Deal seals Europe’s largest smart meter roll

Greenwise Staff

29th March 2010

In what is being described as the largest smart meter deployment in Europe, energy supplier British Gas has signed a deal with smart meter company Landis+Gyr to roll out the energy efficiency technology to up to one million UK homes.

The deal, which will mark the UK’s first commercial-scale roll out of smart meters, will see the deployment of Landis+Gyr’s ‘dual fuel’ electricity and gas smart meters, along with Landis+Gyr’s touch screen in home display, in one million British Gas customers’ homes.

US-owned Landis+Gyr said the deployment would be based wherever possible on existing standards with the company sharing details of its smart metering system with third parties, so as to encourage new and innovative solutions aimed at consumers, suppliers and utilities, to be fast-tracked.

Landis+Gyr said the move was intended to provide other utilities with “an open, practical blueprint for commercial-scale smart metering”, in line with guidance provided by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and UK regulator Ofgem.

“Our partnership with British Gas represents a major breakthrough for smart metering in the UK. Together, we will pioneer the technical and practical standards that we hope will see every home and business in the country switch to smart metering within the next decade,” said Cameron O’Reilly, ceo of Landis+Gyr.

British Gas' "largest and most important" project

Petter Allison, director for Smart Metering for British Gas, added: “We view this smart metering roll out as one of our largest and most important projects ever. Smart meters have a fundamental role to play as they help customers become far more aware of the amount and cost of energy they use, which encourages people to reduce their usage and save money.”

British Gas is the first of the ‘Big Six’ utilities to undertake a major deployment of smart meter following the publication last December of DECC’s final plans for a national roll out by 2020.

The roll out of smart meters is part of UK plans for a smart grid, an electricity network that can intelligently integrate the actions of all users connected to it in order to deliver electricity supplies securely and efficiently.

Landis+Gyr said the deployment could save consumers more than £200 million in energy bills.

Under the deployment, consumers will be able to independently manage their energy consumption and cut their energy bills – at the same time as reducing CO2 emissions in the UK.

The deal between British Gas and Landis+Gyr follows on the footsteps of DECC’s announcement last week that it was providing grants totaling £7.6 million to eight companies to support smart grid development.

The eight companies are Energy Optimizers, Arqiva Ltd,  Highview Power Storage.  Rltec,  Smart Grid Solutions,  National Grid, Scottish Hydro Electric Power and  SP Distribution.

Commenting on the announcement, Energy minister Lord Hunt said: “Smart technologies will help manage the massive shift to low carbon electricity such as wind, nuclear and clean fossil fuels. They will mean more efficient and reliable delivery of electricity, reducing the costs and emissions from electricity generation and transmission. These projects will place the UK on a solid platform to pursue larger scale and integrated projects in the future."