Celebrating 10 Years of G3-Alliance certification and its benefits for utilities

The 10th anniversary of the G3-Alliance certification programme marks a decade of excellence with our certification as a cornerstone in ensuring interoperability and quality in smart grid technologies.

This white paper recounts our journey, highlighting the milestones, technological advancements and global deployments that have defined our success and shaped the future of smart metering and communication solutions.

The journey of G3-Alliance certification

In the era of smart grids, smart metering involves not only measuring electricity, gas, water or heat consumption but also facilitating communication from the meter to the data concentrator or cloud.

Connecting each meter in a smart grid is a challenging task, given the vast number of customers and the widely differing conditions. To address this challenge, many smart meter suppliers have developed proprietary solutions and can provide complete Automated Metering Infrastructures systems.

While these proprietary solutions can ease pilot installations, they pose risks at a larger scale, such as supplier lock-in and lack of support for specific solutions over time.

A viable strategy to mitigate these risks is to rely on multiple suppliers, making their supply share dependent on the quality and performance of their devices.

This approach adds complexity and the potential risk of implementation gaps and interoperability issues between different vendors. Therefore, ensuring the availability of interoperable products is crucial.

The answer lies in a thorough certification programme that enables interoperability and guarantees conformance to the standard. Such a programme sets quality and conformity requirements for suppliers, significantly contributing to the success of large-scale smart metering programmes.

The launch and impact of G3-Alliance certification

In 2014, the G3-Alliance introduced the first G3-certified products, offering utilities confidence that products from different vendors bearing the G3 logo work together seamlessly in the same smart grid network.

The G3 logo quickly became a seal of interoperability, starting with G3-PLC products and paving the way for G3-Hybrid PLC+RF applications.

The initial deployments began in 2015 with the Linky rollout in France. Leveraging G3-certification and multi-supplier benefits, Enedis, the French distribution service operator (DSO), successfully deployed 35 million G3-PLC smart meters and 700,000 data concentrators. The programme was completed on time, within budget and with excellent performance, utilising open and standardised G3-PLC technology, G3-Alliance certified products and top-level infrastructure for laboratory testing.

G3-PLC technology offers the lowest total cost of ownership, operating independently from telecom operators, and facilitates high-speed, reliable, long-range communication over existing powerlines, ideal for smart grid applications.

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Global growth and technological advancements

From 2018 onwards, the G3-Alliance experienced significant growth in membership and certifications.

Today, G3 technology is deployed in over 100 million devices across more than 30 countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe as well as in North and South America.

In 2020, the G3-Alliance introduced G3-Hybrid, the first standard for PLC+RF hybrid communication, and certified the first hybrid platforms and products in 2022. G3-Hybrid combines the strengths of wired (PLC) and wireless (RF) communication, maximising coverage and connectivity while reducing complexity and total cost of ownership.

The G3 specification is continuously enhanced, for example, last year by including support for battery-powered devices. The Alliance has now certified over 600 devices, including 51 G3-Hybrid certificates from six semiconductor manufacturers and five product manufacturers.

The G3-Alliance remains dedicated to advancing G3-Hybrid and G3-PLC technologies, meeting the growing communication demands of smart grids and IoT applications across various industries.

Assurance through high-quality certification

High-quality certification assures vendors and customers that their meters, data concentrators and other devices correctly implement the G3 standard, are interoperable with other certified devices and meet specified performance levels.

The G3-PLC and G3-Hybrid certifications ensure the long-term availability and replaceability of hybrid platforms and products, providing utilities and customers with investment-safe and future-proof projects.

The G3-Alliance members include many utilities and continuously work together to improve the certification programme, leveraging all available expertise.

Testing for G3 Certification is performed by two selected test laboratories: LANPark in France and TÜVRheinland in Japan, with interoperability plugfests operated by Trialog in Paris. Devices are tested for conformance, interoperability and performance.

The latest certification version, Certification Version 7, released in October 2023, includes key enhancements such as frequency hopping, last gasp and support for 915MHz and 920MHz RF bands, among others.

Certification Version 8, which will include support for battery-powered devices, will be released in 2025.

Collaborative efforts and future directions

The G3-Alliance has long-standing liaisons with the DLMS User Association, with whom it collaborates to extend capabilities to multi-utility AMI and IoT applications using the DLMS application protocol and data model.

To achieve interoperability, end-users must ensure that devices use international standards and are interoperable at both the communication and application layers.

The G3-Alliance remains dedicated to supporting and advancing the smart grid ecosystem through rigorous certification and continuous innovation!

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