2013 49 Winter Wiring Matters Smart Measures

8/13/2019 2013 49 Winter Wiring Matters Smart Measures

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/2013-49-winter-wiring-matters-smart-measures 1/48 | WINTER 2013 | IET WIRING MATTERS | WWW.THEIET.ORG/WM

IN MAY 2013 the UK governmentannounced that the introduction ofmore than 50 million smart metersacross the nation was to be delayedby just over a year. At the time,the Department of Energy andClimate Change (DECC), whichis the government organisationresponsible for the roll-out of themeters, stated that communicationsand energy industries neededmore time to design, build, and test

systems to ensure the programme was a success. Most industry playersdoubtless breathed a sigh of relief.

As Lawrence Slade, chief operatingofficer from industry trade association,Energy UK, puts it: “This has givenindustry more time; fitting some 50 to

60 million meters is not something youcan do overnight, so the extra time wasalways going to be welcome.”

Mass roll-out is now scheduled to startin Autumn 2015, which, asserts Slade,gives the entire sector precious extramonths to ensure each part of thesupply chain is fully functioning.

“[We] can now make sure the datacommunications companies are set upand all end-to-end systems testing is inplace,” he says. “Manufacturers can

make sure they are happy with meterspecifications, suppliers can ensureplans for installer recruitment are inplace and we can start building upconsumer confidence much more.”

But extra time or not, the realityis installing more than 50 million

smart meters in homes and smallbusinesses across the nation isa massive logistical endeavour,riddled with challenges. Consumerconfidence is a primary hurdle.

Cost worriesSo what exactly is the consumergetting? In terms of devices, atypical home or small business willbe installed with a smart meterthat comprises an electricity meter

and a gas meter. For the domesticconsumer, the smart meter comes with an in-home display that providesnear real-time feedback on energyusage and its cost. This informationshould help the user better manageenergy use and save money on bills.

WiringFeature #49

SMARTMEASURES

As the roll-out of smart meters across

the UK gathers momentum, will industry

head off some serious show-stoppers?By Rebecca Pool


http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/2013-49-winter-wiring-matters-smart-measures 2/4 WWW.THEIET.ORG/WM | IET WIRING MATTERS | WINTER 2013 | 9

Within the home, the smart meterand in-home display are wirelesslyinterconnected via a smart meteringhome area network (SM HAN) tothe home’s central communicationshub. If a home generates its ownelectricity, for example via solarpanels, the generation meter thatmeasures energy produced will alsobe connected to the SM HAN. And intime, consumer devices such as hot- water storage, fridges, freezers and

washing machines will also connectto the SM HAN so the smart meter canprovide energy data on these devices.

The home’s central communicationshub will wirelessly transmit the energydata from the home, across a regionalmobile network, or Wider Area Network

(WAN), to the energy supplier. As DECChighlights, providing suppliers withaccurate data for billing in this wayremoves the need for a meter reader to visit the premises and brings an end toestimated billing. People will only bebilled for the energy they use, themeters can be switched betweenpre-payment or credit mode, andconsumers will have easier access tobetter deals from different suppliers.

Data privacyFor its part, DECC assures consumer

privacy over data and has establisheda programme to boost consumerunderstanding over how meters work. The government organisationestimates the installation of smartmeters over the next twenty years willcost £12.1bn and provide £18.6bnin benefits. It also expects typicalconsumer consumption will dropby 2 per cent, a figure describedas conservative by UK electricityand gas regulator Ofgem.

But as the smart meter roll-outgathers momentum, unease over theprogramme is surfacing. A primary

concern is upfront cost. UK governmentprojects the cost of smart electricitymeters to be around £43, with smart gasmeters coming in at £56 and displaysat £15. Given this and roll-out costs,it predicts that come 2015, bills willincrease by £7 a year for the averagedual-fuel customer in the short term,until the cost of meters is balanced outover time by the lower operating costsfor energy suppliers. But with mediareports contradicting this – for exampleBritish Gas chief executive Chris Westonis reported to have said energy billscould rise by around £50 per annum

– consumer tensions could rise.“It is not yet clear how easy it’s going

to be to get meters installed, and I don’tthink it’s at all clear how many visits onaverage it’s going to take to install ameter,” says Dr Martyn Thomas, chair ofthe IT policy panel at The IET. “This hasa big implication on cost, and at the endof the day its going to be the consumer who carries all those costs, not theshareholders.”

Consumer refusal And then there’s the tricky question of whether the consumer actually says

yes to having a smart meter. Accordingto Ofgem, the onus is on suppliersto take all reasonable steps to installsmart meters in every household bythe end of 2020. Is this realistic?

A 2012 DECC survey intopublic attitudes, carried out on

120 respondents, indicated that oncesmart meters and in-home displaysare understood, very few consumersfelt they would turn one down.

But as Thomas asserts: “At themoment it’s not clear that the public will be waiting at their front doors with open arms beckoning inmeter fitters. Even if appointmentsare made, will they be kept?”

