**2.1 Pilots and cases of application**

Smart city pilot projects have largely spread out in Europe (Spain, Germany, France, Finland, or Italy). In 2010, the Association "Genova Smart City" drew up a project to turn the capital city of Liguria into a smart city, meeting the requirements of the European Commission [5]. In 2015, into the framework of "Flexemeter project4 —Flexible smart metering for multiple energy vectors with active prosumers", two pilot applications have been performed in Turin (Italy) and Malmo (Sweden). Both projects involved the local DSOs and volunteer "prosumers5 " on real systems and were predominantly focused on the integration of the electricity and heating district supply. By 2030, supported by the European Commission, Geneva (Switzerland) will become a smart city for the electric, heating, and cooling networks, with the integration of renewable energies (wind turbines).

The diffusion of flexible multi-utilities and multiservice system is the crucial step to improve energy and market efficiency, to optimize the energy management during the peak periods, and to promote the integration of DR programs profiled on more efficient energy demand prediction [6]. In that framework, a fundamental role is played by the smart meters. At present, a smart metering infrastructure able to collect, aggregate, and analyze real-time data is essential to properly manage the different energy resources and to reduce greenhouse emissions as required by the COP21 [1].

The European Smart Metering Landscape report [7] has presented the best practices in the smart metering field. Different smart metering pilot projects have been successfully carried out in Europe: in Finland, the smart metering project was based on the monitoring of the cottage's electricity consumption in real time and its impact on the carbon footprint. Another example was carried out in Spain, where consumers equipped with smart meters received specific information to allow an evaluation on how to reduce their average electrical consumption. In Germany, a German start-up company created a Social Metering App that allows users to view and share smart metering data in terms of carbon emissions, kWh, or monetary costs for all energy carriers (electricity, gas, and oil), and water meters.

Under the Third Energy Package6 , Member States are required to ensure the implementation of smart metering for electricity, gas, water, and heating. In this framework, long-term cost benefits analysis (CBA) has been carried out so as to decide the implementation of a smart metering infrastructure [8].

In contrast with the Electricity Directive, which required that 80% of consumers should have smart electricity meters by 2020, the Gas Directive does not specify how many consumers should have smart meters or provide a deadline for deployments following a positive CBA. The following section will show the current situation of the rollout of smart meter gas in Europe.

<sup>4</sup> http://flexmeter.polito.it/index.php/project.

<sup>5</sup> Prosumer is a neologism applied to consumers which also are able to produce electricity that can be delivered to the grid.

<sup>6</sup> http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32009L0072&from=en.
