Advanced v Smart meters: What’s best for businesses?

You have an important choice to make: Advanced or Smart meters.

One way is ‘business as usual’ where independent, daily data & stable metering support your energy goals.

But is the alternative disaster? A loss of control over your data & metering putting any goals you have at serious risk?

Well, as your friendly data expert, we’re letting you in on this choice, before it’s too late.

Background

Market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (MHHS) will replace the old metered Half Hourly (HH) & Non-Half Hourly (NHH) with two new segments.

Those new segments will be Advanced or Smart.

Which segment you are in will impact:

• The quality of energy data you receive
• your ability to continue performing critical Net Zero tasks

Here we’ll lay out exactly what the new segments are, explain the 2 most important ones most businesses will use, and give our recommendations.

1. The New MHHS Segments: Advanced v Smart

Definitions

The market will be split into three new segments in fact:

1. Advanced segment – covering ~1.3million AMR Industrial & Commercial sector meters
2. Smart segment– covering ~30 million domestic supplies, ~400k I&C supplies and ~900k traditional metered supplies
3. Unmetered segment – covering all unmetered supplies across England, Scotland & Wales

Here, we’re focusing on Advanced & Smart metered segments.

A smart meter is any meter which can be remotely communicated with, unlike a traditional (or dumb) meter which always needs to be read manually.

Under the MHHS programme, two types of smart meters will be used: Advanced meters and…well…Smart meters.

• Advanced meters are AMR (Automatic Meter Reader)
• Smart meters are SMETS (Smart Metering Equipment Technical Specification) meters.

2. Key differences between Advanced v Smart meters

Hardware

• Advanced / AMR meter hardware has been around for decades, and is used by the highest-consuming supplies in the country.

It’s robust, reliable and interoperable with all suppliers.

If you switch suppliers, the meter will still do everything it needs to.

Plus it can handle Current Transfer (CT) metering, which a lot of Half Hourly meters already are, as well as multi-phase supplies.

• Smart/SMETS meters on the other hand are designed for mass-market domestic supplies.

This means they don’t work with CT meters and are rarely seen on 3-phase supplies.

The legacy models were not interoperable, and there’s a real concern that future interoperability is at risk due to the amount of firmware in the market.

Data Quality & Access

• We can directly dial Advanced/AMR meters, fix faults remotely and retrieve, validate and present data to customers and suppliers – business as usual.

Plus where Stark Connect and Stark Data pair up, you get the best daily energy settlement data.

• Smart/SMETS meters under MHHS, have a completely different data retrieval model.

They use the Data Communications Company (DCC) as a middleman to collect the data, process it and make it available to us.

We can then provide it to customers and suppliers, but it will not be day+1 and if there are gaps, there’s not much we can do.

If there are any meter faults, they can’t be fixed remotely and we’re in no position to validate data for you.

Ongoing Management

• With Advanced/AMR meters, you’re choosing to contract with your preferred data & metering agent.

That means you have access to account managers & support teams, a contract to wield, service levels and clear costs laid out.

• With Smart/SMETS, you lose control over your contact with data & meter agents.

You’ll likely see increased timescales for resolutions, only having the supplier to liaise with, and be subject to any system or capacity issues the DCC experiences.

3. Directly dialled v DCC middleman

You can keep control of your data quality by choosing Advanced / AMR meters.

It’s that simple really.

Advanced Meter Data Continuity

For Advanced/AMR meters, it will be a seamless migration into MHHS systems.

Your data continuity will be in place, and you’ll be free to choose your supplier and retain your preferred data & meter agents.

Your data collection will stay the same, with an independent, specialist data provider directly dialling your AMR meter.

When we can collect data directly from an Advanced meter, we chase down data gaps and respond to industry agents to resolve data issues for you.

Paired with Stark Connect for metering is how we have the best data in the industry.

Data collection from Advanced/AMR meters under MHHS looks like this:

Smart/SMETS meter means you risk data quality

If you have a Smart/SMETS meter, a specialist data collector will not collect your data.

Instead, the new Data Communication Company (DCC) – a monopoly company regulated by Ofgem & run by Capita – will be doing the work.

We are fully qualified to access that Smart/SMETS data under MHHS, but we won’t be responsible for collecting & validating it.

That’s all up to the DCC.

Data collection from Smart/SMETS meters under MHHS looks like this:

4. We recommend you choose Advanced meters for businesses 

As an independent data collector with over 40 years of data experience, it’s clear why we recommend Advanced (AMR) meters for businesses.

The loss of available day+1 data to business customers is too high a risk.

In Summary

Your meter type matters under MHHS: Choose Advanced/AMR meters today.

Operating in the Smart segment will impact your ability to perform your energy cost-saving strategies and Net Zero goals. 

1. Service Continuity

Advanced meters mean a seamless migration into MHHS & beyond.

Working with a partner you trust can mean the difference between an uninterrupted data service or making do with data from a 3rd party designed for domestic supplies.

 2. Data quality

Timely assessment of energy issues & decisions relies on high-quality, day+1 data.

You need Advanced/AMR meters that provide high-quality day+1 data collected by an independent data specialist.

3. Operational Stability

Accurate & accessible energy data is vital for businesses.

Advanced meters offer this and have been used in the I&C market for decades.

We have always recommended Advanced smart meters to our business customers.