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Smart metering will be “revolutionary” for the water sector, Thames Water chief financial officer Stuart Siddall has said.
“In technology terms, we’ve installed our first 21,000 smart meters in our progressive metering programme,” he told delegates at Water UK’s City Conference in London. “Three thousand of those are now in an area where we’re now collecting the data, and I can only say that the data we’re receiving from that is nothing short of revolutionary.”
“We go and see our engineers and they’re excited by the information they’re getting and the way that they are going to be able to run the networks differently with the information they’re going to get from something like smart metering,” he added.
Thames began its industry-first rollout of smart meters in February 2014, with the aim of metering all 3.3 million properties it supplies water to.
The large programme of work will take years to complete, with a smart meter for every Thames customer delivered over three AMP periods at a cost of £300 million.
Beginning in London – where water resources are tightest – the company is currently working borough-by-borough, before starting work in the Thames Valley from 2020.
Thames has claimed its metered customers generally use 12 per cent less water than those who are unmetered. The meters connect to a wireless networks so customers can view their water consumption online at any time.
The meters also provide Thames with a more detailed understanding of where water is being used and in what quantities across its network – improving its ability to find and fix leaks.
The energy industry is currently readying itself for the rollout of smart meters due to begin in earnest this year, with more than 50 million due to be fitted into houses across the UK by the end of 2020.
However, some parties in the energy sector have expressed concern over the plan. Electricity North West chief executive Steve Johnson warned that the complexity of it is “huge” and “has a huge capacity to destroy trust and confidence”, and chief ombudsman Lewis Shand Smith said it is going to be a “very rough ride between now and the end of the rollout”.
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