Christmas is over and the Turkey and mince pies a mere happy memory of gluttony.
Following the excesses of Christmas my new year’s resolution, like many other peoples, is to lose weight. Like any other goal in your life, tracking progress of your new year’s resolution is a sure-fire way to success. So I would like some clever way to track my progress. Being a techy my idea is to connect my bathroom scales to the Internet and publish my progress on line and if I deviate from my target be sent an automatic reminder to eat less. This thought brings me back to work and thinking about Smart Metering.
The overarching aim of smart metering is to reduce our excess of carbon usage and reduce energy consumption. The primary means will be to accurately monitor and thereby educate and inform the consumer regarding their immediate and overall energy consumption along with an indication of cost and CO2 emissions. Regular updates will be provided allowing comparisons of energy use against time and potentially by appliance type. Smart meters will empower customers to make choices on how much energy they use by providing information on their consumption.
Smart metering is not new and was first proposed in the 1970’s and for larger consumers, has been around for some time. It is only recently that two factors, the need to reduce carbon emissions and the reduced cost of communication technology, have converged to make a viable business case for large scale domestic Smart Meter deployment.
Smart meters are now under consideration in virtually every developed country. Some countries have already deployed smart meters on a large scale such as in Italy and Sweden. In these countries the majority of homes already have one and enjoy the benefits. Commercial interest has now reached the point at which investment in smart metering in the European Union is expected to be over 51 billion Euros, with potential financial benefits ranging from 14 billion to 67 billion Euros.
The UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) now intends to roll-out ‘smart meters’, accompanied by real-time displays, to all UK householders by 2020. This would impact on over 27 million homes with legacy gas and electricity meters.
Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) and large businesses will have an accelerated program and have Smart Meters within five years. By any measure this is a major deployment programme with significant logistical challenges and only matched in the past by the whole sale rollout of natural gas. To support the endeavour the UK energy industry is now fully engaged in defining the detailed specification and planning for roll-out.
Making a meter smart usually requires that meter to be changed.
For larger consumers of gas it is not always necessary to replace a meter in order to achieve smartness. A ‘dumb’ meter can be ‘smarted’ by retrofitting it with communications capability and this is a less expensive option, for comparable specification. This is possible where a gas meter provides a ’pulse’. This is attractive option as the gas pipe is left intact and a lower skill level is needed to fit the device (logger). One caveat is that with larger gas meters the retrofitted device must be ATEX approved i.e. intrinsically safe.
The UK government believes apart from reducing carbon emissions we could all save around 5% of our energy use.
In reality not one kWh of energy or gram of carbon will be saved by installing smart meters alone - it is only when consumers are given the information necessary that they will modify their consumption patterns that the energy efficiency goals of smart metering will be met.
We at Gazprom Marketing & Trading are fully engaged with the programme and we want to help consumers better manage their energy and reduce their carbon emissions.
Our belief is such that we have now formed a dedicated company called Gazprom Global Energy Solutions (GGES). Our aim is to offer Smart Metering and innovated energy saving solutions to any consumer. This is a new venture and has already hit the ground running with clients making substantial savings.
In future blogs I will keep you informed of our progress.
Hot off the press
Gazprom Global Energy Solution has been awarded the Smart Meter Data Management & Solutions Award 2011 at the European Smart Metering Awards. The European Smart Metering Awards recognises excellence in Smart Metering and acknowledges those that are playing a defining role in moving the AMR industry forward.
We are proud to win this award as we are the new kids on the block and it is a great accolade to be recognised by an independent panel of Industry experts from across Europe.
We won the award after fighting off competition from a number of larger more established organisations.
The award is glass trophy than now takes pride of place in our Board room, polished daily by the adoring admires and twinkling in the light from a high efficiency LED spot light.
Having won the award, we are not sitting on our laurels and we continue to invest in the business to innovate new products and services, many of which are about to hit the streets, to add benefit to our clients.
In winning the award I would like to congratulate the team and say a special thank you to our clients and everyone who has contributed to this success.