Gazprom Marketing & Trading buys into Smart Metering

Gazprom Marketing & Trading - the UK-based subsidiary of the World's biggest natural gas company - announced that it has taken an equity stake in a leading automated meter reading supplier.

The company, TruRead, provides a series of creative technologies and solutions which enable meters for gas, electricity, water and other commodities to be read remotely and data transferred without human intervention.

This remote data allows consumers to measure energy use in near real time which enables them to better manage their energy consumption and carbon footprint, 'Smart metering is the technology of the future,' said Vitaly Vasiliev, CEO of Gazprom Marketing & Trading.
'With rising public and regulatory concern about the need to reduce carbon emissions, this proprietary technology will enable multi-commodity consumers to be more energy efficient and to control their energy use more easily and cost-effectively,' said Vasiliev. 'TruRead will be able to give its customers an even better service, while offering new, added value products, like low cost AMR solutions. This is in line with our goal to be a leader of diversified energy services.'
Simon Slater, Managing Director of TruRead, said: 'Today is a momentous occasion for TruRead, it gives us the green light to develop our products and services further, both in the UK and globally'. 'We believe our new product range to be a unique service, which we can quickly begin to market to our customers', Slater added TruRead provides a managed data service through Automated Meter Reading (AMR) and offers a complete, integrated set of services, for end-to-end collection and delivery of meter reading, for electricity, gas and water, using cutting-edge technology at a competitive price. The service starts with the installation of the meter or data-logger and ends with accurate, timely reads, along with an ad-hoc data retrieval service.
TruRead can provide a wide range of delivered data, ranging from simple and accurate billing reads, through to daily or half-hourly consumption data. 'Smart meters' scheme for UK could cost up to £20bn.

Source: TruRead