Smart meters for your business

Smart meters are the next generation of gas and electricity meters. They offer a range of intelligent functions and provide businesses with more accurate information, bringing an end to estimated billing.

Smart meters work by using mobile phone signals (or similar wireless communications technology) to send us your energy consumption data. This brings an end to estimated billing and manual meter readings. If for any reason this should fail, we’ll have to revert to producing your bills based on estimated or manual readings.

All types of smart meters must meet UK and EU product safety standards. They’ve been rigorously tested in laboratory conditions to ensure they work correctly and are safe to use.

You’re being offered a smart meter as part of the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy. Their aim is to develop a world-leading smart energy system, delivering secure, cheap and clean energy.

SSE Energy Solutions is bound by the Retail Energy Code (REC) Smart Installation Schedule. The Schedule aims to ensure smart meter installation is a positive experience for you, the customer. The REC schedule sets minimum standards which all members must follow, so you know what to expect during the installation process. It also ensures we help you understand the benefits smart meters can bring to individual customers, and as part of the wider industry Smart Programme.

For more information about the UK’s smart metering roll-out, use the following links:

• The Retail Energy Code (REC) website
• Find out more about how smart meters work – Smart Meters Guide on gov.co.uk
• Further information about smart meters at Smart Energy GB

The only data we receive from your smart meter is your precise usage for the time period. When your smart meter is installed, it will be set to share your monthly meter readings only. After installation, you will be given the opportunity to access your half-hourly consumption data as well.

You can change how often you’d like your meter to be read at any point. This can be done by calling customer services on 0345-725-2526. Want to know more about how we record, store and use the data from your smart meter? Our Smart Data Guide 2021 will answer your questions.

If you choose to access the half-hourly energy consumption data from your smart meter, you can register for SSE Clarity. SSE Clarity is our free online energy management platform that can help you cut down on the amount of energy you use. To find out more, visit the SSE Clarity page.

Smart meters use similar technology to mobile phone networks to send data securely to energy suppliers. This is sent through the Data Communications Company (DCC), which is part of a national infrastructure project. The DCC establishes and manages the data and communications network that connects smart meters to the business systems of energy suppliers, network operators and other authorised service users of the network.

The DCC ensures consumers can reliably maintain their smart service when they switch energy suppliers. All SMETS2 meters installed at domestic and non-domestic sites must be operated via the DCC. Your data will be kept in a secure manner, governed by strict industry and regulatory requirements, and will not be shared with anyone without your permission.

If your previous supplier registered your smart meter with the Data Communications Company (DCC), we’ll be able to provide our smart meter service. However, if your meter was not previously DCC registered, you may lose some smart functionality when moving to SSE Energy Solutions. This remains an industry-wide issue. The Government is currently facilitating an ongoing programme across all suppliers to ensure that most of these smart meters are enrolled and adopted by the DCC to allow the meter to regain its full smart functionality. SSE Energy Solutions may be able to arrange a replacement smart meter so you can continue to enjoy all the benefits of smart metering.

With smart metering, your bills will reflect accurate meter readings rather than estimates. This should improve your budgeting and forecasting. When you get a smart meter, you’ll also be offered access to SSE Clarity, our free online energy management platform. SSE Clarity makes it easy to measure and manage the energy use in your business. Simple to set up, it takes the profile data generated by your smart meter and shows you how much energy you’re using and when. This gives you the ability to identify how energy savings can be made. For example, it may help you identify periods during the day when your business’s energy use is high – and allow you to take action to address this. It could also provide opportunities to plan, manage, control and optimise your energy consumption.

Visit our SSE Clarity page for more information.

There is no additional cost for a standard smart meter installation, and ongoing maintenance costs are covered in the same way as your present meter/s.

Occasionally, additional work may be required to ensure your energy supply is in a safe condition for a smart meter to be installed, which may be subject to additional charges.

Smart meters are part of a vital upgrade to our national energy infrastructure and underpin the delivery of the UK’s net zero commitment. To ensure customers can benefit from Smart as soon as possible, the Government has set energy suppliers annual, individual installation targets under a 4-year rollout framework.

SSE Energy Solution’s annual installation targets for 2022 are to install:

• 37,507 electric smart meters
• 5,363 gas smart meters

SSE Energy Solutions (SSE Energy Supply Limited) does not hold a domestic supply license and supplies non-domestic customers only. All customers are supplied via credit meters as we do not support prepayment supply. These are reflected in the targets above.

