The initiative belongs to the British authorities

May 11, 2009 09:57 GMT  ·  By

The UK Government is poised to soon unveil plans that would basically force all citizens to have their homes outfitted with “smart meters,” devices that are able to interfere with the gas and electricity networks and to regulate consumption. The move will reduce the load on power grids during peak periods, and would take a huge load off power plants. In turn, this would mean that less of them would have to be built, and the environment would thus be protected.

According to initial estimates, the UK will have to pay approximately £7 billion, or $10.5 billion, to purchase and install roughly 26 million electricity and 22 million gas meters around the country, BBC News reports. The instruments will enable gas and electricity companies to record and monitor the power consumption of their customers, and will also allow people to see how much they've consumed at any given time. The overall power use of the nation would considerably reduce with the new move, government officials argue.

Additional money would be saved up by the fact that meter readers would no longer have to be dispatched to locations, and from the dissolution of the estimated bill system, as well as of the complaints office staff associate with them. In all, electricity and gas companies hope that bills would fall altogether, and that a new taxing system would be set in place. According to UK experts, this is the largest such effort undertaken in the country since the 1970s, when 17 million household appliances were converted to natural gas.

Officials tell that each household could save at least £20 ($30) in bills each year, which would amount to £100 million in cuts overall. The UK could thus save up approximately 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, coming from its fossil fuel power plants. The Central Communications will be in charge of handling and centralizing all data coming in from the readers, but it will be established by the industry, which has already raised some eyebrows. It would be a lot fairer, people believe, if the government was on it too, and did not leave the companies to have their way all by themselves.