The smart meter rollout took an “unexpected downwards turn” in March, according to the latest figures from Electralink.
In total, there were 185,000 smart electricity meter installations last month – the lowest number of installations during March since 2020.
This figure is 9% less than the month before and 13% less than March 2023. The same month in 2021 and 2022 had 224,000 and 219,000 installations respectively.
Installations in March 2020 were blighted by the first of the pandemic lockdowns, with 168,000 devices being installed. That figure plummeted to 12,000 the following month.
It comes as the government’s latest figures, which are for both gas and electricity meters, reveal that at the end of 2023 there were 34.8 million smart and advanced meters in Great Britain in homes and small businesses.
Of these 14.6 million are SMETS1, 18.9 million SMETS2 and 1.3 million are advanced meters.
Yet the figures published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) also reveal that almost 4 million smart meters are in ‘dumb’ mode, meaning they operate in the same way as a traditional energy meter would.
Electralink’s figures show there have been 609,000 installations so far this year.
In terms of regional installation figures, the usual areas in England remained in the top three spots for another month.
East England had 23,000 installations, Southern England had 19,000 and the East Midlands had 18,000 installations.
Earlier this week the government confirmed that heat pumps, storage heaters and heat batteries will have to meet minimum standards of “smart functionality” by 2026.
DESNZ said that it will be introducing a “smart functionality” mandate for certain types of electrical heating appliances.
It said doing so will unlock domestic flexibility and demand side response opportunities while ensuring that consumers are protected from mis-selling of services and threats such as cyber attacks.
The smart mandate is included within a consultation on the government’s Smart Secure Electricity Systems (SSES) Programme.