This is the requirement of energy suppliers to take all reasonable steps to install a smart meter at all domestic and non-domestic premises on or before 31 December 2021 subject to certain exceptions:

AMR meters exception end date – AMR meters installed at any designated premise before 5 December 2018 count towards a suppliers rollout obligation. Where AMR meters are installed, they may remain in place beyond the end date for the smart meter rollout. However, unless they need to be advanced meters for technical reasons, they will need to be replaced with smart meters once they reach the end of their lives.

Technical exceptions – Premises with Current Transformer (CT) meters and large gas meters are exempt from the roll-out duty where AMR meters are installed.

SMETS1 end date – SMETS1 meters installed at designated premises and made SMETS1 compliant before 5 December 2018 (SSE Energy Solutions does not offer SMETS1 meters).

Non-domestic consumer choice – energy suppliers can offer SME and larger non-domestic consumers a choice between an AMR and a SMETS2 smart meter (microbusinesses are eligible for SMETS2 smart meters, only). This consumer choice policy will continue after the AMR end date is reached.

From 2022 to 2025, all energy suppliers will have binding annual targets to install smart and advanced meters to their remaining non-smart customers. These targets will be reset annually based on the proportion of the supplier’s customer base without a smart or advanced meter.

As part of the environmental objective to improve the UK’s overall energy efficiency and reduce its carbon emissions, the Government announced its plans to replace the nation's conventional meters with smart meters by end of December 2021. The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has mandated that from 5th December 2018, energy suppliers who intend to continue offering AMR alongside SMETS2 must offer a choice between these two types of meters to all non-microbusiness customers.

Therefore, as part of the BEIS Consumer Choice Policy, we still offer our larger customers a choice between ‘AMR’ metering, which is available now, and ‘SMETS2’. For the purposes of this policy adoption, we classify a large customer as one with 10 or more sites. Businesses with nine sites or fewer will only be eligible for SMETS2 meters.

No. The smart meter rollout is reaching a diverse range of non-domestic premises, from small microbusinesses through to smaller sites of large multi-site organisations. These consumers will wish to access different levels of data and to access it in different ways. However, some energy suppliers are choosing to provide IHDs as part of their supply offer. We offer all our AMR and SMETS2 customers access to SSE Clarity, our free online energy management platform. When using SSE Clarity, you’ll be able to measure, manage and forecast the energy use in your business. Visit our SSE Clarity page for more information.

Our SMETS2 customers will be able to access near-real time information directly from the meter. However, they need to arrange for their own Consumer Access Device (CAD).

The Smart Meter Installation Schedule, part of the Retail Energy Code (REC), specifies minimum standards for energy suppliers to follow in relation to the installation of smart meters in domestic and microbusiness premises.

Amongst other provisions, the schedule ensures that:

• Energy suppliers must offer energy efficiency advice to microbusinesses before, during or after the installation visit

• Sales are conducted in a fair, transparent, appropriate and professional manner

• No high-pressure tactics are used

To ensure energy suppliers are adhering to the schedule, they are obliged to engage an independent survey company to contact customers following their installation appointment to ask their opinion of the entire installation process. All answers will be treated with confidence and collated using anonymised data.

Visit the REC website for more information.

Smart Energy GB is the national campaign for the smart meter rollout. Its task is to help everyone in Great Britain understand smart meters. Smart Energy GB is required to extend its consumer engagement activities to microbusinesses, where it is cost-effective to do so.

Visit the Smart Energy GB website for more information.

We’ll do our best to assess whether there are any signalling issues associated with your business premises when we book your installation appointment.

In most cases, the smart meter will simply replace the existing meter. In some cases, alternative communication methods like remote aerials can be used where the signal is poor and may be subject to additional cost.

Our smart meter rollout is now well under way, and we are currently in the process of contacting all our customers with qualifying meter types. If you’re eligible, we will be in contact by the end of December 2021 to offer you an appointment. If you require a smart meter sooner, please contact us, or you can take a look at our FAQs for answers to any other smart meter queries.

