Utility Week

16 | MAY 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Energy Analysis Do we need a Plan B for smart meters? The deadline for the smart meter rollout has been put back twice, but with half of households still on dumb meters it looks increasingly likely that 2025 will be missed too. What happens then? I t has been 14 years since the passing of the Act of Parliament that gave powers to begin the smart meter rollout and 12 years since it actually began. In that time, accord- ing to latest government • gures, just 50% of operational energy meters are smart. The devices are seen as integral to the energy transition; they are the beginning of a digitalised power system. By some estimates they will deliver a £6 billion net bene• t to the UK, and a government spokesperson tells Utility Week the rollout is making "good progress" and is making the energy system "cheaper, cleaner and more eˆ cient". 'However, the rollout is already being conducted in line with a revised deadline, which was moved from 2020 to 2024 and then – thanks to the pandemic – further still to 2025. Under a new four-year framework, which commenced on 1 January this year, energy suppliers have • xed, annual installation requirements. With retailers being asked to install as many smart meters in the next two-and-a-half years as they have in the past decade, many in the sector believe the 2025 deadline will be missed and that work should start now on what to do when it is. "My de• nite view is we should start the debate now," says Duncan McCombie, chair of Western Power Distribution's Customer Engagement Group and chief executive of Yes Energy Solutions, a company that helps those in fuel poverty with energy eˆ ciency schemes. He adds: "If it takes time to do something diœ erent, we need to start thinking about doing something diœ erent now because we are going to run out of time otherwise." McCombie is not alone in his concerns about meeting the deadline. Speaking at Utility Week's Future of Heat conference in March, Energy UK's deputy director, Dhara Vyas, shared an intriguing comparison between the rollout of smart meters and the take-up of Amazon Alexa devices. Said Vyas: "In 2018 less than 10% of households in the UK had a smart speaker, by the end of 2022 it's estimated that 50% of households will own one. It's taken smart meters 11 years to get to that point where 50% of households have them." Despite the pessimism, McCombie still believes the rollout will be completed in the next decade. "On the current strike rate, if it did start 10 years ago then we should be hitting it, but it was never a 20-year programme," he says. Original sin A key debate surrounding the rollout has been whether it should be optional for con- sumers and retailer-led or given to the distri- bution networks to install street-by-street, as has been the case in many other European countries. This was the position of Eon Energy from the outset. At Utility Week's recent Customer Summit, Eon UK chief executive Michael Lewis went so far as to label the deci- sion to hand the rollout to retailers as the "original¥sin". "But once you went down the route of saying it's up to retailers, for the right rea- son that we wanted to engage customers, then you have to do it properly and you have to make the underlying systems work," he added. Gillian Baker, Eon UK's director of smart • eld connections, says it "makes sense" to go street by street from a "pure delivery standpoint", but that is only the immediate challenge. She says: "Longer term it's about embed- ding the bene• ts of smart into people's lives for decades to come – that means suppliers and solutions providers. "As it stands now suppliers have long- established relationships with consumers and remain best placed to engage custom- ers and help them understand the bene• ts of smart meters and to encourage custom- ers to engage with their meter and In-Home Display¥(IHD). "Stronger endorsement from central gov- ernment and making smart meters manda- tory would enable more eˆ cient, lower cost deployment." Matthew Roderick, founder and chief executive of n3rgy, previously spent • ve years at the Data Communications Com- pany (DCC) as its chief technology and innovation¥oˆ cer. While he believes the "ship has sailed" in terms of handing responsibility over to the networks, he thinks it could be reassessed in light of 2025. However, he adds, the question is less to do with who rolls out smart meters and more about whether the rollout is man- dated or continues to be optional. Says Roderick: "Logically, an optional roll- out should be led by the organisations that have the best relationship with the consumer because they can market it and encourage the consumer to adopt those meters. So a supplier-led rollout in an optional scenario makes sense to a degree, there's pluses and minuses to both approaches. "Mandating smart meters, which is a very big decision to make, logically rolls into potentially a distributor-led rollout because they can go street by street, house by house, driving the rollout." Roderick's preferred option would be to keep the rollout as optional but have stronger incentives, such as new products and services, to boost take-up. "Incentives are • nally starting to appear with time-of-use tariœ s becoming more popular. For certain types of assets such as EVs [electric vehicles] time-of-use tariœ s are

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