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utILIty WeeK | 7th - 13th February 2014 | 23 Operations & Assets Bentham explains why Southern chose the AMR route over the fully smart option: "We wanted to do the whole thing in one AMP. We could make a good business case for drive-by AMR based on the whole life cost of running the asset. When we made our decision [pre-2010], the smart meter tech- nologies available then were not up to it… we could not make a business case for a whole series of repeaters and collectors across the whole of our patch [a low-power radio communications technology option – see below]. They may have been okay in central Brighton, but not in more rural areas where meter density was lower." At 75 per cent, Anglian Water has a high meter penetration level – in part because it "started way back", says Paul Glass, meter- ing change manager. Once again, this was on water resource grounds. Although it has put in some 100,000 one-way radio meters since 2010, it also has "a big stock [about 1.5 million] of ageing dumb meters", explains Glass. It has been proactively replacing these since 2005, but hitherto the replacements have been dumb for dumb. But Anglian now has upgrade in sight. "In AMP6, we are hoping to cross a very impor- tant rubicon," says Glass, explaining that its PR14 business plan includes the proactive exchange of 800,000 dumb meters for AMR units. In part, this is because the technol- ogy has grown in sophistication and because the company has found "obvious benefit" from the 100,000 first-gener- ation radio meters it has installed. Obstacles So while one-way AMR radio meters are start- ing to win favour over traditional dumb meters, excepting Thames Water, the industry has so far stopped short of taking the plunge with fully smart. The reasons are manifold. As noted, domestic metering of any sort is patchy and piecemeal and politicians have shown no will to man- date it – most recently by leaving metering policy out of the Water Bill. In terms of smart metering specifically, a position paper from the SBWWI Smart Metering Suppliers' Forum notes: "In sharp contrast to the energy sector, there is no man- date for smart metering for the water sector. Without this, and with- out a common focus, water companies have no shared vision of what smart metering solutions they would like to see in their future plans, and have not agreed a common specification for a smart metering system." Andy Godley, senior consultant at WRc, sees coordinated smart metering with water and energy as somewhat lost. "Decc is pushing forward with energy smart metering," he says. "The SMETS2 standard has no mention of water. Ofwat has more or less washed its hands of the whole thing and le it up to individual water companies… Its Smart Metering Advi- sory Group [a multi-stakeholder group, disbanded in 2013] did at least pull people together. There is a need for debate, for a wider forum to look for agreement in terms of direction." Without a mandate and widespread buy- in, a further chicken-and-egg type problem is establishing a cost benefit case. Godley explains: "You need a density of meters to achieve a robust cost benefit case. But without universal metering, it is hard to build that density and hence hard to develop the cost benefit case." And again until smart meters hit the pavements, there will be little in the way of customer pull. Interest swelling Despite these obstacles, the picture is far from entirely negative. While Thames is the only company currently implementing a ded- icated, universal rollout of AMI, many other companies are conducting or planning to conduct smart pilots and trials of one sort or another. David Green, business development direc- tor, smart metering, at communications network and services provider Arqiva, believes: "We are on the cusp of real AMI systems being deployed. I think many planned AMR pro- jects will be replaced by AMI projects. We are talking to a number of companies about the possibilities." Dene Marshallsay, director of specialist water consultancy Artesia Consulting and chair of the SBWWI Smart Meter Suppli- ers' Forum, concurs: "There is an enormous amount of interest in smart metering in the industry. Companies are coming at it a bit late in the current AMP – perhaps because they were waiting to see what would happen with energy smart metering – but momen- tum is gaining and many more are talking about investing or researching." Glass confirms Anglian "wants to do a fixed network trial during AMP6" to get a measure of how the sort of solution Thames is going for might work in its – oen sparsely populated – geography. "There's no one sil- ver bullet here," he says. "It'll be horses for courses, company to company." Bentham says Southern too will be keep- ing an eye on "when is the right point to go to the next step [to AMI]". This, he says, will be strongly guided by the existence (or not) of customer appetite for more granular infor- mation than AMR can provide. Drivers Aside from maturing technologies, there are a number of drivers for the industry to start edging towards smart metering now. These include: growing strains on water resources; ageing infrastructure; brewing customer contempt for leakage; heighten- "Those who have gone for AMR tend to have been driven by operating costs." erIc WooDs, navIGant research "You need a density of meters to achieve a robust cost benefit case" anDy GoDLey, Wrc brought to you in association with