The Brief
A government body charged with overseeing national smart meter roll-out needed to consider fresh technical approaches to offer better value for money to the public purse by reducing implementation costs.
Roll-out was to be deployed over a number of phases, where the latter phases presented more significant installation challenges, especially in the RF domain. These challenges were creating increasing concern as roll-out came closer and costs escalated. A solution needed to be found quickly and articulated in a form that empowered high level decision makers to make clear and effective choices.
The Solution
There were a number of phases to Fen’s work on this project.
Initially Fen reviewed existing housing stock and RF studies, and examined existing meter requirements and specifications. This allowed the re-examination and verification of some of the fundamental premises upon which roll-out decisions were based.
This initial phase informed a second phase of work that produced a wide range of recommendations to consider. These ranged from very simple low-cost software and/or hardware changes, to more sophisticated topological revisions and new product introductions. This allowed the client to consider a number of different approaches sharing costs across multiple stakeholders.
After the client identified preferred solutions from the second phase report, Fen undertook more in-depth analysis of these choices before presenting detailed results to ensure the client was clear and duly diligent in their final choice. The in-depth study involved both theoretical analysis and laboratory RF testing to provide experimental data to underwrite and verify the preliminary findings.
