British Gas leads the way in smart meter rollout

British Gas is currently leading the way with smart meter installations having supplied more than five million to customers so far.

Britain’s biggest energy supplier, which is owned by Centrica, said it has installed 5.6 million domestic smart meters and a further 590,000 in businesses across the UK.

Eon has installed 1.2 million while SSE recently installed its one millionth device.

Scottish Power says it has also installed one million while EDF and Npower have installed 750,000 and 428,000 respectively.

In total the big six account for 9,978,088. This is out of a total of 11 million according to the department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

A BEIS spokesperson said: “Over 11 million smart and advanced meters are already benefitting households and small businesses up and down the country, putting consumers in charge of their energy use and saving them money.

“A further 400,000 meters are being installed every month and everyone who wants a smart meter will get one by the end of 2020.”

Under the government’s smart meter programme, suppliers must by law “take all reasonable steps” to rollout the devices to all homes and small businesses by the end of 2020. Larger suppliers are required to meet individual annual targets, monitored by the regulator.

Last week Citizens Advice called on the government to extend its smart meter rollout by three years to 2023.

Victoria MacGregor, director of energy at Citizens Advice, said in the summer of 2017 Citizens Advice received more than 3,000 calls to its helpline regarding issues with smart meters.

MacGregor said with the deadline fast approaching, suppliers have to install meters at an “increasingly unrealistic place”.

But energy and clean growth minister, Claire Perry said the proposal by Citizens Advice would “only delay” millions of households from enjoying the benefits of a smarter energy system.

The government should soon be deciding on whether to further extend the end date for the installation of the first generation of energy smart meters (SMETS1) following a six-week consultation.

In January, BEIS pushed the 13 July end date back to 5 October 2018 and it has proposed to increase this by a further two months to 5 December 2018.