Smart Meters Bill (Second sitting)

Grahame Morris Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

Thank you. The last question goes to Mr Morris.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Q Thank you, Mrs Gillan. I will also try to be brief. Mr Lickorish, you raised some interesting concepts. I was not familiar with the deemed rental issue, for example. You mentioned perverse behaviour caused by political milestones. Presumably you are of the belief that delaying that roll-out to 2023 is a political milestone that will induce perverse behaviour.

Derek Lickorish: It is no good having a target that nobody believes in. Every programme must have targets. I am not saying, “Change 2020 now.” I think that is a good contingency and I am pleased to see that someone somewhere realises that. I do not think it has a perverse effect on behaviour. You can keep on saying it is 2020, but we need a recognition now that says, “We will look at all the issues and have a unity of purpose about what the targets should be”, because at the end of the day this is not Treasury money; this is customers’ money.

[Grahame Morris]

Q I want to try to understand this, because essentially I am a layman. Looking at the obstacles to achieving the milestones that are already agreed and the performance of the DCC, there seems to be general disappointment about the numbers. A year on and it is 250 when the assumption was that it would be considerably more. If my reading of the explanatory notes is correct, the DCC is regulated by the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority. I am not suggesting that there would be a failure by the DCC, but in that event—for whatever reason, whether it is political interference or technical issues—the Bill has a proposal to give the Secretary of State the power to veto any proposal by the authority to transfer the DCC licence. Do you have any thoughts on that? Are there any circumstances when it would be reasonable to veto the transfer of the licence?

Derek Lickorish: I could give you an answer tomorrow, but I have not thought about it enough, and I do not wish to give a weak, woolly answer because I do not understand the issues at play.

[Grahame Morris]

Q Hypothetically, could there be circumstances where due to poor performance or whatever it is necessary to transfer the DCC licence?

Derek Lickorish: One has to say that it must be possible, so it is right to prepare for that contingency, but I am basing that purely on my own experience of being in the power industry for 47 years. You always have to expect the unexpected. If something seriously goes wrong with this—there is an endemic failure and they are not able to solve it—you must be able to have the power to do something about it. That seems possible.

[Grahame Morris]

Q I am not trying to put words in your mouth; this is just for my understanding. Should the Committee be concerned about the veto proposed in the Bill to prevent such a transfer?

Derek Lickorish: I am not sure that there should be a veto to prevent it.

[Grahame Morris]

We will ask the Minister about that during the course of the Bill.

[The Chair]

Q Mr Wiles, is there anything you would like to add to this?

Richard Wiles: With the complexities and everything, the whole programme is very complex by the nature of the design. To be honest, I have not examined absolute cases of how it could happen, so unfortunately I cannot answer that question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

I am happy to let Mr Morris go first. I know he has been waiting for a long time.

[Grahame Morris]

No, that is okay.

[Richard Harrington]

Q Thank you very much for coming, Doctors, as it were. I thank you for the efforts that you have made professionally to get the programme to the stage it is at now. Although difficult, I would like to ask a broad question that will encompass both your areas. In my Government job, I view the smart meter programme as just the very beginning of a future smart grid for people. I have seen prototypes in America and elsewhere, which you will know much better than I do. What change in human behaviour patterns have you seen up to now for people who have what we could call a very prototype smart grid with smart meters? From both the building and the consumer point of view, what is the vision for the future?

Dr Sarah Darby: I am not sure we can yet say that there is a prototype smart grid. The beginnings of smart energy tend to be different in every country and smart metering in this country is different from smart metering anywhere else. In fact, more attention has been paid to the consumer engagement side of smart metering in this country than anywhere else. This is the only country where a fairly intensive effort is put into customer engagement at the time of roll-out of the smart meter, when everyone is offered an in-home display, and all the installers are trained in communication skills to explain what is going on, what can be done with the display, what the smart meter is about and how customers can use it as a tool, if they wish to. This country is a bit special in that way, and we are seeing, on average, modest positive effects.

In the US, where smart metering is widespread, the emphasis has been very much on using it to try to control peak demand, and as an instrument to introduce time-of-use pricing and whack up the prices at peak times to keep peak demand down. They have special problems there, particularly in the hotter states, with air-conditioning in the summertime and very high peak loads, which is an expensive problem for them to manage. The earliest roll-out of smart meters was mostly, in my understanding, to overcome serious problems with fraud.

Dr Richard Fitton: I agree with Sarah, the UK is very strong on smart meters. If you speak to anyone in Europe, a lot of them are envious of the technical standards of the smart meters that are being rolled out. As we have heard from all the sessions, it is a very complicated issue and it is not getting any less complicated, certainly for the consumer.

Our research group’s angle is everything from the consumer side of the meter. We are looking at how to diagnose problems with buildings using the data and systems that are available. We are also developing appliances that will work with smart meters. A big piece of the puzzle that is missing from some of the discussions is the fact that the consumer should be able to engage with the smart meters. As it stands now, they cannot engage with the smart meters. We can log on to the energy supplier’s portal and get a half-hourly reading. But a magic black box called the consumer access device is the gateway to the occupiers having access to their real-time data. This is not a box on the wall that tells them how much energy is costing. It is a consumer access device that streams real-time data to things such as smart appliances and smart heating systems for homes.

That is the whole aim, as far as I can see, of the smart and flexible grid that we constantly talk about. To attach one of these devices is exceptionally difficult and I have never had one successfully connected personally, nor have colleagues or associates. So a big piece of the puzzle is missing in using this data for something that is really smart, rather than just for billing. Billing is clearly important, but the use of the best-value data for the consumer appears to be the missing part of the puzzle. I think that would also push some buttons to help develop the interest in smart meters and get them into people’s homes.