Energy suppliers are required to supply non-domestic customers with smart meters if they fall within the following two categories:

• Gas customers using less than 732 MWh annually
• Electricity customers in profile classes 1 to 4 (your profile class appears on your bill)

Microbusinesses are defined as companies that meet one of the following criteria:

• Employs fewer than 10 employees (or their full time equivalent) and has an annual turnover or balance sheet no greater than €2 million
• Uses no more than 100,000 kWh of electricity per year
• Uses no more than 293,000 kWh of gas per year

Microbusinesses are eligible to receive next-generation SMETS2 smart meters.

At SSE Energy Solutions, our priority is keeping both our customers and teams safe. As a result, we’ve taken extra steps to ensure the on-site working practices performed by our installation partners are COVID secure:

• You will receive a call before the visit to ensure it is still safe for the engineer to attend. They will also assess the site on their arrival. Please be prepared to advise whether anyone in the property has been identified as a COVID close contact and/or is self-isolating, as this may mean that we need to re-schedule the visit.
• All engineers will carry sanitiser and antibacterial wipes to wipe down any surfaces they come into contact with both before and after use.
• They will be wearing a face mask and will be fully equipped with the necessary PPE following the latest Government Guidelines.
• They’ll also maintain social distancing and may ask you to give them space while they fit your meter/s.

You can find our installation partner’s COVID risk assessments linked below:

• Energy Assets
• SMS
• Imserv

To ensure a successful install is possible, the engineer will carry out a quick site inspection before installing the new meter and check the network coverage in the meter location.

The actual installation is quite quick and should take no more than two hours. Please note, the engineer will have to turn your electricity or gas off for around 30 to 40 minutes. The engineer will also show you how the meter works.

Smart Metering Systems Plc (SMS Plc) are one of our installation partners for our SMETS2 smart meter rollout programme. We selected SMS Plc as a trusted partner because they’re a nationwide firm with over 20 years of experience in the energy sector. Their highly skilled engineers are smart meter specialists who will carry out your upgrade quickly, with minimal disruption to your day.

SMS Plc will contact you to arrange your installation appointment. Their engineers carry SMS-branded IDs, which they’ll be happy to present on request. If you’d like to know more, visit the SMS website for more information.

Energy Assets Ltd are one of our installation partners for our SMETS2 smart meter rollout programme.

Their highly skilled engineers are smart meter specialists who will carry out your upgrade quickly, with minimal disruption to your day. Energy Assets Ltd will contact you to arrange your installation appointment. Their engineer(s) will have an Energy Assets identity card, so please feel free to ask to see this before allowing them entry to your premises.

If you’d like to know more, visit the Energy Assets Ltd website for more information.

You will continue to be billed in line with your contract terms. Your billing statement will show the new meter details along with your first smart meter reading. While your billing terms will remain the same, you can change to monthly billing once your smart meter is installed.

If you’ve been under-billed due to a genuine billing error, we promise not to ‘back bill’ your business for a period greater than 12 months. This applies to all SMEs and to single-site, non-half-hourly customers and quarterly billed gas customers for a period of 12 months, if we’re responsible for the error. For microbusinesses, unless we have been unable to contact a customer due to their obstructive, or manifestly unreasonable behaviour, we would never back bill beyond a period of 12 months.

We think every business needs an efficient energy management strategy, so we can offer you guidance, tailored to suit your business needs. As part of your smart meter installation, your engineer will be happy to provide you with energy efficiency guidance, or you can visit our tailored energy efficiency guidance web page.

Every smart meter customer will be offered free access to our online energy management tool, SSE Clarity. SSE Clarity takes profile data and shows you when your business is using energy. It’s free to use and designed to help you make sense of the information generated by your smart meter.

SSE Clarity can help you see patterns and anomalies in your usage. It also allows you to set alarms and notifications so you can be alerted if you suddenly start using more energy than normal. SSE Clarity is the business web-based equivalent of the in-home displays we provide with smart meters at domestic premises.

Visit our SSE Clarity page for more information.

If you would like to give us some feedback on the installation process, require more information, or if you believe your new smart meter may be faulty, please call our team on 03450-729-563. You will not be charged for the rectification of any fault found within the smart metering system.

All smart meters installed by SSE Energy Solutions contain firmware which can be updated as the technology develops. Whenever an update is released, it will be sent to your meter over the dedicated secure network, in the same way updates are sent to your smartphone. When the update is received, your meter will install it automatically and continue working as normal.

The updates you receive will enhance or maintain the performance of your smart meter. Updates could include, but aren’t limited to, security upgrades, performance enhancements or additional smart meter features. And to avoid bothering you unnecessarily, we won’t clog up your inbox with smart meter update notifications.

