Representatives of the Ministry of Energy, S.A. Moldtelecom, the National Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI), the National Agency for Energy Regulation and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) met to discuss the needs of data transport services to ensure the implementation of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure pilot project (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) provided in the Digital Transformation Strategy of the Republic of Moldova for the years 2023-2030.

The purpose of the meeting was to obtain essential preliminary information about the technological capabilities of the national telecommunications operator S.A. Moldtelecom in terms of the existing infrastructure at the national coverage level, the technologies available to ensure resilience and redundancy in order to maintain business continuity, as well as the possibility of developing tariffs based on monthly subscription without traffic volume limitations for secure transport services of energy data, taken from smart meters to the centralized information systems of the energy distribution operators, through terrestrial networks.

In the context of the discussions, it was emphasized that cellular communications will be maintained, both for redundancy of terrestrial networks and for small isolated groups or individual meters, due to the instability of communications in some rural areas, but also due to the high costs associated with the traffic generated by periodic (e.g. hourly) meter reading.

There has also been interest from the energy sector in the availability of service packages for data transportation including from renewable energy producers. According to current regulations, generators with a production capacity exceeding 200 kW are obliged to transmit technological data to the SCADA platform of the system operator to which they are connected, with the communication costs being borne directly by the system operator.

During this strategic meeting, several technical scenarios based on applicable technologies for data collection were discussed, as well as a general scenario for Wide Area Network (WAN) communications, taking into account the cybersecurity requirements for SmartGrids and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), according to the relevant regulations and standards.

The Ministry of Energy and its partners have expressed openness to develop a solid collaboration to implement this vital pilot project, which will bring significant benefits to both the energy industry and consumers by transforming the national electricity grid into a smart grid and implementing the Advanced Metering Infrastructure to optimize citizens' behavior towards improving energy efficiency in households and for non-household consumers in the future. The data on electricity consumption obtained through the smart grid will be analyzed and used for decision making towards the improvement of energy policies and regulatory framework.

The Ministry of Energy is running a pilot program to install several tens of thousands of smart meters, with the support of UNDP Moldova and the Italian Government. Consumers will benefit from differentiated electricity tariffs for a trial period, after which smart metering will be rolled out nationwide.