34.8 million smart meters in Britain
UK smart electricity and gas meter. Image courtesy 123rf
At the end of 2023, 34.8 million smart electricity and gas meters were installed in British homes and small businesses, amounting to 61% of all meters, reports the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in their quarterly smart meter update.
Of these, approximately 20.2 million were smart electricity meters and 14.5 million smart gas meters.
Moreover, 30.8 million – about 54% – were operating in smart mode, with the balance of almost 4 million operating in traditional mode, according to the government’s latest annual update.
These figures compare with 55% of meters being smart at the end of 2022, with 3.5 million smart meters installed during 2023, almost all by the large suppliers
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This number was, however, down about 6% on installations in 2022, with a slightly greater decrease for electricity installations than for gas, although similarly to 2022 the number of installations by the large suppliers increased during the second half of 2023.
Broken down by sector at the end of 2023 smart meters accounted for approximately 61% of domestic meters, 18.8 million for electricity and 14.1 million for gas, and 57% of smaller non-domestic meters, 1.4 million for electricity and 0.4 million for gas.
Prepayment coverage was at almost 13% in 2023 – similar to the two previous years.
In total, in Britain there are approximately 29.5 million electricity meters and 24.2 million gas meters at domestic properties and 2.5 million electricity meters and 0.8 million gas meters at the smaller non-domestic sites.
While the large suppliers operate almost all the domestic meters, their coverage is less in smaller non-domestic market with the small suppliers having an almost 30% share.
Data from Electralink indicates a further 424,000 smart meter installations in January and February 2024, with both months, similar to the last three months of 2023, continuing to reflect an increase from the same months in the previous year.
The latest DCC data indicates that as of date, 30.2 million smart meters are connected to its network.
