Speaking at the Marketforce Smart Metering Update this morning, Brian Stratton, the head of smart metering programme at UKPN, said suppliers should adopt an “area by area” approach to installing the meters.
This, he said, would enable any “interventions” – work to help fit smart meters due to unforeseen problems, such as wiring or location – to help reduce the cost and disruption to consumers.
He said: “This is a supplier-led programme but I believe the key to ensuring this is a success in terms of interventions would be for the suppliers to adopt an approach that logistically is similar to how a DNO would undertake this.”
It is thought the mass rollout of smart meters could lead to a number of interventions predicted, which would be 32% higher than the number of low-voltage faults UKPN would typically dealt with each year, with UKPN expecting to deal with 232,000 incidents, and for there to be more than 850,000 nationally.
However, British Gas and Scottish Power said that while they “could see the attractiveness” of adopting this model, they were not going to use it. Steve Briggs, head of smart customer operations at British Gas, said: “I think that misses the point about how metering works and consumers work.”
He said a DNO-style approach would fail to meet consumer demand because if a consumer earmarked as a late recipient of a smart meter wanted one earlier in the rollout, they would not be able to get one, whereas they could under the current proposals.
Briggs added that dumb meters that had reached the end of their natural lives could be replaced with smart meters wherever they were in the UK under current proposals, but would not under an area-by-area rollout.
He also said that the most important element was to ensure the rollout was done as cost effectively as possible, something David Ross Scott, smart industry relationship manager at Scottish Power, agreed with.
Scott said: “Efficiency is key because at the end of the day the customer pays for this and we need to make this as efficient as possible.”