To help vulnerable customers, we need smart meters that work

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's focus on ensuring that as many people as possible have a smart meter stands to bring multiple benefits, including:

• More accurate energy bills.
• Innovative time-of-use tariffs.
• More granular data to help manage energy supply.
• Improved performance for electric cars, heating, and other home energy management devices.

These are all important, but in the midst of an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, growing concerns around the UK's energy security, and government figures¹ showing that 13% of households were in fuel poverty last year, one of the smart meter rollout’s most important benefits will be the support it can bring to vulnerable customers.

Smart meters can help our efforts to support vulnerable customers

As the cost-of-living and energy crises have taken their toll in recent years, we at E.ON have done our best to support vulnerable customers. Our efforts and initiatives include:

• The E.ON Next Energy Fund which helps eligible customers who are struggling to pay their bills with direct financial support, replacement of inefficient or broken appliances, and debt write-off.
  
  
• The Warm Home Discount Scheme which offered struggling customers £150 credit on their energy bills to help them through the cold winter months.
  
  
• The E.ON Next Priority Register which helps vulnerable customers with services such as prioritised support in the case of a supply interruption, the option to nominate a family member or carer to look after an energy account, and other measures to provide vulnerable customers with peace of mind.
  
  
• Wellbeing Checks which have helped us provide tailored support to more than 75,000 customers.

Half-hourly readings from smart meters will ensure that bills are more accurate, preventing people from falling into debt over unnecessary overpayments, but they will also provide data that can help us focus our future efforts and make sure vulnerable customers are receiving the support they need as soon as they need it, while helping them keep bills low through more targeted energy efficiency support.

Crucially, customers across the UK, and especially the most vulnerable, will only see these benefits if the smart meters that are installed work as intended.

Supporting customers is about more than installation targets

Helping DESNZ and Ofgem reach their goals for the smart meter rollout, we had the second most ambitious installation targets of any UK supplier, and have installed the second highest number of meters in people's homes. Installation targets are important, but we believe that making sure that these devices work for everyone should be just as much of a priority.

Citizens Advice has found that 11% of smart meters installed by the end of 2023 were reported as not working in 'smart mode' – sending usage data where it needs to go – and this is just one of the ways in which many meter are not fully operational. Installing millions of these devices without taking adequate measures to make sure they work means they will not ultimately benefit the people who need them most. That’s why we are not only focussed on hitting our targets, but on deploying our dedicated Smart Meter Health teams to follow up and ensure that every meter we install is fully functional. In fact, industry data we have received places us among the best suppliers for making sure meters are working properly.

We understand this uses resources that could otherwise be poured into more installation, but we also know that non-working smart meters will not help customers – especially the most vulnerable – and that this should ultimately be our goal.

You can find out more about our customers’ views on smart meters.