A typical tenement on a multi-lane connecting road in Berlin-Friedrichshain. The mailboxes are taped up, not all apartments have been renovated. An unusual place for a premiere: For the first time, an “intelligent measuring system” consisting of a modern meter and a few centimeter communication unit “Smarty” aka smart meter gateway will be installed in the basement of the unglamorous five-storey building in the east of the capital.

What is missing: In the rapid world of technology, there is often time to rearrange the many news and backgrounds. At the weekend we want to take it, follow the sidewalks away from the current, try different perspectives and make nuances audible.

Silke – the “safe supply chain” The fitter appears shortly after 8 a.m. In the delivery truck there is a large black box with a striking locking unit. Unsuspecting observers could assume that pharmaceuticals were being delivered in a hurry, that an organ donation was being transported or that a well-shielded explosive charge was being carried out. The technician enters a one-time PIN on a separate keyboard unit and holds it up to a sensor on the box. After a beep, the lock opens with a click and reveals a view of a somewhat lost-looking smart meter.

Silke, the “secure supply chain”, is to blame for the cumbersome procedure. The metering point operator – in this case Discovergy – must adhere to this from the warehouse to the distribution box. As an alternative to the special delivery box, the installer could still carry the gateway on his man at best. On “Smarty” itself, the federal eagle is emblazoned above the abbreviation BSI along with a device number. The imprint indicates that the manufacturer Sagemcom Dr. Neuhaus had the gateway certified by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

Internet connection – too error-prone and expensive via power line After installation in the basement of the house, which takes around an hour one of the three LED lights on the left side lights up blue next to “TLS”. It signals that there is a channel secured with the encryption protocol Transport Layer Security to the central IT platform of Discovergy in Heidelberg via mobile radio.

The measured values ​​transmitted in this way end up in a room equipped with surveillance cameras in development – and support center on the Neckar, to which “only authorized persons with extra keys” have access, as Dennis Nasrun, Head of Energy at Discovergy, explains. “There the data is stored in a strongly encrypted way, then it comes to our backend” and from there to a special portal via web or app for customers.

Dennis Nasrun – Head of Energy Management at Discovergy

(Image: heise online)

It is becoming apparent that roaming in a basement If there is no reception from the partner, the installer tries first with different antennas and extension cables in order to get out of the meter cabinet and, if necessary, from a warehouse shielded with a steel door. If none of this is of any use, there is still an Ethernet connection via a HAN connection (Home Area Network). Powerline doesn’t support Discovergy, says Nasrun. Even with the currently generated around megabytes per month, data transmission via power line is not only quite expensive, but also “very error-prone”.