Ennatuurlijk optimises heat metering through data-driven Kamstrup solution  

In 2021, Dutch heating and cooling company Ennatuurlijk and Kamstrup started a joint effort to upgrade Ennatuurlijk’s heating network to a more sustainable solution, which included 90,000 intelligent meters along with LinkIQ® communication infrastructure, READy remote reading software, data hosting, software maintenance, and support.  

The initiative was sparked by the government’s plans of becoming CO2 neutral by 2050, which requires that heat suppliers must supply their customers with a monthly energy consumption overview starting from January 2027. At Ennatuurlijk, they saw the coming changes as an opportunity to not only meet the new requirements but also go beyond to optimise their metering and operations altogether.

As explained by Lotte Pleging, Team Manager Data Collection at Ennatuurlijk, “we want to not only be more sustainable but also to have an energy supply that’s ready for the future. In the past, we had an endless amount of heat that we could just circle around. That’s just not the case anymore. We need to be smarter about how we use our energy.” 

Despite many companies opting for meters with external communication via third-party gateways, Ennatuurlijk found meters with integrated communication modules to be the superior investment.

"We calculated all the investments required for third-party gateways and found that 30,000 of the total 90,000 metering points would also need new electrical outlets installed,” says Thomas Toussaint, District Heating Asset Manager at Ennatuurlijk.

In addition, Toussaint and his peers also saw huge risks in this type of metering solution because it involves more stakeholders than necessary. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and when it comes to solving technical issues quickly, Ennatuurlijk much rather preferred clear responsibility for swift decision-making.

“With third-party gateways, you have this network of different elements that need to cooperate. If you have a problem, everyone starts pointing fingers, and you need to go back and forth to identify the cause of the problem. Before you know it, you have wasted thousands of EUR on confusion,” Toussaint explains.

“With integrated communication modules, you take a lot of the risks and extra costs away and make everything pretty straightforward.” 

Dependable data from rock solid meters  

At the start of the project, Ennatuurlijk investigated all relevant solutions available on the market. Having already worked with Kamstrup for more than 30 years, the easy choice would have been to rely on Kamstrup once again. However, persistent on getting maximal value out of their ambitious project, Ennatuurlijk did their due diligence to make sure they had considered all pros and cons before putting pen to paper.

“When we started our smart metering project, we investigated the options available on the market to find out if Kamstrup was still the right choice,” says Thomas Toussaint. “The data needs to be rock solid. You can make a highway of perfect data streams, but if the data isn’t dependable, it’s basically useless.”

Although Kamstrup promises a high success rate on first-time meter installations, Ennatuurlijk were curious as to how the initial readout would work. To Toussaint’s joy, they are already close to their original goal of reaching 95% of all hourly values – much sooner than expected.

“Right from the start, we discovered that our readout was actually pretty good. Across our 90,000 newly installed smart meters, we are already at 91% readout and still improving.” 

Good-looking, intuitive platform with lots of functions 

Ennatuurlijk were on the lookout for an entire single-party chain from meter to MDM, and when comparing the various systems on the market, Ennatuurlijk found most value in Kamstrup’s solution – both functionally and visually.  

“READy had many analysis functions that we didn't have other options for at that time. Compared to the rest, Kamstrup offered the more mature and complete data package with a nice and polished platform,” says Toussaint.

Also, when it came to the interface, Toussaint and his colleagues preferred READy over all the other systems in terms of its intuitive design.

“In all these other systems, I can’t find out what to do. READy, on the other hand, is really user-friendly and easy to navigate. Using READy has made our workflow much easier, which is of great value to us.” 

Soon as the new smart metering solution was in place, Ennatuurlijk quickly found it to be a huge advantage. As Toussaint states, “with all the meters sending their data to READy, this allowed us to start making value of all these extra data immediately.”

Previously, Ennatuurlijk were totally dependent on customers noticing if their meters were having issues, before they could take their measures. Today, their decision-making efficiency is at a whole other level.

“Before, it could take years before a customer invoiced zero gigajoules for the third year in a row, and then we would start realising that there might be a problem. Now, we see issues immediately. We can do a meter quality analysis, and if it shows that a meter doesn’t produce gigajoules, we will know it right away.” 

At Ennatuurlijk, there was a joined wish to make the most of their new metering solution. As Lotte Pleging tells, “our main goal was to meet the regulation change. But now that we had so much more data points and higher quality data coming in, we wanted to do something smart with it, so that we were not just doing it because we had to.”

One of the ways in which Ennatuurlijk started using their data proactively was by assisting their service providers with valuable data insights for maintenance tasks.

“If something is wrong, it will show in the meters’ info codes. So, we started a process train where we analyse these info codes and give clear instructions to our service providers, so that they have a better chance of fixing the problem as quickly as possible.”

Specifically, Ennatuurlijk used READy to identify customer flow issues, which means very high flow and low cooling negatively affecting the return temperature in the network. Within a single year, this new data-driven approach managed to address no less than 431 flow issues.

“In 2024, we used READy to identify and address 431 flow issues together with our service providers,” Lotte Pleging tells. 

Partnership based on trust and respect 

Ennatuurlijk and Kamstrup have worked together for more than 30 years, but because this project was carried out during the covid pandemic, it proved to be a specifically challenging situation for both parties. However, despite supply chain issues and the world seemingly turning upside down, the tight partnership managed to pull through in the end.

As explained by René Lansink, Head of Sales for Heat/Cooling at Kamstrup, “we were acting like partners. On a weekly or biweekly basis, we provided a status on our deliveries, while Ennatuurlijk updated us on the progress of the meter installations. We were very open, and we had some great discussions about that.”

The positive feelings flow both ways, as Thomas Toussaint says, “we really worked it out together. When things go wrong, you find out whether you can depend on someone. We all survived, and we still like each other.”