ESB to install ‘smart meters’ in two million homes
The Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) intends introducing the meters in over two million homes, so consumers will more efficiently use electricity.
The initiative will be piloted by the ESB this year and its full roll-out nationwide will cost hundreds of millions of euro. A paper on the plans will be released in the coming weeks.
Encouraging consumers to conscientiously turn off energy-sapping machines at peak times will be central to the initiative, regulator Tom Reeves said yesterday.
“We’re lucky we’ve had no blackouts like the rest of Europe.”
The smart meters will allow consumers check quantities of power used by different machines.
“It will allow users be conscious of prices by seeing them in real time.”
The regulator also hopes more varied tariffs will be available to users, beyond the day and night-time ones presently in operation. The system, as operated in Italy, also allows electricity operators to root out fraudulent consumers ‘fiddling’ meters.
Mr Reeves yesterday signalled that further cuts in energy prices may follow, if fuel costs continue to drop. Gas bills fell by 10% in February, but that was after a 31% increase last autumn.
He warned however that Ireland was “exposed fully” to Europe’s markets, with limited indigenous fuels and 90% of our gas imported.
“We are very vulnerable to all of these prices,” he said.
Speaking at a Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, the regulator warned that one of the biggest burdens on the electricity system, last winter, was the use of Christmas lights.
Fine Gael’s Phil Hogan said consumers were concerned about costs, which now exceed €1,200 for an average household annual gas bill.
The energy regulator rejected a suggestion his office was just a ‘price processor’ for the ESB and Bord Gáis.
The CER told the Oireachtas Committee that Ireland had one of the fastest growing wind energy sectors. Between 10 and 600 megawatts of energy are created at any one time. This power from wind will more than quadruple in the coming years, according to the CER.
