Smart meter decision expected later this year

The outcome of smart metering trials will feed into the government's decision on a rollout

A final decision on a national rollout of smart meters should happen towards the end of 2008, according to the government, which will consider industry responses and information from smart metering trials.

The deadline for industry responses to the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s (BERR) impact assessment on the potential rollout of smart meters in the UK passed at the end of last week.

The department is finalising its impact assessment model and the outcome of trials will also be considered, said a spokeswoman for DBERR.

“More work is going on around the impact assessment to refine the model,” she said.

“This will hopefully be finished by November, by which time trials will have been reported on and those findings will feed into a decision. There will be a final decision on national rollout towards the end of the year as well.”

The Energy Retail Association (ERA) is still optimistic about a satisfactory outcome for industry, which has been urging the government to mandate a rollout of smart meters to all homes in the UK. It believes that the government’s method of estimating the cost of a rollout could be too conservative.

"We welcome the opportunity to work with BERR to achieve an accurate impact assessment for the rollout of smart meters across Britain,” said Duncan Sedgwick, chief executive of the ERA.

"The industry is confident that the government will reach a positive balance in favour of smart metering once adjustments are made to reflect the industry's own experience of metering operations over many years, and their up-to-date knowledge of developing and trialling smart metering.

"The ERA has put forward recommendations including adjustments to the weighting on the government's optimism bias, which we feel overestimates the amount that costs could rise for some aspects including meter cost, meter installation and communication between the meter and the supplier.”

Last month, Computing reported that Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs had accused the government of “dithering” over a compulsory rollout, and that a supplier for the BERR-run trials said the government had overshot its cost estimate by £7.2bn.