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As if the implications of the unfolding global financial crisis weren’t bad enough, the Irish economy must also contend with the consequences of a banking system exposed to unprecedented property-related debts. Reflecting on the ongoing crisis, Richard Douthwaite explains why investment in local energy innovation may prove the key to improving Ireland’s economic health
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The announcement in 2007 of the introduction of Smart electricity
metering led to widespread hope that Ireland could set a global example
by empowering consumers to cut electricity use and generate their own
renewable electricity. John Hearne investigates current
progress on the initiative, and discovers signs that Ireland’s approach
to smart metering could represent a missed opportunity.
With the smart metering pilot now underway, doubts are intensifying over the capacity of the project to deliver on its potential, as a demand management tool, as a means of consumer empowerment, as an incentive to microgeneration and most crucially as a means of placing our energy requirements on a more sustainable footing.
The regulator reports that recruitment for the customer behaviour trial of residential electricity consumers began in September and that take up has been ‘positive’. French electronics firm Sagem has been awarded the contract to supply smart metering equipment and systems. The benchmarking period, during which detailed consumption information will be collected from consumers, will run from next July for six months through to December. The second phase of the trial will run throughout 2010, during which ‘smart metering initiatives’ will be introduced and the resulting impact on consumer behaviour will be measured. Technology testing will also be carried out during this phase. Once the pilot is concluded, the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) will carry out a cost/benefit analysis to evaluate the results and conclude on the business case for a full rollout, and crucially, the required functionality to support it.
The concern in the industry is that if the pilot does not road-test a sufficiently broad functionality, the subsequent cost/benefit analysis will misfire, delivering a national rollout that will fall far short of its potential. Despite repeated attempts by Construct Ireland to secure a detailed technical specification (as would have been provided to the companies which tendered for the pilot), neither the regulator, the Department of Communications, Energy and National Resources or ESB Networks were willing to disclose it. ESB Networks (ESBN) did however provide a ‘Technical Briefing Note on Smart Metering’ which does offer some insight into the direction in which the project is going.
Demand management
According to the Department of Energy, demand management of electricity is key to the success of the smart metering project. In response to questions submitted by Construct Ireland, the department said: “These meters will enable consumers to manage their electricity usage more efficiently, thereby cutting down on costs and reducing carbon emissions. Shifting demand away from peak time reduces the need for additional peaking plant, which tend to use high carbon fuels.” When launching the pilot in September, the energy regulator Dermot Nolan said that smart metering should lead to significant savings as well as “empowering consumers to have more information and control about their energy consumption”. In the specification however, the primary vehicle of consumer empowerment is the facility to introduce multiple tariffs, which will be modulated to drive use away from peak times. Mirroring the pricing structure in the pool, the smart metering system will be set up to capture 48 half-hourly reads every day, downloaded once a day from the meter to ESB Networks’ IT system. “Electricity suppliers can then use this highly granular data to bill customers on a range of tariffs.” Less emphasis is placed on empowering consumers through the provision of information, and none whatsoever, despite the regulator’s use of the word, on consumer control.
Provision of information is vital, and is referred to in the technical briefing document: “In the pilot ESB Networks in response to the requirements of the CER and industry will be installing low power radio chips in some of the user trial meters to communicate with a compatible in-home display. The in-home display will receive consumption data from the meter.”
The impact on consumer behavior of existing monitoring technology is well documented. “Without an electrician,” says sustainable design consultant Jay Stuart of DW EcoCo, “you can attach an electricity monitor onto the main cable of your electricity meter and it sends a readout in your kitchen showing your real time current consumption; a bit like a speedometer. The research shows that where it’s been installed, on average electricity consumption is reduced by 15%.” We don’t yet know how much real-time information will be available to households through the consumer behavior section of the pilot. Will the ‘consumption data’ to be provided by the ‘in-house display’ include, for example cost data, as opposed to less-compelling kWh data?
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