by Mathew Beech
The poorest customers could be the last to benefit from smart meters, with trials to apply the technology to prepayment meters still a year away. That was the view of experts speaking at last week’s Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum meeting.
Eon’s head of field operations, Chris Lovatt, confirmed that smart prepay meters would be coming in about 12 months’ time.
Maxine Frerk, deputy director of the smart metering programme and head of consumer engagement and rollout at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), said it was “inevitably a bit more complicated” to trial smart prepay meters. There are technical issues with maintaining the prepayment function if a customer switches supplier part-way through and the meter enters “dumb mode”.
This view was echoed by independent smart meter consultant Chris Shelley, who said smart prepay meters were “complex” and that “what they have got now works”.
Most prepay meters currently installed in homes are relatively new, having been replaced in the past seven years, said Shelley. He claimed that “utilities won’t be keen to write off their investment and replace them early”.
Despite the apparent difficulties of trialling smart prepay meters, Frerk said Decc wanted to ”facilitate” the environment for trials for when “the suppliers feel they are ready to overcome some of those challenges”.
This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 26th October 2012.
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