“Consistency in pursuing the goals and achieving those makes the horizons broader, while competitors have to adapt humbly,” says Elena Turanskaya, CEO of ADD GRUP, a worldwide provider of smart metering solutions.
ADD GRUP rose to one of the top places in a high-tech industry under Elena’s leadership. In less than 30 years of operation, ADD Grup has delivered 7 million smart power meters in more than 30 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
ADD GRUP’s Principles of Success
“The philosophy of our strategic management lies on several pillars: high quality products, permanent innovation, and a skilled team,” says Elena. Quality is achieved by well-established business procedures, effective interactions between corporate divisions, world-standard management of each stage of the production cycle, and lastly, significant expenditures in equipment for inspecting and regulating the made goods.
According to Elena, ADD GRUP is continually investigating its clients’ unsolvable challenges in the electrical and water business and providing them with creative and effective solutions produced by the R&D department. ADD GRUP continues to develop its approach for capturing new markets in Smart Water Metering by introducing more efficient products that enable cost savings and responsible resource utilization.
A Wide Range of Offerings
The ADDAX smart electricity metering system from ADD GRUP is one of the most successful on the European market, with more than 7 million smart meters deployed in 33 countries. Russia and Ukraine account for half of the installed base, although Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Sweden, Estonia, and Latvia all have considerable deployments. A few years ago, the corporation began aggressively expanding throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The ADDAX name is synonymous with benchmarking smart metering systems due to its hardware stability, low failure rate of less than 1% per year, and outstanding communication efficiency.
ADDRA is ADD GRUP’s smart water metering solution, which combines ultrasonic water meters with Lorawan, Sigxfox, and NB IoT-based two-way communication. The meter is paired with a Bluetooth-controlled shut-off valve, resulting in a comprehensive AMI water solution with the ability to disconnect customers from the water supply for commercial or technical reasons.
ADDERRA is the company’s third most popular solution. This is an electricity and water sub-metering/payment control system for rental properties and hotels. The difference between traditional submeters and ADDERRA submeters is full integration with billing software and payment platforms (Stripe, PayPal, etc.). This allows landlords and hotel owners to minimise losses due to over-consumed resources while requiring minimal monitoring and control.
Key driving force behind Adderra development
The teams at ADD GRUP debated the topic of resource overconsumption and identified two industries where the problem is particularly pressing. These are hospitability and the rental market for real estate. Hotel guests and tenants, in particular, are the sources of utility waste since they use twice as much water and power as a typical household.
The separation of utility expenses from the lodging charge, for example, allows hotel operators and landlords of holiday rental housing to streamline utility management. The fact that tenants/hotel guests must pay for water and energy individually encourages them to reconsider their usage habits. As a result, the ADD GRUP team began working on a new strategy to address resource overconsumption. It took into account a number of factors in order to develop a viable, long-term solution that would benefit all parties engaged in the utility use process, including hotel owners and landlords, visitors and renters, and, of course, the environment. As a result, the firm is proud to provide ADDERRA submetering, a cost-effective solution for renting resources.
ADDERRA is an innovative water and electricity payment control solution that promises to increase hospitability and rental markets’ economies while reducing their negative environmental impacts. ADDERRA also provides benefits to landlords of long-term rented business and residential buildings, such as protection from unpaid utility payments. Not just in third-world nations, but also in prosperous ones, the issue of unpaid debts left by renters persists. According to Eurostat, EU residents owed roughly 2 billion euros in utility bills in 2018. As a result, the ADDERRA service can protect landlords who are unable to modify the utility company’s contract in their tenants’ names. Tenants have three options for payment, depending on the landlord’s confidence level toward them: prepayment, pre-set limit mode, or post payment. Additionally, as all the processes become digital, ADDERRA minimises the involvement of property owners in payment collection, especially from unreliable tenants.
Apart from the above-mentioned security, business landlords have the chance to improve the attractiveness of their rental offer. After installing ADDERRA submeters in each tenant’s rented space, commercial centre or business park owners would be able to bill renters for the resources they consume individually rather than split total resource consumption by all tenants or at building-level metres.
Easy way to Pay and Monitor Water and Electricity Bill
ADDERRA does not keep up with the competition. “ADDERRA is two steps ahead of equivalent services,” Elena explains. She goes on to say that the company’s solution is one-of-a-kind, combining three cutting-edge features: a Bluetooth submeter, a smartphone application, and a billing and payment platform. The team overhauled the utility payment procedure for guests and tenants. Everything has become digital, making it easier, faster, and more convenient to use.
ADDERRA provides three payment methods for water and electricity: pre-payment, post-payment, and credit limit mode. Tenants will find it much easier to adjust to sustainable resource consumption if they can monitor utility usage online via an application. “Thanks to our solution, there is no need for third-party billing applications or complex infrastructure that will include meters with RF or PLC communication, communication equipment (like concentrators or gateways), servers, and head-end software for meter reading,” says Elena. She further says that is why the installation of ADDERRA meters is simple and budget-friendly for the owners of hotels and rental properties.
