Utility Week understands that there is a delay of 13 minutes between large numbers of customers losing or returning to power and network companies being notified by the communication service providers (CSPs) for the DCC.
A spokesperson for the DCC said: “DCC is working with network operators on a solution to ensure that they are notified as soon as possible after a power outage.”
The DCC said the problem would be solved by April 2016 when the DCC network is scheduled to go live.
Two CSPs – Telefonica in the south and central areas of the UK, and Arqiva in the north – are contracted to provide communications to the DCC for the smart meter rollout.
Utility Week understands that in the south of the country there is a delay with “the last breath” – a smart meter’s final signal before a blackout – and also issues in the north with “the first breath” after returning to power.
This will hinder customer service procedures and ongoing repair work on the network to correct the overall fault, a problem which would undermine efforts to develop smart grids.
A Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) spokesperson said: “Providing outage alerts is an important benefit to network operators and to hardworking families and businesses. This will eliminate the need for bill payers to call up their provider and alert them to a power outage.
“Network operators are currently in discussion with the DCC to ensure the design meets the needs of both operators and bill payers.”
A spokesperson for the Energy Networks Association said: “Delivering smarter networks is the real, long term prize from smart metering and the potential benefits can reduce costs, increase network efficiency and improve customer service.”
But questions still remain whether the DCC will be ready for suppliers to become users on schedule in August 2016.
The DCC will only be releasing a limited version of the network in April, with “two or three” updates required before August to achieve full functionality.
The DCC’s operations director Dave Broady said: “We are absolutely, if it’s humanly possible, going to try and drive those sub-releases out before August next year to get users on-board.”
The DCC reported a plan for driving out the sub-release to Decc on schedule at the end of September.
Decc’s smart metering implementation programme’s head of business design assurance Seamus Gallagher, speaking in September, said the government was “confident” that the six months contingency already built into the rollout will be adequate, but that the government, with industry, will decide what DCC’s release strategy will mean for the rollout.
The DCC said it was currently “developing further.”
The ENA said: “Any further delay to the operational launch of the DCC systems is very likely to lead to an increased deployment of foundation smart meters (reduced functionality) which when coupled with the potential for differences between the systems used to deliver information from smart meters will risk erosion of the long term benefits vital to delivering long term cost savings and the enhanced end-to-end system performance that will make our energy consumption truly smart.”