Metering
SSE's Metering business provides services to most electricity suppliers with customers in central southern England and the north of Scotland and has undertaken a programme of in-sourcing of meter reading operations and meter operator work in other parts of Great Britain to establish a national metering business. It supplies, installs and maintains domestic meters and carries out metering work in the commercial, industrial and generation sectors. It also offers data collection services to the domestic and SME sectors.
Metering performance during 2009/10
In total, SSE owns 3.8 million meters. During 2009/10, it collected:
- 6.8 million electricity readings, up from 6.4 million in the previous year; and
- 3.9 million gas readings, up from 2.6 million.
This increase reflects the fact that SSE has completed the in-sourcing of its meter reading and electricity meter operation services throughout Great Britain, a year ahead of schedule.
Before the in-sourcing was completed, SSE relied on a combination of its own employees in central southern England and the north of Scotland and up to nine external agencies elsewhere in the country to read electricity and gas meters and install and repair electricity meters.
In line with its general preference for services and operations to be carried out in-house, SSE decided to in-source metering services in a programme which started in 2007. This programme has now been completed and, as a result, SSE's metering team now comprises 1,500 directly-employed people working in all parts of Great Britain. In addition to securing annual cost savings of at least £5m, the in-house metering team delivers more reliable metering services, allows more effective management of customer data and creates face-to-face contact between SSE and its customers. It thus helps in the retention of customers.
Longer-term, SSE's Great Britain-wide metering team will be able to support the transition to smart meters which will take place over the next 10 years and will help SSE deploy other energy-related services and products during that time.
Smart metering
Smart metering is an emerging system that enables the quantity and value of electricity and gas used by the customer to be continuously monitored and allows information about its use and cost to be available to the customer and exchanged with the supplier, through two-way electronic communications. All homes in Great Britain are expected to have smart meters by 2020.
Metering priorities in 2010/11 and beyond
The key priorities are:
- maximising the number of bills issued to customers on the basis of an actual - as opposed to estimated - meter reading;
- applying the lessons learned from the EDRP to inform a full roll-out of smart meters throughout the country.
SSE believes that there must be radical changes in the way that energy is produced and consumed and these energy reduction trials, which have used a number of innovative technologies, will assist customers in reducing their energy consumption. It strongly supports smart meters, and the opportunity they provide to help customers cut their energy consumption, while reducing the number of service-based tasks which are largely administrative and reactive in nature, and replacing them with more substantive energy advice, products and services. They have the potential to help transform the relationship between customers and their energy supplier.