Additional Offerings and Exclusivity
By delivering Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solutions, ADD GRUP has been assisting utility companies in increasing their economic efficiency by lowering power losses and cutting operating expenses, therefore safeguarding their income for many years. And it gets better every time.
ADD GRUP has expanded the Adderra concept to include its new modular meter and the unified ADDAX and ADDERRA brands, as well as their functionality, to create a comprehensive and flexible offering that can meet all of the needs of a market that requires both smart metering and prepayment functionality.
The result of ADD GRUP’s efforts is as follows:
The modular meter developed by ADD Grup is fully compliant with the IS 16444 standard and can be supplied with the next communication modules:
- 2G/LTE Cat1;
- 2G/NBIoT module;
- RF (Wi-Sun) module;
- Hybrid module PLC+RF (G3 or Prime);
- LoRaWAN module;
ADD GRUP has incorporated the following elements that generate technical advantages over competitors, in addition to the conventional functionality requested by utilities and standards institutes.
- BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) mesh network for group metering. Each meter as BLE interface on-board. One of the meters in the group can act as Leader meter having a WAN communication module and serving as a gateway for the other meters (up to 64 units). The meters should be placed in a radius of maximum 20 m. In this case the rest of the meters can be installed without communication modules. Such solution can be suitable for metering rooms which are very common in India, Indonesia and some other countries and helps save significant amounts of money on modules for each meter as well as monthly fees for 3GPP modules to mobile operator.
- Flexibility in the choice of communication solutions Depending on the country’s landscape, population density, and rural, city, or industrial areas, none of the communication solutions will be ideal for all areas. Meter that supports any of the above-mentioned communication modules gives flexibility to utility or to integrator to build an appropriate network for a maximum SLA. So, the order can be made initially for meters and choice of modules can be made during deployment phase.
- ADDDERA Prepayment / payment control metering. Here, the company integrated the ADDAX smart metering solution with ADDERRA, a cloud-based payment control solution used for metering applications and integrated with billing and payment processing platforms. The solution is offered as SaaS and includes the following functionality.
Generation of digital tokens
- In kWh. This is the most standard way of prepayment and is widely used when there is a single-tariff for electricity. The calculation is made on the meter level.
- In currency. This is a commonly used prepayment method for multi-tariff metering. The calculation is made on the meter level.
- In TIME. This is a totally new approach according to which each purchased token activates the meter for a specific period of time after expiration of which the meter will disconnect the relay. In view of electricity theft being an urgent issue in India this can be a very good solution especially for standalone meters without communication. When the token is purchased in kWh or currency, utility never knows, when the consumer credit reaches zero. However, when the token activates the meter for a specific period of time, utility will always know that there is something wrong with the meter if at the day of programmed disconnection the consumer does not come to pay the bill for the new token. It is also very convenient for consumer as he can always know when to buy the new token or utility can notify him by sms.
Token transmission and payment processing
- Based on ADDERRA smartphone application. The consumer downloads ADDERRA app and buys the tokens through the app via an integrated payment platform (Stripe, Paypal or any other Indian based). After the token is purchased, it will be sent by HES remotely to the meter, if the meter is part of communication solution. Alternatively, the consumer can charge the meter with the token using the smartphone app and BLE interface of the meter.
- Based on BLE key-bob. In case the consumer does not have a smart-phone, he can buy tokens from vending point of utility, charge the token to key-fob and later send the token from key-fob to the meter. The token can be also sent by HES remotely to the meter, if the meter is part of communication solution.
Meter data exchange for stand-alone meters.
- With ADDERRA meters that do not have communication module are no longer stand-alone. The system is structured in such a way that every time you need to get a new token, you first have to exchange data between meter and key-fob or between meter and smartphone app. The data which are received from the meter can be current consumption and alarms (tampering, power down etc) or any other registers. The keyfob and app will send these data into HES before new token transaction happens. Having this info from stand-alone meters utility is much better prepared to deal with electricity theft even without having built communication infrastructure.
From prepayment to payment control metering.
- With ADDERRA utility and consumer are no longer bound to prepayment only. No matter which type of token (kWh, currency or Time) is chosen, they can agree over a certain credit of trust, where consumer is given certain amount of money, kWh or time without the necessity to pay them in advance and only by using out this credit the meter will disconnect the relay. The system (both app or keyfob) will alert the consumer about the necessity to settle the payment.
Future Vision
ADD GRUP isn’t only about product design and production. The company’s objective is to establish two-way contact with individuals from various markets and nations, define their issues, and build solutions that can really solve those problems. Its efficacy is founded on the economic, social, and environmental sustainability aspects that it considers while designing goods. Elena mentions, “I am proud to say that by adhering to these principles, we have managed to become a strong player in the metering industry, reaching quality indicators that our competitors cannot brag about, providing benchmarking solutions in electricity and water metering segments, and being pioneers in water and electricity sub-metering and payment control solutions for hospitality and rental property.”
Elena is confident that the ADD GRUP team will come up with outstanding solutions that will outpace time, competition, and serve the well-being of society.
