Maintenance

Smart metering gains ground in France and UK

A consortium of four electricity distributors is rolling out Echelon’s smart meter to 90,000 homes in France.

Echelon’s Networked Energy Services (NES) meters allow the amount of electricity produced as well as that consumed to be measured. This allows the meters to be used with renewable microgeneration technologies as well.

One of the distributors in the GAELD consortium, Régie d’électricité de Loos, is using the NES meters to allow householders to sell electricity produced by solar panels back to the utility.

The distributors – GAZELEC, Régie d’électricité de Loos, Energies et services de Creutzwald and Energies et services de Lavaur – expect to start rolling out the new meters over the next few months and complete the installation by 2013.

Meanwhile, first:utility is looking to take on the UK’s ‘big six’ energy suppliers by offering its electricity and gas consumers smart meters as standard.

The company’s smart metering technology takes readings every 30 minutes, allowing first:utility to provide accurate bills and energy consumption information, as well as tips on how to reduce usage.

“It’s all about what happens when consumers are not in the house,” says Mark Daeche, co-founder of the company. “Where money is saved is having better insulation and turning off as many appliances as possible overnight or when out.”

Bills will also show estimated household CO₂ emissions in a bid to encourage consumers to improve the efficiency of their homes and reduce usage. In future, the smart metering technology could also be used to sell microgenerated energy back to the grid.

first:utility already supplies 6000 homes in the UK via its smart meters and is aiming for 25,000-30,000 by the end of 2010, together with 10,000-15,000 businesses, Daeche told Energy Efficiency News.

For further information:
www.echelon.com
www.first-utility.com/residential/residential-products-electricity.htm

Featured company:
Haven Power

07 November 2008

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