Smart meters: the stuff of Dan Dare or Big Brother?

12/10/2009

Smart metering promises big benefits for the UK, but only if energy companies use the extra capabilities it will give them wisely, writes Rory Bergin, head of sustainability and innovation at consultancy HTA.

It is reasonably well understood that the key to changing human behaviour is to put the information in the hands or mind of those whose behaviour you want to change and let the evidence do the rest. The pictures of diseased organs on cigarette packets, is a fairly obvious, although gruesome example. Pictures of diseased organs are to the public health world as smart meters are to the energy world. Both are tools to inform us about our bad habits and to shock us into adopting new ones.

What smart meters can do

Studies have shown that smart meters with some feedback mechanism can save up to 15 per cent of a household's carbon dioxide emissions by simply informing users when they are using energy needlessly and encouraging them to switch off unnecessary equipment or lights. Even more exciting is the possibility that they might switch the lights off for us, thus allowing us to get on with the slightly more exciting tasks we were already doing. (Hopefully, we won't be reading the new Dan Brown book when the lights go out.)

The meters are planned to be linked to a display unit in each home which will give feedback on electricity and gas usage and could include information on cost as well as carbon emissions. Much of the details of the proposals are yet to be worked out, but the overall strategy is clear. The UK will have a smart metered domestic market by the end of 2020 and this will allow the use of more complex tariffs, the linkage of micro generation devices in homes, the implementation of feed-in-tariffs and the use of plug in electric vehicles. This sounds very Dan Dare and I cannot wait.

But is it Dan Dare or is it Big Brother?

Part of the attraction of smart meters for the large energy companies is that because they measure power usage at smaller intervals, ie, every half hour, they can be used to charge consumers more at peak periods than off-peak, and by so doing either make more money or encourage consumers to use more power at off-peak periods. This can be seen as a double edged sword for the consumer, those who can manage their appliances accordingly may benefit and those who cannot may be penalised.

They will also be able to deal with microgeneration in the household energy system, measuring what is used in the household and what is sold to the grid. This will help with the payback that is so important in the marketing of these systems. Currently they are seen as an expensive luxury and only installed in cases where there is a planning or funding requirement to do so; accurate metering of their energy contribution will help to make them into sound business too.

What they can't do

What smart meters cannot do though, is tell your washing machine to turn on when there is cheap electricity available. Not unless there is another layer of technology in the home to make this possible. Home automation systems that do this type of thing have long been the preserve of the luxury home owner, where an IT network is installed and there are control panels on every room to modify lighting and heating, and often security and entertainment systems as well. These fit into the nice-to-have category that most of us can do very well without.

But if these systems were to 'talk' to our smart meter and respond to signals such as 'from 17:00 to 21:00 the price of electricity will drop below 12p/kW'' and then turn on the dishwasher and washing machine in that period. Or if the meter signals that the grid will pay a '2p/kWh premium for generated electricity above any existing tariff for two hours between 14:00 and 17:00 this week' because one of the nuclear plants is closed for maintenance, then we might choose to sell the electricity generated by our photovoltaic panels instead of choosing to charge our house battery, or use the electricity ourselves in other ways.

What they shouldn't do

What is less appealing is the suggestion that the energy companies might do some of these things without our permission. A typical suggestion is that freezers can happily be turned off for a period of several hours without any danger of defrosting the contents. This may be the case, but I want to be the one in control of when this happens.

What must not happen is for people to lose control of their appliances. There is already a low level of trust between householders and utilities, formed through years of poor customer performance, and it will only take a few incidents of a pensioner losing the contents of her freezer to turn most people off the idea of letting utilities have any impact on their domestic energy use.

The average householder has a pretty low level of ability to deal with complex technology, so we mustn't place too much expectation on people to become fluent in the art of micromanaging their energy use by texting their washing machine or telephoning their fridge. It will be fun the first time, but a chore the second. The introduction of this type of technology must be user friendly first, and technologically advanced second, otherwise it will be wasted effort.

Sources and links

www.hta.co.uk/ to find out more about the design-led multi-disciplinary consultancy for housing and regeneration.

www.rorybergin.wordpress.com/ to follow Rory Bergin's blog.