Water Industry Association calls for smart water metering

The British water industry supply chain trade association, the Society of British Water and Wastewater Industries (SBWWI), has made a call for smart water metering, saying that it would bring “significant benefits to the water industry and consumers”. In a recent position paper the SBWWI says that domestic water metering in the UK progresses in a piecemeal fashion, with each water company having different approaches, policies and metering coverage. Where meters are installed, they are usually “dumb”; largely because water companies struggle to make an economic case for smart meters to the regulator, Ofwat, and there is no clear policy and planning for the future of smartmetering.
Without this, and without a common focus, water companies have no shared vision of what smart metering solutions they would like to see in their future plans, and have not agreed on a common specification for a smart metering system. Further, with the energy smart metering agenda fast progressing, there is a risk that without urgent representation of the water sector, the infrastructure networks being put in place for energy smart metering will not be able to cater for the future needs of the water sector. Separate provisions would be resource inefficient and, in the long term, significantly more costly for customers.