Objectives of the consultation
The Government published a Prospectus with Ofgem containing proposals for the delivery of electricity and gas smart metering in Great Britain. This covers both domestic households and small and medium non-domestic sites. The Prospectus document, which represents the joint views of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (GEMA) sets out proposals for and asks for views on how smart metering will be delivered.
Supporting papers
To download the consultation document, please follow the link below.
CIBSE response
CIBSE raised a question over the ownership of In Home Display (IHD), whether it would be the supplier or the end user as both options will cause different issues. There would also be a problem with recovery of costs, supplier may not be able to absorb the cost when the customer may change their supplier after a month. There will have to be a central fund established for recovery of costs and consideration needs to be given to how will this work and who will run. The Government also need to ensure that all customers are treated equally on roll out and disadvantaged are not left to be last because they may be on pre-pay meters.
CIBSE does not agree with the home area networks as these will incure serious costs, security issues and the potential for interference. CIBSE advised connecting the meters with a single multi core cable to the IHD and the IHD to have the telecoms facility, rather than networks. Allowing other devices to connect to the meters may also make hacking and the introduction of viruses more likely.
To read the full CIBSE response, please follow the link below.
Results of the consultation and next steps
The government has published several documents in response to the consultation, dealing with different aspects of the smart metering implementation programme separately. All documents can be downloaded from the Ofgem website.