UK city where smart meters offer biggest bang? Nottingham
Nottingham is the UK’s top “Smart-Meter City,” based on how much smart meters there could help residents cut their electricity consumption and energy bills.
Esri UK, a geographic information systems company, identified Nottingham as the community likely to benefit the most from smart energy meters in a study conducted in partnership with the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). In the study, two regions — the Midlands Hub and the Trans-Pennine Corridor — emerged as smart-meter “hotspots” for their concentration of potential smart-meter cities.
The study was aimed at not only helping the public understand the benefit of smart meters, but to identify where utilities should first invest time and resources in the planned nationwide rollout of advanced energy meters.
“The rise in electricity prices and the severity of recent winters is putting huge pressure on UK households,” said Peter Mingins, sector lead for utilities and telecom at Esri UK. “Smart-meter technology is one of the steps along with wider energy efficiency measures which will help consumers make better electricity consumption decisions, so they can reduce their bills. However, smart meters won’t appear overnight and our study has identified the cities and local authorities that have the biggest potential benefit from smart meters first.”
The top 20 smart-meter cities are:
- Nottingham
- Wolverhampton
- Southampton
- Birmingham
- Liverpool
- Leicester
- Manchester
- Kingston upon Hull
- Coventry
- Glasgow
- Stoke-on-Trent
- Edinburgh
- Bradford
- Leeds
- Plymouth
- Bristol
- Newcastle upon Tyne
- Sheffield
- Cardiff
- London
The two regions identified as smart-meter hotspots include the cities of Nottingham, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Leicester, Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent — together comprising the Midlands Hub — and the so-called Trans-Pennine Corridor spanning from Liverpool to Hull, which includes Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield.
According to the Esri/CEBR study, in 90 percent of the top 20 smart-meter cities, price sensitivity rather than energy intensity is the main driver for saving money through smart metering. These are communities where rising energy prices have a higher impact on household due to monthly electricity bills being larger relative to disposable incomes in those cities. In particular, cities with a high proportion of lower-income inhabitants stand to reap the most benefits as smart-meter cities.
At a city-level, London doesn’t look likely to benefit from smart meters as much as other cities, as energy consumption and bills appear to be more manageable relative to disposable incomes. However, that’s only part of the picture, because of London’s large socio-demographic diversity. The study found that — unlike the rest of the UK, where cities with a higher proportion of lower-income households would see the greatest potential benefit — parts of London with more higher-income households would see the largest payback from smart meters. Those areas include the City, Kensington & Chelsea, Bromley, Sutton and Barnet.
