Every household in the UK to be smart meter enabled by 2020

The Government has unveiled plans for every home in the UK to be equipped with smart meters by 2020. Some 26 million electricity and 22 million gas maters will need to be fitted by that date at an estimated cost of £7 billion.

The responsibility for this roll out will lie with the energy providers in what some are calling the biggest programme of work since British Gas converted appliances across 17 million homes in the 1970’s.  However, according to the Energy Saving Trust, if everyone in the UK switched to smart metering British householders could save £1.2 billion a year and the equivalent of 7.4 million tones of CO2 emissions, figures already being delivered in mainland Europe.

One of the UK’s smaller energy companies, First Utility, has already installed smart meters in the homes of its 10,000 customers.  The other suppliers are now to follow suit.

Jon Pyke, Chief Strategy Officer, Cordys, stated: “The latest generation of energy meters offers both customers and energy companies major benefits in terms of efficiency, reliability and cost savings.  Smart energy meters can provide real-time information in energy consumption, solve interference issues, improve fraud detection, simplify relocation processes and it is at this level that the joint solution from Cordys and Powel ASA will bring real competitive advantage to the sector.”

An integrated all-in-one solution for meter management, measurement, workflow and reporting for smart energy meters has already been launched in the UK. The solution combines the multi-vendor Powel Meter Management solution with a flexible workflow and orchestration solution from Cordys, a global leader in next generation Business Process Management (BPM).

Under the agreement Powel will add more value to its advanced Smart Metering solutions by embedding Cordys SOA-based Business Process Management platform with centralised control, automated workflow and a high degree of flexibility and scalability into its software suite. With this added functionality, energy companies can automate work processes quickly, monitor activities in real time, and easily integrate legacy systems to create a scalable and highly agile business operations platform.

The platform offers a comprehensive set of business processes, including Meter Management, Meter Data Management, Workflow and Dashboards, with application integration capabilities for CRM, ERP and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). 

Powel is a market leader in Scandinavia in the field of smart metering and measuring data and its software is responsible for controlling and reading more than one million smart energy meters throughout the region.  Currently Powel produces more than 30-meter adapters for the best known brands in the sector and its front end Meter Management solution seamlessly integrates with the most common household smart meters in Europe.

“As demand on Smart Metering infrastructure increase, so does the demand on the business processes that support it,” said Frode Solem, Powel’s VP Smart Metering Solutions. “Combined with the embedded business process management functionality from Cordys, our Smart Metering Suite will enable our customers not only to deploy an advanced Smart Metering infrastructure, but it will also give them the opportunity to design, execute, monitor and change automated business processes quickly and frequently. This will undoubtedly drive real competitive advantage to our customers as the market evolves.”

“Responding to high customer expectations, frequently changing legislation, new compliancy rules, and unforeseen market conditions is all about speed of change and process innovation,” said Jon Pyke, Chief Strategy Officer, Cordys. “The embedded Cordys functionality within Powel’s industry leading Smart Metering solution will enable customers to increase operational efficiency and productivity as well as drive cost savings. We are excited to have been chosen to help Powel bring this offering to the energy sector.”