Smart Meters Bill (Second sitting)

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd Sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Kerr]

Q I will be brief. My question is about engagement and awareness. We are talking about this smart meter roll-out in the context of the fourth industrial revolution and about what should be a centrepiece of national infrastructure renewal in that revolution. My concern is that there is not a lot of public awareness of the total picture of smart meters in the context of the smart grid and the smart economy. I do not think that there is a lot, but what is your experience? Is enough being done to raise awareness? What more can be done?

Sacha Deshmukh: You raise a good point. I am very enthusiastic about the smart British future. Consumer experience in terms of public engagement, particularly with nationally led projects, always teaches you to be very balanced and clear about the benefits available now, what they are building towards, when they will be available and the reality of that. It is about wanting to ensure that people can continue to trust the promise. Not least, all our communications through different channels are regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority, the Committee of Advertising Practice, the broadcast codes and so on. We need to be accurate in the promise to consumers today and give accurate expectations, but I very much take on board what you say.

For a number of our areas of activity, talking about why this matters for the bigger picture will be increasingly important. A consumer spoke to me recently in a focus group. Apropos of nothing, without any information, they essentially summed up an entire sustainable, reliable energy vision that really was a 60 to 100-page BEIS document. They got it and summed it up instantly, so you are right that the consumer appetite is strong. We just need to balance that with the accuracy of the promise to the consumer in the immediate term as well.

Dhara Vyas: I agree with Sacha. The only thing I would add is that I think we have to remember that not all consumers will either want, or be able to, engage. Customers and consumers need varying levels of support to engage with the benefit of not just smart meters but, as you say, the whole wider agenda. Smart meters may be the first internet-enabled thing in the home and it is really important that all consumers are supported to interact with it as much as they want to, or might not want to. There are always going to be some consumers who don’t want to and they should not be penalised for that.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

Q My question follows on from that. In terms of your own organisation, when does your contract run out for what you are doing?

Sacha Deshmukh: Our organisation exists to support the roll-out, so our lifespan will be that of the roll-out.

[Clive Lewis]

Q Okay. Obviously, there are provisions in the Bill to extend the Secretary of State’s powers until 2023. Do you feel there is enough provision in the Bill beyond initial roll-out? It is very possible that many people will have this box on their wall at some point in the near future. There are 250 SMETS 2 and more SMETS 1. What is to stop those from being just boxes on a large number of people’s walls that bleep at them every so often? Where is the process for people to be able to engage past 2020, 2023, to be able to get the most from these boxes? No doubt the technology will develop; at the moment it is simply that a little figure will tell you how much energy you are using at the right time, and that will be swapped between you and the energy supplier. What about when people want to engage in some complicated manoeuvring on their SMETS 2 box—where will they get the support for that? It feels to me at the moment that you get a very complex box on your wall that can do lots of magical things, but who is going to explain that to you—who is going to support you in that process?

Sacha Deshmukh: During the lifespan of the roll-out, clearly supporter behaviour changes; that is an important part of our responsibilities. I am very excited that our organisation’s targets for next year have been set so that we will really be pushing in this area; there are enough consumers who now have the product for us to really help their behaviour, and it makes sense to do so. Looking forward—though you might say that I am speaking against my own interests and my own organisation—it is always important not to replicate bodies when other bodies exist that already serve consumers in different ways. It was absolutely right, given the scale and intensity of the roll-out, for there to be a body to engage around the roll-out. However, there are other organisations, such as the Energy Saving Trust, Citizens Advice and others. Liverpool John Moores University is looking into what could be done to support people with dementia using this technology. The Energy Saving Trust is looking into how the data could be used. I think that a plethora of organisations could best support consumers, alongside greater automation in the future. It may be counter to my interests not to argue intensively that it must be us; but I think that as this roll-out reaches its conclusions and you have the whole country taking that step forward, people should be looking at which organisations are most relevant to people’s lives. They should support the use of this service and create new services for consumers provided by the organisations that they recognise, rather than necessarily having a different body for all time to come.

Dhara Vyas: I agree with Sacha. The SMETS 2 meter is not the key thing here; it is about what it enables and what access to information via the DCC enables. Whether it is healthcare, peer-to-peer selling or generating of energy, there will be a market around it. We are beginning to think through the regulatory impacts of that and the consumer journey as well. How messy will it be to unpick who to go to for what support and help? Will that fall under the auspices of Ofgem, or a different consumer protection body? It is a really exciting future. Potentially it could be messy—if something were to go wrong for a consumer, how would we unpick those problems? The governance and regulation of these future disruptive technologies also needs to be thought through quite carefully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

That is what I do not know. That is why I am asking the question.

