Slap in the middle of the UK’s planned roll-out of smart energy meters to every household, I have been blessed with the installation of a smart meter, writes George Malim. The problem is it doesn’t do much and isn’t integrated with any of my other smart home technologies
The UK jumped in, along with many other nations, and embraced the concept that smart meters would be highly valuable to consumers as they seek to control their energy costs and gain previously unavailable visibility into their bills. The £11bn project has been specified to see every home have a smart meter in a four-year installation phase running from 2016-2020 – however that has been subtly downgraded to every home being ‘offered’ a smart meter by 2020. Inevitably some commentators say the project is lagging behind but installations are projected to peak next year with 20 million smart meters being installed between 2016 and 2018 – so plenty of homes will have the new meters.
As the lucky recipient of one of those 20 million devices, I’m a little bewildered. This is a huge and expensive project but my experience has been relatively smooth. My energy provider offered me a smart meter I accepted and a few weeks later my traditional meters were replaced and I’m apparently now smart. However, while it was interesting to glance at my near real-time energy consumption for a few days after the installation, the cheap, black and white screened device doesn’t seem to do very much. Knowing I’m burning gas and using coal in the form of electricity doesn’t help me to reduce consumption or be more green and the fact that I have this meter doesn’t make me an adopter of other smart home technologies that would enable me to run my home more efficiently. Instead, I’ve got more data about my habits but no means to do anything with it.
I can only conclude that the lofty aspirations of the smart meter project will come to fruition in a future phase and utilise the expensive infrastructure that is being put into homes to aid green initiatives and help consumers manage their bills. If not, that £11bn, which will ultimately be passed to consumers by their energy providers, will not have been money well spent. In fact, this type of incompletely thought through project makes it easier to understand why, in analysis of the findings of a recent survey by Mindshare, Reboot Digital Marketing found that 25% of Brits would elect robots to positions of power in favour of human politicians.
George Malim