Still Energy UK’s Slade does notforesee any problems: “Once we startgetting the benefits out in the open anddebunking some of the risks that have

come out, I think people will startcoming round to the idea that this isactually a good thing.”

John Scott, former technical directorof Ofgem and now director of ChilternPower, believes communications withfuture customers are going to be key tothe acceptance of smart meters.However, he also advocates lookingbeyond upfront costs.

“You need to look further than theimmediate cost of the smart meterbecause all the opportunities andbenefits come from achieving the smartgrid and having informed and educated

customers,” he says. “This is thegame-changer for drawing customersto engage with the energy system.”

As smart meters are rolled out andconsumers become more familiar withhow they operate, Scott highlightshow demand-side management couldconsiderably reduce the strain on thenation’s power grid and reduce energybills. Here, consumers will shift demandfor energy from peak times to periods oflower demand, and crucially supplierscan encourage this load-shifting byenabling tariffs that reward customersfor consuming energy during quiet

times. Indeed, British Gas is alreadytrialling a ‘Free Power Saturdays’tariff for possible launch next year.

“The roll-out of smart meters is justthe beginning of what should be a hugerange of opportunities,” says Scott.“And this active demand side is reallyimportant to the economics of the futuregrid, which is why DECC and Ofgem arepushing hard for smart metering and what it will lead to in terms of demandmanagement.”

But as promising as the vision is,hurdles remain. Take the notion ofdistributed storage, whereby consumers

may use large home batteries to storethe energy they have generated fromtheir solar panels or other form ofdistributed generation.

If in the future a customer wishes touse some of his or her stored energy,this is simply not possible given today’s>



< wiring, earthing and protectioncircuits. These networks will need aconsiderable upgrade to recognise suchoff-grid operation, and Scott is adamantthe industry should be looking at issuessuch as this now.

SpecificationsBut while keeping an eye on the futuresmart grid is key, right now many inthe industry are still grappling with thefirst wave of smart-meter specifications,and other teething problems. In April 2012, DECC released the Smart

Metering Equipment TechnicalSpecifications – SMETS1 – that detailedhow equipment should be deployedduring the Foundation phase of smart-meter roll-out. These specificationsincluded a host of technical detail,but gaps existed, namely withcommunications network interfacestandards and security architecture.

DECC has since issued SMETS2, which provides more detail, butstill concerns are rife, especiallyover future-proofing the first waveof smart meters. “Ideally you’d want to design the system in much

more detail before starting to installequipment,” says Thomas. “The IEThas been saying for five years nowthat given the smarter grid will deliverthe benefits, running ahead of thegrid architecture and design withmeter specifications is a mistake.”

“If I was running this programme, thisisn’t where I would want to be,” he adds.

“Too many of these difficulties havecome about because of the politicalpressure on timescales. The politicaltimetable has been allowed to dominateover the engineering realities.”

Meanwhile John Scott harboursadditional concerns over the energymarket model for the nation’s smartmetering roll-out. Unlike mostother European countries, networkoperators are not responsible formetering services. Instead, to boostmarket competition, the governmenthas concluded that energy suppliers

should hold the contract with theconsumer and be responsible forsmart-meter roll-out, an arrangementknown as the Supplier Hub model.

“When you look at the smarternetwork where, for example,distribution companies wish toaccess demand side services, youhave to ask is this model rightfor the future?,” he says. “Contact with the customer will becomeenormously more rich and manymore opportunities exist than justreading meters and paying bills.”

One option would be to hand

responsibility over to networkoperators, but as Scott highlights, tomake such a change is hardly trivial.“People are reluctant to raise this as it would bring such a huge upheaval,” headds. “But I do think the Supplier Hubmodel needs a fresh look.”

But amid concerns, other industryplayers remain upbeat. As Energy UK’s>

The programme of roll-out for smartmeters is currently in the second ofthree phases, the foundation stage.The first ‘policy design’ phase ran from July 2010 to March 2011 and outlinedthe proposed design requirementsfor the different elements of thesmart metering system, such as the

minimum information that should bedisplayed on the in-home display.The second, foundation, phase

began in March 2011, and involvesDECC working with industry andconsumer groups to prepare for massroll-out. During this phase, industry isbuilding and testing systems withsuppliers gaining experience byinstalling the first smart meters; manythousands will be installed. Also, theData and Communications Companyhas been set up, encompassing the keyplayers to provide smart meteringdata and communications services

nationwide. And finally, the last phase, massroll-out, is scheduled to start in late2015 and finish by the end of 2020.During this time energy suppliers willbe responsible for replacing over53 million gas and electricity meters.This will involve visits to 30 millionhomes and small businesses.

