Consumers turn to smart-meter alternatives for energy management

The pricing of smart meters offered by utilities is making many consumers seek out alternative products for energy management and monitoring, Cassandra Sweet writes in The Wall Street Journal. This article surveys several products, including General Electric's Nucleus, which can now work without a smart meter, and the Nest Learning Thermostat.

Watch Your Energy

New monitoring gadgets may help reduce utility bills

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204443404577052314024514498.html

DLMS: Smart Meter Protocol Stack

Device Language Message Specification (DLMS) 
(originally Distribution Line Message Specification)
IEC 62056

Through a partnership with Kalki Communication, Microchip is now able to provide a Device Language Message Specification (DLMS) protocol stack optimised for its 16bit PIC microcontrollers. The company claims that the DLMS protocol has become the worldwide standard of choice among smart meter designers for interoperability.
The acceptance of DLMS is said to cover most energy types (electricity, gas, heat and water), multiple applications (residential, transmission and distribution), and numerous communication media (RS232, RS485, PSTN, GSM, GPRS, IPv4, PPP and PLC); as well as secure data access, via AES 128 encryption.

Read more at :

• User Association certifies Smart Meter stack for PICs
• http://www.dlms.com
• IEC 62056 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia