The network underpinning smart meters has been described as “clearly not up to scratch” by one industry boss following an outage earlier this month.
Utilita chief Bill Bullen said a recent Data Communications Company (DCC) network outage resulted in prepayment meter (PPM) customers being unable to top up.
Bullen said he does not think “the DCC’s network has got the capacity to cope with much more than they are dealing with at the moment”.
Speaking to Utility Week, he added: “We saw on 1 April there was a big failure on the DCC system but we are still seeing huge amounts of downtime, scheduled downtime, scheduled maintenance and also unscheduled downtime from the DCC which is just not acceptable for a prepay customer… because prepay customers need to vend all times of the day and night to keep on supply.
“It’s a real problem. The failure that we saw on 1 April was indicative, in my opinion, of a system that can’t really cope with much more.”
Despite Bullen’s concerns the DCC told Utility Week that it provides a “robust system”.
Bullen said around 70% of vending activity during the outage failed. The Utilita boss added that the DCC’s network has no facility to prioritise different messages and that it has “basic design flaws”.
He added: “I’ve had correspondence with the DCC over a number of years, saying I think we have got some problems here, and they’ve been completely in denial about it, even up until a couple of weeks ago they were in denial about it… Given the amount of money that has been spent on this system, there’s a bit of a scandal in the offing is my view because it’s clearly not up to scratch.”
According to figures published in the DCC Business and Development Plan 2022-23 the company, which is funded by energy retailers and distribution network operators, is expecting to have spent £688 million in 2022/23.
Utility Week has seen evidence that, ahead of the 1 April price cap update, network users were recommended by the DCC to take some precautionary measures to reduce the risk of congestion at times of peak demand on its network.
A spokesperson for the DCC confirmed that an outage occurred on 1 April, that it was less than five hours and that it was due to issues with one of the network’s communications service providers.
They told Utility Week: “The DCC provides a robust system that is helping more than a million prepayment consumers benefit from having a smart meter on the national network – namely the ability to switch suppliers while maintaining full smart functionality.”