Where there’s a will…

Is there the political will – or the technology – to bring smart metering to water? Utility Week and Sensus bought together industry leaders to discuss the challenges of smart metering.

As the energy market prepares for the national rollout of smart meters to begin in 2015, some ask whether water is being left behind.

Metering is still far from universal in the water sector, so what challenges and opportunities does smart metering present for water companies? Utility Week gathered industry experts for a roundtable discussion, held in association with Sensus at London’s Soho Hotel in June.

Independent consultant and Society of British Water and Wastewater Industries (SBWWI) smart metering chair Dene Marshallsay opened the session by outlining the challenges to smart metering. It is difficult to make the business case for smart metering, he said, because it can be difficult to prove a higher return on investment than dumb metering.

It is also politically sensitive: smart metering can lead to inequality, because it gives greater control to those predisposed to understand and change their water use.

But perhaps the greatest obstacle to the widespread adoption of smart metering for water is the lack of political will or leadership – and here there is a direct contrast with energy.

The European Union has mandated the rollout of smart meters in a bid to cut energy use, and the UK government has embraced the agenda. Although the rollout has not been without its delays and difficulties, it is very clearly a priority. Not so in water, where the industry’s leaders have all but missed the opportunity to piggyback on the energy rollout.

Indeed, the question of who should be leading the rollout of water meters is itself not fully resolved. The Smart Meter Advisory Group – which consisted of  the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Environment Agency, water companies, meter suppliers and customer groups – was disbanded in 2013.

Anna Walker, in her 2011 review of the sector, named Ofwat as the proper leader on marketing, but the regulator has not wholeheartedly embraced this agenda. Metering policy is left to individual companies to decide, and only those companies in water-stressed areas have the right to compulsorily meter their customers.

However, there have been a small number of trials of smart meter technology. One example is at Thames Water, where the UK’s largest water company kicked off a 15-year programme to roll out smart meters earlier this year. Thames Water’s head of metering Steve Plumb told delegates about the experience of trailing 6,000 meters on two fixed networks. “Both worked,” he said. “The business case does stand up.”

As Plumb outlined, Thames’ experience has shown that people use on average 12 per cent less water with a smart meter, compared with 10 per cent less with an AMR meter, or eight per cent less with a dumb meter.

But how is a smart meter defined? That was one of the key questions delegates identified. After some discussion around the table, the broad consensus was that a smart meter is a meter that transmits consumption data in real time, or as close to real time as possible. There was some disagreement as to just how much scope there was in this definition.

A meter’s ability to do this is determined by its battery life, as each transmission requires power. While this is simple for electricity meters, meters for other services, which are not connected to the power supply, require battery power and are more problematic.

Gas meters, for example, generally transmit data every 15 minutes, and a number of delegates believed this was perfectly adequate to provide customers with actionable insight into their gas use.

However, other delegates believed that real time data was key, citing research which shows that customers behave differently with real time data.

However frequent the data transmissions, the key for water companies is turning the data into information that helps it better understand its customers. As one delegate said: “You’ve got to be able to do something interesting with the data – granular data allows you to interact differently with your customers.”

There are questions about who owns the data from smart meters – the customer or the utility providers. In the energy smart meter rollout, it has been decided that customers retain ownership of their data, but it is not yet clear whether the same rules would apply in water.

It may be that water companies’ legitimate, non-sales-related uses for the data – for network management and leakage control, for example – could exempt them from the data legislation that applies to energy companies.

It may be that when businesses are separated in preparation for the opening of the water market, data could be kept by the wholesale part of the business and not passed to the retail arm.

While the benefits of smart metering, and metering itself, are manifold, take-up is still low and patchy. Why is this? Delegates identified the main reason as the regional imbalance of water supply. While the south suffers from water shortage, the north generally has more than enough water, meaning the imperative for metering is not the same and in many cases the business case is not there. This prevents the creation of a united front on metering.

Moreover, the technology is only just reaching maturity. As one delegate pointed out, the battery life to provide the number of transmissions necessary over a number of years is essential. The relative newness of the technology and different approaches of the water companies means the supply chain is not yet mature.

The next five years will be a key time in the development of metering in the water sector. While trials such as the Thames one test the impact of smart metering, the sector will also be able to watch and learn from the smart metering rollout in energy.

Arqiva has published a white paper demonstrating the benefits smart metering can bring to water businesses. Email smart@arqiva.com for more information or to request a copy.