[Clive Lewis]

Q In terms of the versatility of the smart metering data that you touched on, Richard, it was quite sobering to hear you say that that has never worked for you. We can probably quite accurately talk to suppliers about the build and so on, but I am thinking of all the other things, such as the heating being attached to movement sensors so that it goes off when you leave the house and, by talking to your phone, switches back on when you are due to arrive back in 15 minutes. Google can do that already.

Obviously, the cheapest and greenest energy is the energy that we do not use, so that is fantastic on the demand side, which we do not focus on enough in this country. You are saying that that is not really working. I wonder whether this legislation is the place where this will happen. Is there anything in this legislation that you feel is sufficient to give you encouragement that that will happen in the future, or are there holes in it that mean that those data and that potential will never be realised?

Dr Richard Fitton: There is nothing in the Bill that would cover that element. There is guidance around the periphery of the Bill and the licensing Acts and things like that, but there is nothing specific.

[Clive Lewis]

Q Does it need it?

Dr Richard Fitton: The consumer needs a route to access their real time data from the home area network. That needs a procedure to be put in place because that is the keystone.

Dr Sarah Darby: I wonder whether we are a little at cross-purposes here, because I am thinking of the in-home display as the way that the customer accesses that information. But I think you are talking about stuff talking to stuff.

Dr Richard Fitton: I am talking about stuff talking to stuff. The home area network—I will not do the thing with the cups—is provided in the smart meter itself that things can attach to. The consumer access device talks to that via a Zigbee principle and says, “Here is your data.” You can stream it, save it, and pass it on to other appliances.

[Clive Lewis]

Q When we talk about something that is at the heart of the demand side of the fourth industrial revolution, I guess you would expect us to be planning some years ahead to be able to make use of emerging technologies. What you seem to be saying at the moment is that this Bill does not do that. It is quite limited in its purview.

Dr Richard Fitton: Technology developers I am working with now are trying to make that work. That is how savings can be brought about. It helps things like grid smoothing and demand-load shift.

Dr Sarah Darby: I would add that it is important to consider stuff talking to people through the display. When people ask for a smart meter, or when they are getting one, the bit they are really interested in—almost always—is the display. The single most powerful reason people have for wanting or appreciating a smart meter is that they get visibility of their energy use.

The knock-on effect from that is also very important in terms of the future energy outlook. For example, no amount of smart technology will insulate your walls for you. There are still a lot of unsmart things that need to be done to our building stock in this country, for example, that the smart revolution will not actually do.

On the other hand, if smart technology can be used to communicate to people to get them thinking more about what can be done, and if it can be combined with advice and guidance so that they have clearer ideas about what options are open to them—if there is support for the metering in that way—a lot can be done to take us forward. I want to emphasise that aspect of it as well, in terms of communication.

Dr Richard Fitton: We are carrying out that type of work with the International Energy Agency—taking in this data and processing it in such a way that building physics can be incorporated with the algorithm so that we can then say, “These buildings are likely to need some type of intervention to make them cheaper, more fuel efficient and more comfortable for the occupant.”

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

Q Dr Darby, in the information you provided you said that it is important to conduct the remaining smart roll-out well rather than do so at speed, and then you gave three main reasons for that. I am not sure whether you were here for the evidence session this morning, but I raised concerns about my own constituency in Moray in the north-east of Scotland, and other more remote and rural areas, where people want smart meters but the installation is not happening particularly quickly.

One of your main concerns about rolling out quickly is that customers will feel pressured into adopting smart meters; yet I have constituents who want smart meters but cannot get them. For example, a village hall, the Houldsworth Institute in Dallas, has had people out to try to get one installed, but there is no mobile phone reception—it is in a blackspot. How do you think your evidence relates to people who want to see the roll-out far quicker, but are hampered because the technologies do not allow it or we do not have enough installations happening in the more remote and rural areas compared with the more urban areas?

Dr Sarah Darby: That would be an argument for paying special attention to such areas and thinking how that could be addressed. It does seem to me that the strength of the programme so far is that it is voluntary, and that the early learning is being done by people who are already well-disposed to it and will perhaps put up with any kind of teething glitches that go on. They will adapt and then, if they are satisfied, will pass the word on to others so that others will want a smart meter too.

If we speed up, the amount of attention paid to the installation process will almost inevitably drop off. There will be pressure on installers just to go into a building, put the kit in and get out, and not to spend time doing the things that customers have said they appreciate about the roll-out so far: having someone who will explain stuff to them and show them how to use the equipment, and having that level of support to the installation. If we lose that through speeding up the whole process, the programme will suffer greatly in the long run.