The smart meter rollout showed continued signs of resurgence in August but is still lagging on last year’s figures.
The latest update from Electralink shows that just under 183,000 smart meters were installed last month. The rate was 20 per cent more than July but still down 17 per cent on August 2019.
In total there have been just over one million smart meters installed so far in 2020, compared to 1.76 million by the same point last year.
The rollout was hit by lockdown measures in April and May as installations were restricted to purely emergency work. However, the industry has been slowly ramping up ever since.
Yesterday, Smart Metering Systems, which manages 1.3 million meters across the country, said it expects to be back to pre-Covid levels of installations by the end of the month.
Earlier this month, the milestone of five million second-generation SMETS2 smart meter installations was hit.
Electralink said that during August the East England had the highest figure with 24,000 installations, Southern England followed closely with 22,000 installs and East Midlands with 18,000.
The cumulative number of installations since the programme began is now 13,806,000.
Last year, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced the deadline would be pushed back to 2024. Due to the impact of coronavirus, the rollout deadline has been pushed back again by six months.