Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Callanan on 5 April (HL Deb col 1963), what plans they have to ensure the rapid development of common standards and language for (1) household appliances, (2) heat pumps, (3) electric vehicle chargers, and (4) other electrical devices, for demand-side response flexibility.

The Government is taking action to ensure there are appropriate standards in place for smart devices, essential in delivering demand side flexibility and a smarter energy system.

The Government has sponsored the development of technical standards for devices that have high potential for domestic demand side response, called Energy Smart Appliances, through an industry-led process with the British Standards Institution. A new standard, Publicly Available Standard 1878, was published in May 2021 for heat pumps, household appliances, battery storage and Electric Vehicle (EV) Chargepoints.

The Government has already taken action to standardise EV chargepoints. In December 2021, the Government laid the Smart Chargepoints Regulations, which will come into force on 30^th June this year. These regulations mandate that most chargepoints sold for private use on the GB market must be smart and meet minimum device level standards.