Smart Metering
Britain’s in love with energy. It makes our lives better, every minute of every day. But we've taken energy for granted for too long. If our love affair is to continue, the relationship must change. We must learn to appreciate energy again.
That’s where smart meters come in.
As consumers, they’ll show us how much energy we use and what aspects of our lives are most energy-hungry. Then we can combine self-interest and eco-friendliness to adjust our habits, saving ourselves money as well as resources.
We’ll demand more from our suppliers – not more energy, but services that help us to manage our energy bills and our impact on the environment. This creates new opportunities for energy suppliers to keep us as customers and to win more business. And they will be able to better manage their costs too.
But smart metering is about more than meters. For Växjö Energi, we developed and implemented the system that’s enabling 20,000 customers in Växjö, Sweden, to understand and lower their energy consumption. The project won the European Utility Award for customer service.
We’ve shown how energy suppliers can compete in a smart market. Our Smart Office service bridges the gap between energy suppliers’ existing processes and systems and a smart metering infrastructure. We’re also helping people to understand smart. Our Smart Metering for Dummies is in its second edition and we’re working on Smart Grids for Dummies. You could also take a look at SmartMap, our at-a-glance guide to the smart landscape.
When smart meters are installed, we’ll all need to be confident that they, and our personal data, are secure. That’s another area where Logica can help. Many clients protect their customers’ personal data and have gained international security standard accreditation with our help. For instance, our work with the French Lottery reassures players that they are secure. Teachers and parents across Europe are confident that Fronter’s managed learning environment is safe for children and students to use.
For a competitive smart market to operate effectively, reliable central systems are essential. To deliver them, an in-depth understanding of British market regulation, information management and security, as well as expertise in sectors such as telecoms and financial services, is vital.
Fortunately, we’ve been here before.
When Britain introduced competition for electricity and gas, Logica designed, built and continues to operate the central electricity market balancing and settlement systems on behalf of ELEXON – and we were the central design authority for the New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA). We’ve also designed and implemented energy central market systems in Australia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United States.
In fact, we’re experts in central market systems of all kinds – for example, we created SWIFT for banks that needed a cross-border funds transfer system.
Oh, and did we mention telecoms? Put it this way, billions of SMS text messages sent every day depend on standards we developed in 1992. SMS changed the way people communicate, just as smart metering will change the way we use energy.
