Austrian intelligent home energy firm EET has launched its Virtual Meter technology to lower costs, simplify installation and improve reliability of electricity metering for home energy products.

EET originally developed and deployed the technology for plug-in battery systems, but now offers OEMs, metering equipment providers and energy companies the ability to use it, either embedded directly into their own products or as a standalone plug-in meter.

The technology is said to deliver significant advantages for manufacturers, installers and end-users. For manufacturers, metering hardware costs and operating costs related to meter product integrations and post-install support are reduced. For installers the time on site and installation complexity is reduced, lowering costs and installation error rates. For end-users in the case of plug-in products, the technology enables a true plug-and-play experience.

The Virtual Meter is versatile and can be integrated into a wide range of products, including plug-in battery storage systems, private EV charging stations, heat pumps and home energy management systems. It enables all use cases that require real-time electricity data, such as dynamic load balancing, solar PV self-consumption and excess-PV charging.

“The Virtual Meter technology simplifies the metering installation or setup experience, reduces hardware and installation costs, doesn’t suffer from connectivity issues, and reduces post-installation service cases,” said Mark Reijerkerk, CEO of EET. “Together, this provides a real differentiator in the market for any residential energy product, one that delivers sales growth and increases installer and end-customer satisfaction.”

The technology functions by continuously tracking voltage signatures and neutral shifts caused by household loads. In addition, it injects very small, high-frequency signals into the phase conductor to read device-specific impedance patterns. Machine-learning models process these inputs to deduce accurate, real-time total home load data, entirely without traditional current sensors.

“Embedding the Virtual Meter in any residential energy product is possible since it functions based on a single connection to the household grid,” said Tom Smet, CTO of EET. “This means the standard connection a residential energy product has to the grid or even a standard wall socket enables the Virtual Meter. There is no need for installation, or for locating the meter in the metering cabinet.”

The meter removes the complexity and cost associated with conventional metering while providing the benefits of real-time metering data, available today through licensing EET’s technology.

EET (www.eet.energy) is a technology company developing innovations for decentralised energy. With more than eight years of research in electrical signal analysis, EET’s patented technologies empower consumers and partners to manage energy more efficiently and sustainably.