19 Jul 2010
BT has partnered with communications services firm Arqiva, a company heavily involved in the switch from analogue to digital TV broadcasts, and BAE-owned information management specialists Detica, to provide a dedicated long-range radio communications solution for the government’s smart metering initiative.
The group will offer a dedicated network specifically for the smart metering programme, using Arqiva’s radio spectrum and network infrastructure.
BT's remit is to provide expertise in delivering complex IT and comms projects, while Detica will provide robust, secure information and infrastructure security services.
Other partner support will come from smart meter and smart grid specialist Sensus which is providing its FlexNet fixed network utility meter reading system.
The group argues that a dedicated radio spectrum at 400MHz would have advantages over the GPRS-based radio spectrum used by mobile operators.
This is backed up by recent research from analyst Ovum which stated that GPRS has some serious limitations, not least the fact that as the majority of UK meters are in cellars or part-buried, they may have difficulty connecting to a GPRS network.
The multibillion-pound government smart meter initiative plans to install smart meters in 28 million residential premises and small businesses by 2020.
The initiative aims to reduce Britain's energy costs and lower carbon dioxide emissions by 2.6 million tonnes per year.
Government guidelines will be published in the near future, according to a Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesperson. These guidelines will give further details on the UK's smart meter approach for monitoring power usage.
The partners say they will review these before formally launching their proposal in September.
Technology market research firm ABI Research recently estimated that the market value of smart grids would top $45bn (£30bn) by 2015.
The consortium announcement this morning is one of many we expect to see in the coming months, however, in order to offer an end-to-end solution, partnerships will be crucial to making the smart metering roll-out a success and smart grid a reality.
While smart metering and the smart grid rollout clearly have the potential to be game changing in terms of carbon emission and energy consumption reduction in the UK, in order to deliver on its promise, the network will need to be capable of high availability and resiliency, low latency and high throughput to enable smart grid services.
As such, the technology challenges of making the smart grid a reality in a cost effective way shouldn't be underestimated.
There are many ways of connecting the smart meters to the grid - each with different technology and cost profiles, suitable for different population densities and different geographies.
We believe the most cost effective manner in which to implement smart utility services has to be based on the best technology choice for each circumstance.
As such we believe that any workable solution would have to be a hybrid one, encompassing a mixture of solutions including wireless and fixed line elements.
Today's electricity infrastructure simply cannot coordinate and control all of the systems that will need to be attached to facilitate the changes that need to be made for the implementation of smart grid and smart metering.
The smart grid is not a tangible entity in the same way as the physical wires of the current electricity grid, it will be made up of a series of connections that will be integrated with various communication devices and solutions to enable better management and control over the UK's electricity. It will affect practically every aspect of the electricity system and give it much needed transparency. The reality is that the mixture of options available will cater for varying communication needs in different situations.
Mesh and GPRS networks will work well in certain environments, existing broadband networks in others and so on.
With all of this in mind it will be a flexible approach to partnering and sourcing joining equipment manufacturers, communications providers, integrators, application owners, and utility companies will be critical in making smart grid and smart metering a success.
Posted by: Amy Cooke, Business Development Director, Cable&Wireless Worldwide 21 Jul 2010
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