A Smart Ready Meter Strategy from Landis+Gyr

Utility companies could be wasting more than £116 million by replacing traditional meters with devices that are not "smart-ready", Swiss meter manufacturer Landis+Gyr warned today.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced plans in May to fit every home in Britain with a smart electricity meters by 2020, along with a consultation to agree the roadmap towards this target.

However, according to the Swiss company, a full roll-out of the meters, which the government hopes will open the door for mass take-up of micro-generation incentives, cannot realistically begin until 2012.

In the intervening period, one million traditional gas meters will need to be installed every year, which will then need to be replaced by smart meters.
The business estimates that more than two million devices will need to be exchanged, at a cost of more than £116 million.

"This is a potentially significant issue for the energy industry. As it stands, the UK will deploy millions of pounds worth of assets which in some cases will have an installed life of months," said Stephen Cunningham, chief operating officer of Landis+Gyr UK.

Meters
Smart meters allow remote monitoring, giving utility companies a more accurate picture of energy consumption. Alongside demand controlling smart-grids, smart meters allow closer monitoring of energy use, generation, and purchasing, making renewables and micro-generation incentives like the proposed feed-in tariff easier to implement.

Dave Robinson, market development manager at Landis+Gyr, told newenergyfocus.com in March that without smart meters, renewable generation such as wind and solar would not be efficiently integrated into grid and would, for the most, part be side-lined (see this newenergyfocus.com story).

However, Landis+Gyr said today that each year smart-meters are not in place, more ‘dumb' gas meters will need to be installed as older ones break down. It said it was concerned that the vast majority of these will be traditional mechanical models, which will not be upgradeable to provide the required ‘smart' functionality, and therefore will have to be replaced during the national roll-out.

The company said that a partial solution to this problem could be ‘smart ready' gas meter, which is fully electronic and capable of being retrospectively upgraded to deliver ‘smart' functionality.

Landis+Gyr claims to have shipped two million ‘smart ready' meters, which it said could have multiple advantages, including reducing the time needed to upgrade the entire installed base and increasing public familiarity with smart meters before the national roll-out.

Stephen Cunningham said: "The implementation of any major nation-wide infrastructure project will of course be complex. However, we believe that smart-ready gas meters can make a major difference in smoothing the road and minimising the cost and time involved in a national launch."

Article from newenergyfocus.com.

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A Smart Ready Meter Strategy from Landis+Gyr

E.ON UK