UK to go 'smart'

A long-delayed UK government announcement on smart meters has finally been delivered. But the question remains: will this lead to reductions in energy use?

A 2006 study for Defra (the UK Government’s environment department) by the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute suggested energy savings of 5-15 per cent. This was challenged by the Government’s energy regulator, Ofgem, which back in 2006 offered a “conservative assumption of a 1 per cent reduction”, and which now recommends a Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) assessment of 2.8 per cent savings for electricity and 4.5 per cent for gas.

Why the difference?

The answer is that smart meters can only be half the story. The other half is the consumer and how the behavious at that end changes, or not. While smart meters will supply real-time, accurate figures on a household’s energy, whether any energy is saved depends on whether the consumer acts on the information that the meter supplies.

Will it simply see another gadget added to the menagerie? Will people shift the time when they choose to use gadgets at home? To a time when the energy is cheaper? If so, how will there be a reduction of overall use? So if households are still using almost the same amount of energy overall, how do smart meters help? And what if cheap energy only invites more of it to be spent??

But as the article explains, the reduction or energy savings come in the form of power stations that are always on to cope with an uncertain demand. At off-peak times this energy is wasted.
Reducing peak demand levels and spreading energy use more evenly makes the system more efficient, meaning that the UK needs to build fewer power stations. General Electric estimates that this process can reduce overall energy demand by 5 per cent.

But people will make a shift in timing only if there is a considerable change in the time of the day pricings.

The other way to look at it is that utilities will have more control over homes. Rationing energy supplies will become more real. Whether it is under a central authority or not, power companies will be given some control. It will take some more time before the consumer can actually ‘buy’ energy like anything else in the market, but he will be able to sell it should he choose to generate.

Is smart meter a good decision?