In September last year, The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) named the winners of more than £2 billion-worth of contracts associated with the communications infrastructure and services for the smart meter programme.
Since then, all the involved companies and organisations in the sector have been busily preparing themselves ahead of the start date for the mass rollout in August 2015.
However, with the final specifications for the meters yet to be decided, and Decc still consulting on the final “companion specification” for the meters, there are concerns that the timetable for delivery could slip further as the pressure builds.
Daron Walker, director of fuel poverty and smart meters at Decc, admitted that “there is still more work to do” ahead of the mass rollout next year in what is a “complex delivery landscape”.
In order to get this “enormous” project off the ground, Walker said the Data and Communications Company (DCC) – the licence was awarded to Capita – needs to design, build and test its systems to work seamlessly with the final meter specification (SMETS 2). If there is a glitch in the system, “then it will just be more painful, take longer and the cost will be higher” than the predicted £10.9 billion.
Energy UK’s smart meter policy and project manager, Rosie McGlynn, expressed some concerns at “incredibly challenging timescales”. She said was “essential suppliers get to work with the DCC.
“It is critical that the DCC have testing environments set up and the right people in place.”
The timetable for the development and testing of the end-to-end procedures for the smart meter programme – which includes testing the interoperability of the meters and the various communications systems – was presented to the industry at the end of last year and McGlynn says that even then “it looked quite challenging”.
“Now I think it looks even more challenging”, she adds, going on to say that the indicative timeline (see below) is going to be subject to a review and is likely to be moved.
Rob Searle, smart metering industry lead at Telefonica – which won a 15-year contract to be the communications service provider (CSP) for the southern and central regions – concedes that there is an “awful lot of testing” still to be done. The detailed testing phase has yet to even begin because the company has to complete the design and begin “the build phase”.
Even with these concerns, the attitude of the sector has shifted since Decc awarded the contracts and there is a “huge amount of momentum”, according to David Stroud, general manager at smart meter manufacturer EDMI Europe.
He says progress has been “good” but waiting for the SMETS 2 standard to be finalised is frustrating and is preventing meter manufacturers from developing fully interoperable meters – or “real products”.
Once SMETS 2 is finalised, Stroud says energy suppliers will want to start the testing process from the “end-to-end systems through the data service provider (DSP) and CSP down to their meters of choice”, although he adds that meeting the August 2015 start date for the mass rollout “is still achievable”.
This view is shared by another smart meter supplier, Sentec.
Chris Shelley, chief executive of Sentec, has says there is now “quite a lot of activity” as meter manufacturers, the data and communications providers, and the energy suppliers prepare for the mass rollout.
Despite the “major step forward” that has been seen within the industry since the summer, Shelley says “we’re still seeing delays” and there is some “nervousness” in the sector because the final specifications have still to be nailed down.
The majority of the concerns relate to the SMETS 1 meters that have already been installed, and how they will fare once the DCC picks up responsibility for the communications and interoperability for the smart meter rollout.
He says the DCC will be responsible for the SMETS 2 meters, not the SMETS 1 meters that have already been installed by suppliers in the foundation stage of the rollout.
To over come this, the suppliers are having to test the meters and their own back office systems to ensure the SMETS 1 meters will continue to function once the DCC goes live with the SMETS 2 meters.
Shelley says: “Everyone is dependent on CGI (the DSP) and there is a bottleneck there for sure in terms of testing meters.
“It’s an issue because everything has got to go through the same channel and be approved in the same way.”
At the moment, Shelley is unsure whether the timetable will slip, but admits: “Testing is going to be the key thing.
“Everyone will want to do some testing live and the success of the programme will depend on the quality of the testing and the outcome of the testing.
“I think it’s going okay at the moment but with such a complex programme it’s hard to guarantee nothing will go wrong.”
Decc tells Utility Week the testing phase “is on track at the moment” and that his company will continue to “work closely with industry, consumer groups and others” to roll out smart meters across the UK.