Speaking exclusively to Utility Week, Eggleton responded to Labour peer Lord Whitty’s call last week to capitalise on the opportunity afforded by having to visit every home in Britain to fit a smart meter by performing an energy assessment at the same time.
While Whitty said the move would bring about a “step-change within energy efficiency in total”, Eggleton, who was heavily involved in O2’s winning communications service provider bid for the rollout, said this idea would be entirely incompatible with the rollout’s main drivers of speed and efficiency required to install the sheer number of meters by the 2020 deadline.
Eggleton said: “Whilst that sounds great in a perfect world, the sheer practicalities of that put the whole rollout at risk. The whole focus for energy companies and the installers is to get a really slick and efficient installation because they are going to be doing tens of thousands of these a week.”
“I wouldn’t know how long a Green Deal assessment takes, but in a really slick meter installation you may be able to do it in between 20 to 45 minutes.”
Eggleton also said too many “real challenges still remain to be resolved for the programme to deliver on time,” without adding additional complication.
“A lot of time is still going into the interconnectivity of devices between communication hubs and meters and in home displays. And then you have the problems of multitenant sites and flats and hard to reach areas. So then to layer in a Green Deal assessment on the top of it, just smacks of being wholly impractical.”
Lord Whitty reasoned in his call that the combining the two would capitalise on the one true success of the Green Deal scheme which is the number of assessments done, replace the Green Deal scheme and fill the expected funding void left by the Energy Company Obligation, while giving energy efficiency a level of certainty for the next five years of the rollout.