Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 8
8
Acknowledged
Smart meters demonstrate energy consumption reductions for electricity and gas users
Conclusion
The Department has commissioned research to identify the energy consumption savings made by consumers with functioning smart meters. The estimates show energy reductions of 3.3% to 3.6% for electricity and 2.9% to 3.1% for gas. These findings are based on a sample of 500,000 consumers who had a first-generation smart meter installed between 2015 and 2018 (with consumption data up to 2019).25
Government Response Summary
The government acknowledges the committee's observation regarding energy savings from smart meters, detailing its ongoing programme of data collection, monitoring, and evaluation, including recent published evidence and future evaluation research in development.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
2.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: February 2025 2.2 The department has an ongoing programme of benefits data collection, monitoring, and evaluation which includes recent published evidence on energy savings and consumer benefits. Further substantive evaluation research to complement this is currently in development. 2.3 An independent evaluation of evidence on energy savings for households resulting from smart meters carried out by the Department’s Behavioural Insights Team was published in Summer 2023. This identified savings of 3.4% for electricity consumption and 3.0% for gas, in line with the programme’s assumptions of 3.0% and 2.2% for credit consumers. Wider consumer benefits were explored in recent published evaluation which focussed on consumers who may experience barriers in the energy market (e.g., those on lower incomes). A range of additional benefits were identified, such as the ability to top up and access balance information remotely offered by smart pre-payment meters. 2.4 This evidence was collected as part of an ongoing programme of data collection and monitoring capturing benefits across the roll-out, including energy consumption reductions, credit and pre-payment consumer experience, demand side response and flexibility and savings accruing to industry. 2.5 To supplement the department’s existing evidence base, DESNZ is in the process of designing a new phase of programme wide evaluation which will capture evidence on existing benefits in addition to potential further benefits resulting from innovation enabled by smart metering. Work to provide additional sources of evidence on energy savings is also underway, including testing the potential of the Department’s National Energy Efficiency Data framework (NEED) to provide estimates of impacts.