Brussels, 11 October 2010.  The General Assembly of Meters and More has approved the inclusion of five new members. The new members of the Association are: IBM Corporation, Siemens S.p.A., ST Microelectronics S.p.A., CESI S.p.A. and Sagemcom SA.

Meters and More is an International non-profit association established in Brussels, Belgium. The aim of the Association, which founding members are Enel Distribuzione and Endesa Distribucion Electrica, is to maintain and promote the "Meters and More" communication protocol that enables bidirectional data transfer in an Advanced Metering Management (AMM) system. Meters and More is a new generation protocol, which is being adopted for the smart meters that Endesa has started to install for its 13 million customers in Spain.

Meters and More Association benefits from the experience of Enel’s “Telegestore”, which is the unique AMM system in operation worldwide for over 32 million customers.

The Association aims to provide the industry with a field proven open protocol for smart metering, thus being a tangible answer to the European Commission’s Mandate 441 to achieve standard AMM solutions across the continent. Meters and More is one of the technologies selected by the OPEN meter European research project as a candidate for the European standardization and has already been delivered to WG2 of CENELEC TC13 which, in the implementation of the EC mandate, is in charge for selecting the PLC communication protocols.

The Association is in charge of making available and evolving on an open basis the Meters and More protocol specifications, certifying compliance of new equipments and promoting the protocol’s widespread diffusion. By joining the Association, any company or entity may freely access the protocol specifications and may contribute to its evolution.

After only six months since its foundation, Meters and More can now count on the support of major companies operating in the industry with different roles, including electricity distributors, solution and service providers, technology providers and meters vendors, which together will enrich the association with expertise in the smart metering, smart grids and meter data management

“The presence of the new members will boost the activity of the association and will concretely support the existence of interoperable devices, applications and services based on Meters and More. This is one of the most important goals of the association since it is the way to bring to the industry the advantages and benefits of a field proven open technology” said Giuseppe Michele Salaris, Chairperson of the Association's Board of Directors.

The next steps of the Association include the definition of a certification process that, by assuring the compliance of products to the protocol specifications, will support interoperability.
The protocol specification will be evolved to include the management of new interfaces that are relevant for supporting the smart grid implementation.