Friday, 22 May 2009
Smart meters lead to powerful communication challenges
As well as putting meter readers out of work, the government’s plans to install smart meters to remotely monitor every household’s gas and electricity use by 2020 may hit other snags.
Neither Whitehall mandarins nor the utility companies have yet outlined how they plan to pull off this ambitious project, preferring to muse on the potential reduction in the average household’s bills and national carbon footprint.
Smart metering works by replacing existing meters with equivalent devices that are able to transmit data about customer use to a central office via a communications network.
That network can be wired or wireless. Existing schemes use cellular GPRS and SMS communications, for example, which is unlucky for those living in areas with no reliable mobile phone signal.
Network transmission based on Wi-Fi, WiMax and other licensed and unlicensed radio wavebands is being explored, and there are wired alternatives such as analogue modems (dial-up over PSTN), broadband, and power line communication (PLC) where the electricity supply cable carries data.
Electricity supplier First Utility, which says it has already provided smart meters to more than 10,000 households in London, uses PLC, GPRS, SMS, PSTN and low-power radio (pagers).
