Smart meters could bring free home hubs

Homes could get free or subsidised cellular gateways called femtocells as a result of a Government drive for smart energy metering in UK households.

Femtocell, as explained here last month, are basically short-range mobile-phone gateways that use a broadband connection to carry calls to the operator. They improve coverage and use scarce spectrum more efficently, and could result in cheaper calls with free local data traffic.

Femtocells would increase the number of cellular base stations but reduce radiation because of the shorter range, answering fears about real or imagined health effects. They would also give mobile operators a foothold in the digital home.

But they will cost around around £300 each unless they create a mass market, allowing economies of scale to kick in. And this is where mobile operators could find common cause with energy suppliers.

Smart meters are being installed in thousands of homes in trials announced last month. They will provide information on the gas and electricity being used at any given time, which the Government hopes will make people more careful about how much energy they use.

Smart metering will also allow householders to offset their energy bills by generating their own electricity from wind or the sun.

But electricity companies, who see a way to avoid the expense of home calls by meter readers, need a way to collect the data. Part of the purpose of the trials is to test out ways to do this.

There have long been suggestions that smart meters could be combined with, or linked to, some form of home gateway, the cost of which could be shared by the utility companies, the broadband service provider, and (directly, or indirectly through energy bills) the householder.

One possibility would be to have a Wifi gateway talking wirelessly to the meter. But this presents the problem of what to do about homes with no broadband, and no wish to have it. Mobile phone coverage is far wider, even without the use of femtocells.

Ashley Pocock, the director of home technology at EDF Energy, confirmed that he had held talks with operators, but only to discuss possibilities. “We are ruling nothing out,” he said.

Another possibility is powerline communications, which piggy-back a high-frequency data carrier on to the mains lines. Trials will certainly include the use of Zigbee, the low-drain wireless link, which is designed to deliver small packets of information over short ranges.

Zigbee could be used to deliver data to an existing home gateway. It could conceivably be used as part of a mesh network, passing data from home to home until a broadband connection is reached.

Pocock agreed that a possible partnership with a cellular operator would be unlikely to affect homes in the initial rollout.

“My main concern is to implement a system now that will not prevent us from taking up any of these possibilities in the future,” he said.

EDF Energy is owned by the French company Électricité de France, following the purchase of Seeboard Energy (formerly South Eastern Electricity Board), London Energy (and SWEB Energy).

Other companies involved in the smart meter trials are E.ON UK, Scottish and Southern Energy, and Scottish Power.