Smarter sparks
Green Futures
Published on Sunday January 4, 2009
Meters which cut consumption are to be rolled out to every home, the government says. Chris Alden reports.
Every household in the UK is to have a ‘smart meter’ installed by 2018, after the government announced plans for a national rollout of the technology within ten years.
Installing ‘smart meters’ in every UK household could save 7.4 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, according to the Energy Saving Trust (EST) – and cut energy bills by £1.2 billion a year.
Smart meters can give energy companies automated, real-time readings of electricity or gas consumption. This means that meters no longer have to be read manually, and customers can track the power they are consuming more easily.
They offer the opportunity to view usage over set periods of time – allowing people to work out when consumption is highest, and to plan energy savings. EST says international trials show smart meters can help reduce energy bills by between 5% and 10%.
Energy companies have been conducting independent trials of the technology for a while now, but without a mandate from government. Announcing the move, energy minister Lord Hunt said the case for smart meters was “a bit of a no-brainer” – but added that with 47 million meters in the UK, installing them would be a complex process requiring two years of planning.
Other countries are ahead of the curve. In Ireland, trials have already begun as part of a €1 billion scheme to install smart electricity meters in every home and business by 2012.
Yet some smart meters are more advanced than others. At Swansea University, a smart electricity meter is being developed that doesn’t only measure the energy use in your house; it measures the electricity use of every individual circuit, too – in kilowatts and cash.
“Most smart meters don’t provide a real cost in cash – and not many people know what a kilowatt is,” said Richard Lewis, lead researcher of the university’s Smart Metering Team. With this model, “if the kids are upstairs and you’re constantly telling them to turn the lights off, you can say: ‘that’s costing me 2p or 3p an hour’.”
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