Open-Source Advanced Metering Infrastructure for Rural Energy Access
OpenAMI brings actionable energy telemetry to village mini-grids — per-customer reads, credit balance, tamper alerts, and remote disconnect. Not just aggregate data, but leakage visibility at every layer (feeder → branch → customer) so operators can locate theft and loss, not just see imbalance.
Why it matters now: Proprietary vendor lock-in left operators stranded when platforms shut down. OpenAMI provides a vendor-agnostic path: open gateways, MQTT northbound interop, geo asset topology, and operator backends you can self-host or migrate between providers.
Metering capex rivals generation costs. Proprietary stacks lock operators in. When vendors exit, meters become bricks. Rural backhaul is fragile. Protocol fragmentation (STS, DLMS, Modbus, OEM mesh) blocks swap and scale.
Vendor-agnostic gateways at the pole. MQTT/JSON northbound contract. DLMS/COSEM at the meter. Open backends (MPM, ThunderCloud 2.0, OpenEMS). Geo topology for loss mapping. Community-maintained integration.
OpenAMI is not an any-to-any solution matrix. You must pick compatible components: First-km hardware (meter/DCU) → Aggregation hub (SparkNet / MeshEMS / MQTT gateway) → Backend (MPM / OpenEMS / ThunderCloud) → Billing & O&M. Integrations are evolving; not every backend supports every meter type yet.
Pick one component from each layer. Not every combination is supported yet — check integration status with your chosen backend provider.
This is what sits in the field — meters at customer premises, pole gateways, and mesh networking.
| Component | Role | Supported By | GitHub Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Street EMS (Hardware) | pole-to-meter mesh · DCU mesh backhaul | NESL | STREET-EMS |
| MeshEMS (Software) | Street Pole gateway · OpenAMI firmware | E-IOT | meshems-openami-metering |
| DLMS/COSEM meters | Revenue meters · interop via DLMS at DCU · VMRS registers northbound | OEM vendors (Inhemeter, Donsun, etc.) | — |
| SparkMeter hardware | Revenue meters + RF mesh · SparkNet field radio | SparkMeter | — |
Aggregation hubs collect meter data and push it upstream. They normalize vendor protocols into a common northbound format.
| Component | Role | Supported By | GitHub Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| SparkNet Hub | SparkMeter aggregation · USB Gateway + SparkNet-HTTP plugin · feeds GroundBolt or alternate HES | EarthSpark / SparkMeter | sparknet-http |
| OpenAMI / MQTT | Actionable telemetry · normalize OEM/DLMS to registers operators can bill, vend, and disconnect on · leakage visible at every layer | EnAccess / E-IOT / ISV | openami |
The backend manages billing, CRM, mobile money, and O&M. These are alternatives — you run one, not all three.
| Component | Role | Supported By | GitHub Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| EnAccess MPM | Operator backend · prepaid billing, CRM, mobile money · supports MQTT/OpenAMI integration | EnAccess Foundation | micropowermanager |
| OpenEMS | Linux end-to-end backend · under active development by Arila (iteration < 60 days) · lightweight village use · can swap Raspberry Pi meter for first-km MeshEMS fan-in · No support yet for SparkNet aggregation, DLMS/COSEM, or STS · more urban/grid-present | E-IOT (Arila Barnes) | openems |
| EarthSpark ThunderCloud | Operator backend (open) · ThunderCloud / GroundBolt · dev preview · SparkNet-HTTP native · TC 2.0 technical report | EarthSpark | thundercloud |
These work across different stack combinations and may be adopted later as grids mature.
| Component | Role | Supported By | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utility Network | Asset topology convention · GeoJSON layers + associations · maps feeder → branch → meter so loss can be compared at each point | ISV | Village GeoJSON · UN |
Esri Utility Network is Esri’s schema. The ISV/open pack is a convention (GeoJSON layers + associations), not an OGC standard. IEC CIM is a heavier cousin for the same topology idea.