FACT BOX

ROLL-OUT PROGRAMME

Smart MeteringSystem

In homedisplay

Smart meterelectricity

Smart meterGas

Commshub

Interfaces to otherconsumer devices Generation

Meter(S)Direct Load

Control

WANSmart MeteringHome Area Network

SM HAN

The Smart Metering Home Area Network wirelessly

connects equipmentincluding meters, the

communications hub andin-home display

Ofgem has approved aninstallation code of practice,

outlining how suppliers shouldgive a practical demonstration ofan installed meter to a customer

and should not conduct sales andmarketing pitches when

installing a meter. [British Gas]



< Lawrence Slade highlights,the energy suppliers have beenheavily involved with the designand content of smart meteringspecifications. “We’re prettycomfortable with this,” he says.

And Slade is confident the first,foundation-phase meters willbe future-proof. “We’re working with manufacturers to make sureeveryone is very clear about howa meter that is being put on a wall will be interoperable and how themarket will work as the roll-out

phase progresses,” he adds.

The highest hurdle?But specifications and future-proofing aside, perhaps the mosttroubling issue has yet to betruly tackled: the security of datacollected by smart meters andtransmitted to energy suppliers.

Many in the IT industry areconcerned that, for example,unscrupulous consumers couldcommit fraud by manipulating thedata captured by the meter, or ahacker could compromise a smart

meter to find out a home owner’sminimum energy usage and learn when they are most likely to be out.

But an even greater threat hasemerged. As Professor Ross Andersonfrom UK-based Cambridge Universityrevealed in 2010: “Smart meterscontain a remote ‘off’ switch... toensure that customers who defaulton their payments can be switched

remotely to a pre-pay tariff. This‘off’ switch also creates informationsecurity problems of a kind andon a scale that energy companieshave not had to face before.”

The worry is that a ‘cyber-attacker’ could hack through anetwork’s security layers and, as Anderson explains, send a commandto millions of homes instructingmeters to permanently switch offthe supply. Or as Scott points out:“If you sent an instruction to openthe switches of a large number of

meters, you’d disconnect a hugeamount of load, which would probablydestabilise the British grid.”

These concerns have been takenseriously, with government and relevantenergy groups working with CESG – Communications Electronics SecurityGroup – the UK government’s authorityon the security of communications andelectronic data to tackle issues. And while measures are underway to makesure the end-to-end security model isrobust, DECC has yet to formalise asecurity specification.

At the time of writing the organisation

declined to answer Wiring Matters’ questions on the security of smartmeters and other issues, and manyindustry players remain uneasy.

“Your implementation needsto be robust enough so you aresecure against even a nation-stateusing serious amounts of resourceto break through security,” saysThomas. “However, there is no precisestatement of what the propertiesof the [security] architecture are...and then there’s the question of whether a security architecture would get implemented properly.”

“This is so important and sopotentially critical that to rely oninformal specification rather thancarrying out a proof is irresponsible,”he adds. “It’s a serious threat and weneed to get it right.”

Given the grave securityconcerns, and other issues facingthe smart meter programme, is atimely roll-out likely? Thomas hasdoubts and outlines how projectsof this scale tend to over-run.

In August 2013, the DECC awardedits multi-million pound contractsto the companies that are tocoordinate the communicationsand services networks linking theUK’s 53 million smart meters withthe business systems of energysuppliers, network operators andenergy service companies.

The entire programme encompassesnumerous data and services

communications organisations, allof which are part of the so-calledData and Communications Company(DCC). UK-based business processmanagement organisation, Capita,has been nominated the DCCLicensee to oversee all operations while IT systems consultancy CGI ITUK is to develop and operate the ITsystem that controls the movement ofmessages to and from smart meters.Meanwhile UK-based utility andenvironment consultancy, Gemserv,is to maintain and update industrycodes for the use of smart meters.

Crucially, Telefónica UK, willprovide the communications networkfor transmitting data from smartmeters to energy companies in thecentral and southern part of the UK. It will use its existing cellular network,branded O2, supplementing this with smaller wireless networks –called mesh networks – to connectmeters in regions that don’thave O2 mobile coverage.

At the same time, UKcommunications company Arqiva will provide the communicationsnetwork in northern England and

Scotland. The company will use along-range radio communicationsnetwork, developed by USsmart meter communicationscompany, Sensus Technology.

FACT BOX

SUCCESSFUL BIDDERS

A smart meter from EVBEnergie, Germany. As well asautomatic meter reading, thedevice uses two waycommunications to reduceload and connect/ reconnectremotely. [EVB Energy Ltd]

“It’s not yet clear that the roll-out can be sensibly completed onthe time-scales that government isasking for,” he says. “But I think thegovernment will be flexible in theface of reality as it approaches.”

However, Scott is more optimistic thenecessary smart-meter infrastructure

can be put in place to meet roll-outdeadlines. “This is a huge logistics taskbut with good project management,adequate resources and so on,” he says.“The conversion to natural gas involved visiting every house and we did thatpretty effectively, so why not?” *

2013 49 Winter Wiring Matters Smart Measures

Documents