Smart work

In-Depth

With a UK roll-out of smart metering imminent, Tom Fryers looks at what we can learn from deployments elsewhere

Ask a politician about reducing carbon emissions and it is not long before smart meters are mentioned. Even the gloomiest economic news did not deflect David Cameron from making the opening environmental salvo of the year by promising advanced metering for every British household.

But as a number of other countries have demonstrated, the drive to adopt smart metering is not always the environment.

The US, for example, has a very large installed base of meters, but smart metering has generally been driven by the desire to reduce peak load, enhance security of supply and reduce the costs associated with manual meter reading.

On the other hand, de-coupling supply and transmission in certain European markets has led to a search for competitive differentiation of what is now a commodity proposition. Smart metering will probably be deployed in this context to strengthen long-term customer relationships. In Italy, which has more than 30 million installed meters, one of the key drivers was tackling energy theft and the cost of managing meters.

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