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Abstract:The Smart Meter (SM) is an essential tool for successful balancing the demand-offer energy curve. It allows the linking of the consumption and production measurements with the time information and the customer's identity, enabling the substitution of flat-price billing with smarter solutions, such as Time-of-Use or Real-Time Pricing. In addition to sending data to the energy operators for billing and monitoring purposes, Smart Meters must be able to send the same data to customer devices in near-real-time conditions, enabling new services such as instant energy awareness and home automation. In this article, we review the ongoing situation in Europe regarding real-time services for the final customers. Then, we review the architectural and technological options that have been considered for the roll-out phase of the Italian second generation of Smart Meters. Finally, we identify a collection of use cases, along with their functional and performance requirements, and discuss what architectures and communications technologies can meet these requirements.

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Service quality of public services is a major aim of the New Public Management reforms occurring throughout Europe. The Citizen's Charter initiative, launched by the UK Prime Minister John Major in 1991, has been an example followed in some European countries, including Italy (Carta dei servizi). This paper analyses and evaluates the cultural differences in the usage of the concept of service quality standards between the UK experience and the Italian one, referring particularly to two kinds of public services, very different one from the other: healthcare and electricity supply. The comparative policy analysis leads to a sketch of two different profiles in the usage of quality standards in the public sector: a common law profile, where quality standards are not legal rights but targets to be achieved and improved; and a public law profile, where quality standards tend to be overlapped and confused with legal rights of users. Under the latter framework, standards are likely to be sidestepped because they are perceived more as a problem than as an opportunity to change.

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