Sara Jane Asquith is SSE’s Director of Metering & Smart Transformation. She is responsible for SSE’s roll out of over 7 million smart meters across Great Britain.
The roll out of smart meters to every home in Great Britain is one of the biggest infrastructure projects the British energy sector has seen in decades. Over the next five years energy suppliers will be going into every home in the country, removing the traditional gas and electricity meters customers are currently using, and replacing them with new smart meters.
Smart meters will give customers real time information about their energy use and make estimated billing a thing of the past. But the benefits of smart meters aren’t just limited to the improved service customers will have. The roll out itself will bring jobs and investment to all corners of the Great Britain and give workers the opportunity to learn new skills.
Every energy company in Britain is taking part in the roll out. SSE alone will be investing more than £1 billion to install more than seven million smart meters by the year 2020. If you were to lay them down end to end they would stretch roughly from John o’Groats to Lands End. We have been given a deadline of 2020 by the government meaning that we can’t just take our time so by the time we reach the peak of the roll out we will be installing around 9,000 meters every single day.
To make this possible we will bring on board thousands of new staff. At the peak of the roll out there will be around 1,500 SSE installers in the field, replacing the meters and teaching the public how to get the most of their new smart meters. On top of that we will have a range of staff working on the roll out, from technical experts on hand to help the teams overcome any problems to customer service teams to help customers get the most out of their new meters.
SSE has invested large sums of money into our smart meter training facilities and depots. With any project of this scale there is always a danger that something could go wrong. That is why we have made sure that our installers have been trained in state of the art facilities. We know that it’s vital that we get it right first time for customers, which is why we’re investing in the early stages of the roll out, learning from any mistakes and making sure our teams know how to overcome any problems they may come across. Last week we were very happy to welcome Lord Bourne, who has responsibility for the smart roll out in the Government, to our training centre in Treforest to show him the work and investment that is going into the roll out.
The smart meter roll out is a huge opportunity for the Britain, changing how customers interact with their supplier, creating new jobs and giving those people who are already working the chance to develop new skills. Our approach to the roll out has always been ‘do it once, do it right’. We’re putting our all into it to make sure it goes right first time which is just another reason that we’re proud to make a difference.