Smart Meters

Wikipedia says "The United Kingdom rollout is considered to be the largest programme ever undertaken - involving visits to more than 27 million homes to replace meters for both gas and electricity. The official start date of rollout is 2012 but some energy suppliers are already installing smart meters in people's homes and as of January 2010 there were estimated to be in excess of 170,000 domestic smart meters installed. Eon is considered to be leading the rollout of the new technology, and is expected to have at least 2 million meters installed by end of 2012. This energy supplier is reportedly installing on average 1,000 new smart meters every day."

However - how will the Smart Meter assist microgeneration data recording? As far as I can see data readings are more accurate so may reduce the possibility of inaccurate bills, and secondly physical access to the meter is no longer required as data can be updated remotely, i.e. by bluetooth.

The Centrica website says that the 'smart grid' will increasingly rely on microgeneration. "Smart meters are the starting point in what will be a major upgrading and renewal of our entire energy chain. The end-point in this journey is the 'smart grid', where the entire grid is intelligently swapping real-time information about its operations to optimise performance and reduce demand. The advantage here is avoiding the transmission losses inherent in the network system (up to 10%), and locally generating electricity and heat using renewable sources: solar, heat-pumps, wind, and other low-carbon technologies like micro-CHP (a boiler which produces heat and electricity) and fuel-cells. Smart meters are essential in facilitating micro-generation. They capture the measurement of energy produced locally and potentially exported into the grid, allowing suppliers to make payments to homes and businesses for the energy produced, and informing networks and generators of the local generation coming on to the grid. Smart meters can also control the amount of electricity going into a home or business; for example restricting non-essential consumption at peak times (but still allowing some consumption)."

ConsumerFocus notes that the smart meter rollout is estimated to cost more than £11bn – each customer will foot the bill.

The Ofgem site has radical ideas (albeit from 2006 and not updated!) on measuring what each appliance is doing via SmartMeters - but it's not so smart a website as the HTML text won't transfer onto here!

This 2008 Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/20/energyefficiency.smartmeters refers to the Italian experience of 5% energy reductions after smart metering, but adds that proponents do question how interested energy companies are in selling less energy. They also argue that smart meters would mainly benefit the energy companies by doing away with estimated billing and manual meter readings.

N-power say: "In December 2009 we became the first major energy supplier in Britain to start installing smart meters for our microgeneration customers who export electricity back to the grid. Each of the microgeneration smart meters comes with a Customer Display Unit which will display the amount of energy being used at the property. It will also show the level of energy being exported back to the grid, and the amount customers will be paid for that energy." That seems more like it.

There's an exhausting (10 mins) video with a commentary on the smart meter uses at MicrogenReady but it seems to show an artist's design rather than explain how the smart meter works, or one in real life.

A cautionary tale is at this blog: concludes: "The surprising lesson in all of this is that the data I rely upon was available before my smart meter was installed and the monthly summaries are still the most useful data available for my purposes. So where is the consumer benefit from smart meters? As far as I can tell all the benefits are flowing to the utility company, but my rates are still going up."

Another blog is also interesting - explaining that without a real-time display of units used and comparisons made available, a SmartMeter is unlikely to assist in energy reduction: "The meter's display is still there on the fridge door but when the batteries powering the display ran out and it went blank, no-one noticed."

So will smart meters be a boon or burden for homeowners? It seems to depend on how engaged the homeowners are and how they use the data from the smart meter to make energy conservation decisions. Smart meters won’t give you cancer, but who knows how much help they’ll be in helping reduce your energy consumption. Smart meters are simply a tool that you can choose to use or ignore. But the ones we get may not be as useful as we're led to believe... more to the point, they will need to indicate the energy exported to the grid by solar power as well as the energy imported from the grid.