Engineering news
The government's plans for the roll-out of smart meters to homes and small businesses in the UK have been heavily criticised as the Department of Energy and Climate Change announced that their introduction would be delayed until 2015.
Analysts said it had been a mistake to allow energy suppliers such as EDF to be responsible for the roll-out rather than network operators. Following the government's announcement that the introduction of an estimated 50 million energy smart meters will be delayed for more than a year, Stuart Ravens, principal energy and sustainability technology analyst at Ovum, said: "We have been critical of the selection process for smart meters for some time. Giving retailers such as British Gas and EDF responsibility for the smart meter rollout has created some unique issues.”
Ravens said that in other smart meter deployments around the world, metering was the responsibility of electricity network operators, not retailers. This allowed network operators to tailor a technical solution for smart metering in their particular region. However in the UK, Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) had “in its wisdom” divided Britain into three regions and opened the provision of smart meters and related services to retailers.
“Retailers have no geographic constraints, nor have they historically shown much interest in trialling and testing a variety of communications technologies. With very few exceptions, the smart meters deployed in Britain so far have relied on cellular-based communications, with mixed results,” said Ravens.
In practice, Ravens said, a hybrid of wireless and wired communications technologies would be required throughout the UK. The lack of region specific testing, or testing by DECC itself, meant that “Britain could have commissioned a communications network for over 50 million meters that had not been properly tested,” he said.
Ravens added that the extra time for the roll-out was necessary but questioned why it had taken the government so much time to understand a flawed process.
David Green, business development director at SmartReach, a company which has developed a smart metering communications solution based on long range radio connectivity, said it was a “real challenge” to develop a communications technology able to reach all of the existing meters.
He said: “Electricity meters tend to be installed in quite difficult to reach locations and basements. There was no existing communications technology able to reach more than 70%. The government's objective is to reach as close to 100% as possible.”
The SmartReach system is backed by a consortium including Arqiva, BT, BAE Systems Detica, and Sensus. “We are proposing is a new radio network using existing radio sites. We've spent a lot of time testing and trialling this and making sure it will work in a British environment.” Green emphasised that SmartReach's technology could reach 100% of its target if chosen.
Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, said: “More time was needed if the mass roll-out of smart meters was to get off to the best possible start and ensure a quality experience for consumers. We therefore now expect suppliers to be ready to start their full scale roll-out by autumn 2015.”