Could a smart meter save you money and help you manage your household budget?

As your Distribution Network Operator we have a vital role to play by making the best use of the information provided by smart meters.

In the future, information from your smart meter will help us improve our services to you, for example a during power cut and voltage enquiry.

Ultimately the smart data will also help us better manage our network and the investment decisions we make to deliver an efficient low carbon reliable electricity network for the region.

The visibility of the power flows on our network that smart meters will provide is a vital tool to ensure we operate an efficient and flexible system of electricity, connect low carbon technologies and make informed investment decisions. The near real-time information that smart meters can send us will help deliver an improved service to you. Smart meters can send automatic alerts when there is a power cut or problems with the voltage. These alerts mean our teams will be able to respond and resolve issues more quickly.

Smart meters will

• reduce network reinforcement costs, lowering bills,
• power cut alerts to enable our quick response and restoration,
• increase our understanding of energy use as we transition to a Distribution System Operator (DSO),
• improve our power cut notification system enabling our quick response, and
• enable us to check if a problem reported by a customer is an issue on our network or a fault with the internal installation.

We will only access and use the data provided by smart meters to fulfil our regulatory duties and deliver improvements to our network.

Ofgem, the industry regulator, has approved our Data Privacy Plan to access half-hourly electricity consumption data in an aggregated format. We will collect and aggregate half-hourly consumption data on a regular basis for sections of our low voltage network and will not store individual customers half-hourly consumption data unless we have express permission to do so.