With climate change firmly on the agenda, the EU set member countries the challenge of reducing their carbon emission by 20 percent by 2020. Smart metering provides a convenient way to inform customers of how much energy they are using in real time, enabling them to reduce their climate impact and save energy, whilst also relaying their energy usage back to their energy supplier.
To meet the 2020 target, the UK government agreed that every domestic energy customer should have a smart meter fitted. For Energy Suppliers to communicate with the smart meters, the government procured a centralized communication service for Energy Companies to use to connect to the smart meters in customers’ homes.
This service includes the supply of a standard communications hub that will work across all energy suppliers and meters, and, crucially, still work if the customer changed supplier. O2 won the contract to supply this vast and complex communications system for two thirds of the Smart Meter installations across Great Britain, covering over 20 million customers.