The UK stands on the brink of one of the biggest changes to affect the energy market since British Gas converted all the nation's homes to natural gas in the 1970s. It is a change that will affect every energy consumer. The plan is for all UK homes to have smart meters by 2020. With the new government this date could be earlier.

Smart meters are intended to help the government meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets of at least 34% by 2020 by providing key price signals At the same time enabling consumers to sell locally generate energy back to the grid A key part of the justification for smart metering is the link to smart grid technology and demand side management. These benefits will become particularly poignant if the trend in energy prices increase by a factor of four over the next 10 years as some analyst now predict. Unlike electricity, gas cannot generated from wind and solar by the consumer but it can be stored. As a consequence many of the benefits declared for domestic electricity smart meters and smart grid do not apply to gas.

Much of the debate has been focused on the domestic benefits of smart. When looking at gas, particularly larger consumers, the issues and benefits are very different.

Ahead of the mass domestic rollout, large consumers are already using ‘Smart Technology, although it is not called Smart but more generally AMR (automated meter reading). Such technology when linked to the Internet provides a powerful solution to access accurate daily flow and load profile consumption data. This high resolution data enables a business, to better understand consumption and manage energy cost. Better data is crucial in a volatility and dynamic energy market. At the same time business are subject to increasing legislative requirements and the environmental pressure.

One such piece of legislation is the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), a new government-backed legislative carbon emissions trading scheme that came into effect on 1st April. The CRC is a mandatory climate change and energy saving scheme in the U.K. Organisations that use a certain amount of electricity will be obliged to participate in the scheme and monitor their emissions. They will have to buy allowances from the government for each tonne of CO2 they emit, creating a significant incentive for organisations to reduce their emissions and in turn saving money by not wasting energy. At the moment only larger business are affected by the CRC. However, as energy becomes more expensive and the drive to reduce emissions intensifies the net will spread wider with more smaller businesses affected. Only with AMR can a business be in control of the true facts about their energy consumption. Therefore acting sooner will provide valuable experience and information for when all businesses are affected.

Gazprom Global Energy Solutions are perfectly placed to assist companies in the design, development, installation, monitoring and energy management consultancy, being one of only a handful of AMR companies in the UK to offer a completed end-to-end solution for businesses, and now the second largest AMR provider in the UK.

Contacts for further information:

Alan Jones, Technical Director
alan.jones@gazprom-mt.com