WILL EVERY HOME AND SMALL BUSINESS HAVE A SMART METER BY 2020?

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Home » WILL EVERY HOME AND SMALL BUSINESS HAVE A SMART METER BY 2020?

By 2020, the UK government have announced they want every home and small business to have a smart meter installed in their home or premises. That’s 53 million meters in 30 million properties.  With 5 million smart meters installed in the UK today, that leaves a target of over 32,000 installations a day from present to end of 2020 – which seems quite an optimistic challenge.

As a business that helps our customers to source the skilled people they need, we know how difficult it is to find staff in this area.  This is backed by the results from our recent skills shortage survey with ‘Smart Metering’ being the highest ranked function that is affected by the skills shortage in the Industry.

As the biggest national infrastructure project in our lifetime, the smart meter roll-out has created a huge employment demand, with over 10,000 certified Meter engineers currently needed to meet the stretching targets.

Organisations like ECTA, Utilities Academy and the ‘Big Six’ are out there attempting to build on the number of engineers through development programmes, and apprenticeships.  However, it also presents an opportunity for the government to use this project to create an entirely new skilled workforce.

With National Apprenticeship week coming up shortly, this a golden opportunity for the government and other companies across the industry to grab the opportunity presented by the smart meter roll-out.  Investing in the future engineers now, will allow consumers and businesses to be part of the smart transformation of the energy industry.

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