Anatomy of smart metering

19/05/09

Following the DECC announcement on UK smart metering, this two part feature from Electronics Weekly interviews Mark England, Sentec MD, covering design issues and the rationale for smart metering in the UK.

In the first article - 'Smart metering - an Electronics Weekly guide', Mark helps to explain what a smart meter is and what the benefits are.

Keeping power grids running during power troughs in order to have enough power to meet demand at peak times is inefficient. Finding a way of evening out power demands - for example by persuading consumers to move some of their daytime use to night-time hours - will result in more efficient energy usage, and less CO₂ emissions.

"A lot of smart meter ideas are to encourage consumers by offering different tariffs at different times - like Economy 7 on steroids," Mark explains. A smart meter is a meter with two-way communications and a consumer display. It displays consumption in lots of different ways, including demonstrating to consumers that it really is cheaper to run appliances at night - which providing the right tariffs are available will result in some consumers altering their behavior and shifting to night-time usage.

The second article - 'Anatomy of a Smart Meter' looks at more advanced applications of smart meters, including in smart grids, where the smart meter acts as a hub for a home network where non-time-critical loads are turned off briefly during demand surges. This article also looks at the accuracy and implementation of smart meters.