A new survey of attitudes towards smart meters has found that the more people know about them the more likely they are to support their installation.
The research was commissioned from Ipsos MORI by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) as the first of three nationally representative surveys to try and understand public attitudes towards domestic smart meters and how they are changing over time. This is in advance of the programme to install them in all homes in Britain by the end of 2019.
Smart meters are devices designed to show exactly how much gas and electricity is being used in real time, and communicate directly between utilities and their customers.
The results are good news to companies aligning themselves to carry out the installations, such as Glasgow-based company Smart Metering Systems (SMS), which has recently raised £55m to fund its expansion into the market.
Half of the UK energy bill-payers had heard of smart meters (49%), with one in twenty claiming to have one installed (5%). Although the report’s authors believe this figure is an overstatement, principally due to some respondents failing to understand what a smart meter is.
Almost half (48%) of all respondents were undecided about smart meters. Four in ten (42%) of those without one in their home expressed interest in having one installed. One in three people (32%) expressed support for the installation of smart meters in every home in the country, while one in five (20%) were opposed.
But there was disappointing news for the Energy Saving Trust and the government. When asked which sources of information about smart meters they trusted most, people put the EST last, at 16%, followed by the government (17%), then Which? magazine (26%), and, surprisingly, the most trusted source was energy companies (33%).
Support for smart meters and interest in installation, were both highly correlated to age and size of household; with younger and larger households expressing greater support and interest.
Amongst the perceived benefits of having a smart meter installed, the most popular was being able to better manage household finances (33%), followed by helping to avoid waste (26%) and produce greater accuracy of billing (19%).
More information: www.decc.gov.uk/