Making the link

Energy suppliers have granted Electralink access to data it has historically only transferred. Mathew Beech reports on Electralink's plans to use it for the good of the smart meter rollout

Smart meters are coming. Even with the delay announced earlier in the year by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), by the end of 2020 more than 95 per cent of homes in the UK will have had one installed.

This is seen by the industry as a big opportunity to restore public confidence. “You’ve got to go in and do it once, do it right, and make sure the customer is happy,” says Gavin Jones, business development director at Electralink.

Jones believes that Electralink – a company set up by the electricity distribution network operators (DNOs) in 1998 to transfer data between the companies operating in the deregulated UK electricity industry – can play a vital role in ensuring the smart meter rollout runs as smoothly as possible.

When the mass rollout of smart meters starts in earnest in 2015, there is a raft of potential unknowns installers could face.

Where are the dumb meters located? What if an engineer cannot access them or finds that emergency remedial work needs to take place? What other hidden problems are going to be unearthed? “One way we can help is identifying where there are a high number of problem locations, or difficulties with gaining access to the meters,” says Jones.

This is because, as shown in the graph, Electralink has data on where existing meters are installed (among a host of other information), because they have been logged by a meter reader on previous visits. So if you know there is restricted access to a meter – for example, because of a tree growing in front of the meter box – engineers can take the necessary tools to remove the dumb meter and fit the smart replacement.

“Those kinds of insights ahead of time can help us do things more efficiently. It might be that some suppliers have this information to hand and are already using it,” says Jones. “It might be that for other suppliers, we’re able to find that information and present it and get it to them cheaper and more effectively than they can themselves from their own systems.

“This is industry seeking to help itself out. It’s the entire industry giving us the right to use this data to help industry as a whole.”

This is the key. Electralink has now been granted access to data that it previously just transferred securely for the industry, and is offering all the suppliers the opportunity to view it and have analytics run over it to help them understand any potential problems they will face in the rollout.

“Electralink has worked closely with the users of the Data Transfer Service (DTS), and put in place the appropriate safeguards, to allow for the first time market participant access to industry-wide data,” says Stuart Lacey, chief executive of Electralink.

“By aggregating the millions of messages that cross the DTS every month we have created a unique data set that will assist suppliers to optimise their smart meter deployments,” says Lacey.

It is not just the energy suppliers and their engineers that are set to benefit from this use of data. The DNOs also stand to benefit. It is thought the mass rollout of smart meters could lead to a large number of interventions, which for each DNO could, it is predicted, be 32 per cent higher than the number of low-voltage faults a DNO would typically deal with each year.

UK Power Networks (UKPN) is expecting to deal with 232,000 incidents, and for there to be more than 850,000 nationally during the smart meter rollout. “The big questions for network operators is how many will there be, what type of complexity, when will they occur, and crucially, what level of resources will we need for this to be completed?” says Brian Stratton, head of smart metering at UKPN.

He adds that, where any issues are found, homeowners face a minimum of three visits from a combination of the energy supplier, the meter operator and the DNO to install a smart meter.

“Apart from the cost implications of this, there could be significant disruption to customers as well, so this has the potential to generate considerable customer disquiet and put a shadow over the entire smart meter programme,” says Stratton. “It is time to gather as much information and intelligence as possible to solve the difficult problems now.”

Clearly, Electralink can help with that. In fact, energy companies have given it the right to hold on to data for up to three years. “They believe there’s value in that information, so we will be able to do better tailored trend analysis and understand more about the history of what’s going on,” says business development manager Jones.

“There are some bits of information that are repeated and have more credence than if they are just a one-off. The longer you’ve got it, the more valuable and more interesting it becomes.”

He acknowledges that while at the start of the rollout the data held by Electralink can be helpful for all suppliers, as the programme continues the larger companies may decide to go on their own. “When we come to 2019 when we’re 94 per cent coverage – or whatever it may be – if you’re a big supplier you may have enough data to say “we know what’s going on”,” Jones says.

He is convinced this data will be “really helpful” for the smaller suppliers, who are likely to start installing smart meters later in the programme and who do not have a large customer base to assess their own data. However, he is keen to reiterate that the services and the data from Electralink are available to all suppliers, DNOs and anyone else interested or involved in the smart meter programme.

Getting the smart meter rollout completed as cost efficiently and as smoothly as possible is what the suppliers want, the DNOs want, and what Decc wants. Most importantly, that would give consumers what they want: a quick, smooth rollout that does not waste taxpayers’ money.

“This is a numbers game”, says Jones. “This is 50 million houses, so you’ve got to be really efficient. “It will take a lot of planning but it isn’t going to be easy.”

This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 2nd August July 2013.

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