‘Alt HAN’ rolls out for smart metering in Britain

The ‘Alt HAN’ solution is being rolled out to households in Britain that would otherwise be excluded from the benefits of smart meters due to network range limitations within buildings.

The solution, which is being delivered in partnership with energy suppliers, is expected to benefit approximately 700,000 households, mostly in apartment blocks where meters are concentrated in a basement, a central room or cupboards on each floor and out of range of the individual premises.

Also affected are larger single premises where a meter may be installed in a garage or outbuilding.

With the solution, those households will then be able to use an in-home display to monitor their consumption and spending and thus access those and other benefits of the smart meters.

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“The development of Alt HAN devices has been a long journey,” Jonathan Brennan, Chair of the Alt HAN Co. Board and Meter Strategy Manager at E.ON UK, has commented.

“For energy suppliers it‘s great news to have these solutions proven and available, and to be able to start campaigning and delivering smart metering to customers who have previously been excluded through no fault of their own.”

Alt HAN solution

The Alt HAN Co was formed as a not for profit initiative owned and governed by the energy suppliers collectively.

The Alt HAN solution, which is being manufactured by Landis+Gyr following the outcome of a competitive process, is a plug-in device that in essence functions similarly to the commonly used wireless network range extenders.

The rollout of the Alt HAN devices started at the beginning of 2023, with mass rollout in August.

As of Autumn 2023, which is the last published data, 870 installs had been completed out of the 61,000 devices delivered but energy suppliers were reported to be ramping up their orders and deploying the devices in increasing numbers.

Two specific challenges have emerged, of which one is the case of apartment buildings with a room for gas meters and a separate room in a different part of the building for electricity meters, with the potential for the connectivity to be lost if pairs of gas meters using the Alt HAN bridges attempt to communicate at the same time.

The ‘time offset’ solution, which was implemented for the first time in October, was found to be in programming the gas meters to ‘wake up’ in sequence.

The second is crowded meter rooms, with the meters alongside each other with insufficient space for the Alt HAN devices.

A ‘crowded meter room’ service, impacting an estimated 5,000 buildings and around 100,000 customers, is planned to go live in mid-2024 and lies in making the buildings ‘smart ready’ prior to the installation of the smart meters with coordination among all the interested parties.

The service, of which no other details have been released, is reported to be being mobilised with IMServ and SMS as ‘meter equipment manager’ partners.