WATER PAGES
Gearing up for smart meter mass rollout
Smart meters are prominent in water companies’ 2025-2030 business plans, in line with regulatory expectations for large-scale rollouts. In this Q&A, Andrew Welsh, water utilities director at Xylem UK, discusses the sector’s readiness, and how the company is gearing-up for a rapid increase in demand.
What are the key benefits of smart meters for utilities and their customers?
Smart water meters collect and transmit water usage data in near real-time, enabling water companies to remotely monitor consumption on an hourly basis. Customers can track their daily consumption data and bill information – and, importantly, see how the two correlate - via a secure portal or app.
Smart meters are recognised as integral to water companies’ long-term water resource planning. This is both in terms of supporting per capita consumption reduction targets, by providing customers with clear insights into their water use and how they can make savings, and leakage reduction, by enabling real-time monitoring for more accurate measuring and faster detection of leaks.
This capability is particularly beneficial for customers who have a leak on their property - water companies can alert them to the high or constant usage almost immediately. With standard automated meter reading (AMR) meters, readings are taken once or twice a year, meaning customer leaks could go undiscovered for some time.
Having visibility and control across the entire network brings many more benefits, including more accurate customer bills based on daily readings, remote data collection instead of manual meter reads and data insights that provide a better understanding of consumption patterns and trends.
Looking ahead to when smart meters become ubiquitous, they may present water companies with more creative tariff
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options, to help encourage behavioural change especially in times of drought.
What is the current smart metering landscape in the UK?
Smart metering is here - and it is gaining momentum. As of September 2023, the Environment Agency reported that an estimated 14% of households in England had smart meters, a figure expected to rise to around 40% by 2030 – and to 65% by 2050. Implementation underpins the sustainability and demand reduction efforts of the UK water sector and is critical to securing our water future.
Xylem is a leading manufacturer of smart meter networks and solutions, through its Sensus brand, and is supporting utilities across the UK with their programmes. Water companies are at different stages of the smart metering journey, but they are all moving forward.
Some are undertaking small-scale trials, while others are progressing at pace with large-scale rollouts - Thames Water is eight years into what is the biggest smart water meter programme in the UK. Anglian Water’s programme began in 2020 and will see installation of 1.1 million smart meters by 2025. Xylem has supplied Sensus smart meters for both these flagship projects.
TheSensusbrand combines smart water meters, advanced sensors and software analytics with multiple communication networks, including FlexNet, Xylem’s own long-range radio network, as well as cellular narrowband internet-of-things (NB-IoT) telecommunications.
What are the regulatory expectations around smart water meters?
Ofwat expects all water companies in England and Wales to consider smart meter solutions as the standard meter installation type in the 2025-2030 asset management plan period (AMP8). To build drought resilience faster, it has already allowed funding for the 2024 Price Review
| December 2023 |
www.draintraderltd.com Andrew Welsh
(PR24) to be accelerated for seven schemes, equating to 462,000 smart meters, from 2023-25 – that is in addition to projects already underway as part of the UK Government’s green economic recovery plan.
The Environment Agency has similar expectations, asking all water companies in England to install smart meters from 2025. The regulator says smart metering will be “an important enabler” for water efficiency and leakage reduction options set out in the sector’s water resources management plans.
How is Xylem managing the increase in demand?
From 2025, virtually all water companies will be installing smart meters. Xylem is getting ahead by investing in additional capacity and process optimisation at our manufacturing sites, including a state-of- the-art test facility at our factory in Laatzen, Germany. Across Europe we are gearing up to produces millions of meters annually to meet forecast demand with the accelerated roll-out of smart metering projects.
Xylem also works closely with its component and materials suppliers to ensure there is sufficient stock. Over the past three years, a global component chip shortage has been impacting technology manufacturers worldwide, but the good news is usual service has returned.
Being a large player in the market means we are well placed to ramp-up demand when required. All these measures put Xylem in a great position to meet the
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