creating new opportunities for energy management in SMEs: When paired with software to analyse and visualise consumption data, addressing key barriers to effective energy management becomes increasingly feasible, enabling SMEs to reduce their energy consumption and costs.

The aim of the VISE4KMU project is to provide SMEs with comprehensive support in actually exploiting these new potentials. To this end, the project team develops prototypes of automated smart meter software as well as a smart meter ecosystem to enable comprehensive, targeted, and individualised energy consulting for SMEs.

The scientists at the Wuppertal Institute focus primarily on socio-economic research about a smart meter ecosystem for North Rhine-Westphalia – because only when the smart meter software is embedded in a digital ecosystem can the potential for SMEs be realised. However, this requires various actors to take on new market roles, engage in new collaborations, and develop innovative business models. For this reason, the researchers examine the level of acceptance of smart meter-based solutions for SMEs among the relevant supply-side actors – i.e., energy providers, energy consultants, metering point operators, software providers, and new market actors. Based on this, the project team analyses what barriers currently exist and how the ecosystem should be designed in order to enable SMEs in North Rhine-Westphalia to actually benefit from the smart meter rollout across the board.