Three years after first announcing its intention to roll out smart meters across Great Britain, the Government has finally published plans setting out how it is going to happen. In brief, smart meters will dramatically change the way that meter readings are taken, see an end to bills based on ‘estimated’ consumption and enable householders to see exactly how much energy they are using. This final point is particularly interesting. One easily could have imagined the smart meter being in the same place as where meters currently reside; in a cupboard somewhere! However, the Government are proposing that alongside a meter, a free-standing display will be included to ‘provide real-time, near instantaneous feedback on consumption (in terms of energy, money or CO2)’. It will be interesting to see if innovative companies can link this requirement into existing technology, so the information could be displayed on a mobile phone, a television or a laptop, for example. It’s even possible to receive updates about your home’s energy usage via Twitter.

Rolling-out smart meters to 26 million homes and several million businesses is a huge undertaking, so how does the government propose to do it? Well, their preferred approach is to give responsibility for the provision of smart meters to gas and electricity supply companies. A single provider will be also appointed centrally to supply communications services to and from meters. From a business opportunity point of view, it’s fair to say this will be exciting some boardrooms this morning.

Ensuring a smooth and successful roll out over the next decade(s) is a huge challenge, but technology companies – working with the other parts of the sector – are more than up to the task. The consultation announced this morning raises a lot of questions and no doubt the wide range of stakeholders involved in this area – including Intellect’s Smart Metering Group – will be seeking to provide constructive feedback on the proposals. However, with eight documents to get through, some strong coffee a decent supply of biscuits may be order of the day.

Finally, it’s very pleasing to see the consultation state that smart meters are a ‘key step’ towards smart grids. I could not agree more. At a micro level, they will enable a smarter grid to literally have two-way communications with every home; at a macro level, they have significant transformational capacity. Today’s developments once again highlight what an exciting time it is to be involved with the sector. For more information about what Intellect is doing in this area, please get in touch.

Technorati Tags: smart grids, Smart metering

Tags: smart grids, Smart metering

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 11:50 am and is filed under Energy and Environment, Private Sector. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.