Green Zeal: renewables and ration packs

The world outside the UK has been embracing smart energy for some time now. One of the underlying technologies enabling smart technology in the home and work place is the smart electricity meter

The following is a run-down of the top 5 examples of smart meter usage around the world – unsurprisingly the UK is not amongst them:

Italy

Arguably the country to have the firmest embrace of smart energy technology – the state energy provide, Enel deployed smart meters to over 27million homes in 2005/2006

The two way communications devices have improved the businesses power management systems and include a large number of features for the user. Examples are remote control over energy in the home, notification of supply issues and monitoring of energy uses in different areas of the home.

Canada

Canada, although antagonistic to some other environmental policies have done well in this case – the Ontario Energy Board fully embracing smart energy technologies
They surpassed the target of fitting smart meters in nearly 1million homes and business premises by 2007 and are well on their way to meeting their target of installing these meters in the whole province by end of 2010

USA

As expect, California is at the forefront of the smart energy revolution – a program in place to fit 9millioin homes with advanced communication upgrades to their electricity meters. This allows them to monitor energy usage on an hourly basis and price customers based changing supply. This effectively produces increased efficiency in energy generation by smoothing demand over the day – encouraging customers to use energy at normally off-peak times

Surprisingly, Austin Texas one of the states known for the gas-guzzling habits, are also making good progress towards smart meter fitting – a program on the way to install smart meter to nearly 400,000 customers

Turkey

A surprising 4th place on our list is Turkey, which is embracing smart energy technology, arguably to a greater extent than the EU. Elektromed have installed 1.5million smart electricity and gas meters, whilst they also hold the current world record for installed smart water meters, with over 500,000 homes adapted. A true example of how countries are embracing smart energy technology as a way to save money.

Australia

Follwing the release of the 2004 paper from Victoria’s Esssential Service Commision, a plan was put in place to roll-out smart meters to 1million large customers by 2013. This work commenced in 2006 and progress is looking good. Additional to this, in 2007 all other Australian states committed themselves to smart energy and the roll-out of smart metering to their residents and businesses.

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“By 2020 I’ll be an old man”, stated my wise, old grandfather a few days ago whilst perusing The Guardian. His even wiser grandchild thoughtfully pondered how this was a very optimistic point of view, however, he kept it to himself, as that thought in no way helped morale or the pervasion of smart meters across the UK.

Now, there is much talk about smart meters and “the smart grid” but so far the UK has yet to prove any genuine progress in this area. The promise is positive, even though the estimates are a little vague – these meters should help each household reduce energy usage by “3-15%”. This is probably a saving of around £100-200 million per year.

These smart meters will cost a reported £340 per household, of which there are 26million in the UK. We therefore see a pay-off in around 20 years for UK wide smart meter installation (with any additional costs of a smart grid unaccounted for).

This is clearly and unconvincing argument – very few investments are deserving of a 20 year pay-off period – like my Grandfather, I might be dead by then.

Additional to this, it is unclear who will pick-up the upfront costs. The pockets of the UK government are increasing shallow and customers will unlikely wish to fork cash under the promise of a 20 year pay-off

The answer should be to reduce the cost of these smart meters by reducing the unit cost of the technology and improving the efficiently of the installation process. Otherwise it is unlikely that the smart meter will be universally accepted in the UK, in my lifetime.

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