Remote reading of energy meters enables households in Oldham to halve their heating energy bills
By making possible the remote reading of district-heating energy meters in Oldham, Sensus energy meters are enabling households to reduce their energy bills by up to half compared to fixed billing.
Technology developed by Sensus Metering Systems will enable 2500 households in Oldham served by district-heating schemes to be billed for the heating energy they use, rather than being billed a fixed amount. Some households are already seeing their heating bills halved compared to the previous unmetered supply. At the heart of the project covering a 120 square-mile area of Oldham is automatic meter-reading technology that will ultimately enable all the energy meters to be read from a central office using a fixed radio network. There will be no need for manual meter reading. The project is led by Switch2 Energy Solutions and forms an integral part of Oldham Metropolitan Council’s affordable-warmth strategy and is in direct response to residents’ wishes to move from fixed heating costs to an arrangement based on consumption. Jayne Clare, managing director of Switch2, explains, ‘The Oldham project brings together the latest technology to measure and read energy consumption linked to the district-heating scheme. ‘This means that residents pay only for the heat they use, which will make households much more energy conscious — and that will also impact on the energy required to run the district-heating scheme, and on its CO2 footprint. ‘Moreover, the fact that all the meters in the 2500 homes can be read automatically and remotely will also deliver significant operational benefits to the council.’ At the hub of the project is the Sensus((S))cout automatic meter-reading (AMR) system. A transponder attached to each energy meter forwards consumption date to GSM gateways and then on to a central location using a repeater network. Jamie Longman of Sensus Metering Systems says, ‘We are currently working on a number of automatic meter-reading projects in the UK and Ireland that enable utilities, water companies and their energy partners to read thousands of meters systematically through an unbroken and seamless data chain that stretches from the meter point via the IT system up to the billing process. ‘The system also adds value by delivering real-time information to energy providers about business-critical issues, including leakage and broken-pipe detection and tamper alerts.’
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