Smart Meter madness (Part 3)

(By Anthony Miller – Thursday 14th May 2009 8:00pm). My latest posting (see Smart Meter madness (Part 2)) on the government’s proposal to install ‘smart meters’ in all 25m UK households (and, by the way, in businesses too) has generated a lot of reader comment, both for and against.

For example, Pete Foster at Market Focus accentuated the positives:

“I think you’re missing the bigger picture on smart grids. Smart meters are widely recognised as being an essential step to better management of electricity, giving consumers better insight into energy use and how to limit it (as well as better enabling consumers to feed back their own generated power into the grid). If we are going to reach the emissions reduction targets that are now enshrined in law then a smart grid is going to be an essential part.

Secondly, smart meters and grids represent an enormous opportunity for ICT companies (Ed: a view echoed by industry association, Intellect director general, John Higgins, in an interview for Computing - see here). There are a lot of vendors developing additional devices, software and solutions based on the technology, with some fortunes riding on its adoption.

This is not just another potentially disastrous public sector IT project, it’s a technology that is being introduced globally to better manage energy and help fight climate change and will inevitably come to the UK (probably sooner rather than later).”

Alex van Someren raised the privacy issue, also reflected in comments from a ‘vox pop’ on the BBC website (see here):

“You might be interested to know there is some evidence that micro-metering of electricity demand allows very interesting insights into people's domestic activity too. One can tell from the time and power profile which blip is the lights going on, which is the washing machine, how long you stay in the (electric) shower, etc. There are therefore some complex intelligence/privacy issues in the resulting information flow which I am sure the Government has not yet considered its responses to...but will soon have to.”

Andrew Hall at Haywood Hall took the pragmatic view:

“Smart meters are already here & for most energy companies have been for some time – they are the same as 'dumb' meters & they simply need customers (like you & me) to be able to read the meter & key the data into a web-site or a telephone key pad. Very efficient for the companies & hardly an inconvenience for the consumer.”

I have yet to plough through all 40 pages of the government consultation paper (see here) and the multiple supporting documents. However, one paragraph jumped out at me on a first skim-through:

“There are exemplars on a smaller scale elsewhere in the world from which we can learn. But Britain’s programme will be bigger and more comprehensive than any so far undertaken. Government, regulators and industry will need to work together, and with the wider community of stakeholders, to ensure the roll out is effectively planned, prepared and delivered.”

Merits to the proposals there may be, especially for the case for 'Smart Grids' (and see our comment in Deloitte TMT Trends for 2009). Whether they will exceed the costs and justify the risks is yet to be seen. But the thought that, once again, we are going to embark on the world’s biggest and most complex commercial technology roll out strikes fear in my heart.

By the way, with precision timing, a press release from Steria landed on my desk announcing it is to manage the deployment of some 35m smart meters in France. The new meters will be tested in 2010 and then rolled out between 2012-2016. Well, if the French are doing it, then it must be OK.