Your smart meter can record consumption on 48 different registers. Any number of these registers can be used in any combination, depending on your supplier and your chosen tariff. This enables suppliers to charge different amounts at different times of the day, or different days of the week. To keep your bills simple, any registers that aren’t being used to record consumption aren’t normally shown. This Primary Total is the sum of all 48 consumption registers and increases each month to display your total usage. It lets you keep track of your overall consumption, regardless of which registers are being used. It also lets you check that the correct readings have been used when changing suppliers. Most UK suppliers have agreed to show the primary total on their bills as a consistent source of usage data.

If you currently have a SMETS1¹ smart meter, installed by SSE Metering, your smart meter may not work properly if you move to an SSE Energy Solutions contract. In addition, if you received an In-Home-Display device with your SMETS1 smart meter, this could also be affected. Under these circumstances, your meter may stop communicating with us. If this happens, we’ll have to go back to asking you for a manual meter read. Furthermore, your In-Home-Display device may not be displaying the most up-to-date unit price information. Please note, this is an industry-wide issue affecting SMETS1 customers who switch between different suppliers.

The industry is working to fix this problem, and as a result, all SMETS1 smart meters are being adopted and enrolled with the Data Communications Company (DCC). The DCC is the secure central body that was set up to manage the communications between all suppliers and newer SMETS2 smart meters. This is a government led-initiative with a completion date planned for 31 December 2022. As soon as the DCC communicates the exact enrolment date for each meter, we’ll contact our SMETS1 customers with more information.

Once your SMETS1 meter is enrolled with the DCC and can communicate with our systems, it should operate in smart mode and its smart capability should be restored. This includes automated meter reading and the ability to switch to another supplier without losing the smart functionality, providing the new supplier has the capability to accept SMETS1 smart meters.

¹SMETS1 smart meters are the earlier versions of smart meters which allowed customers to submit automatic meter readings remotely. They also enabled customers to access their energy data.

If your previous supplier registered your smart meter with the Data Communications Company (DCC), we’ll be able to provide our smart meter service. However, if your meter was not registered with the DCC, by coming to SSE Energy Solutions, you may lose some smart functionality provided by your previous supplier.

This currently remains an industry-wide issue, however, the Government is currently facilitating an ongoing programme of work across all suppliers to ensure the majority of these smart meters are enrolled and adopted by the DCC, in order to allow the meter to regain its full smart functionality. In the meantime, SSE Energy Solutions may still be able to arrange a replacement smart meter so you can continue to enjoy all the benefits of smart metering.

The Government has made a commitment to help the UK become more energy efficient and reduce energy use. It has therefore set a target to ensure all our customers have a smart meter installed by end of December 2021.

From 2022 to 2025, all energy suppliers will have binding annual targets to install smart and advanced meters to their remaining non-smart customers. Each year these targets will be re-set based on the proportion of a supplier’s customer base without a smart or advanced meter.

Visit the Smart Energy GB website for more information about the initiative.

Yes. The Government decided in August 2017 that all energy suppliers to non-domestic premises should use the Data Communications Company (DCC) for the operation of SMETS2 meters. This decision was taken to ensure non-domestic consumers with smart meters had access to fully interoperable smart meters and the benefits that they bring.

SSE Energy Solutions offers larger customers a choice between ‘Automatic Meter Reading’ (AMR) meters and ‘SMETS2’ smart meters. Smaller businesses (those with nine sites or fewer) are being offered SMETS2 meters only.

With AMR meters, your energy data is retrieved remotely by an appointed Data Collector (using mobile phone networks) and sent to your supplier. You can view your business’s half-hourly data consumption after two days using our free online management platform, SSE Clarity.

With SMETS2 smart meters, energy data is transferred through the Data Communications Company (DCC), a centralised, secure, national network. Like an AMR meter, you’ll be able to access SSE Clarity but will also be able to access your energy data in near-real-time when linked to a personal device.

Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS) meters are controlled by radio signals to complete certain functions such as switching between peak and off-peak times and maintaining heating and hot water. On 31st March 2023, the service that transmits these radio signals will be switched off nationwide, affecting the functionality of these meters across the industry.

We want to ensure all our customers continue getting their heating and hot water, which is why we're exchanging these for smart meters.

We're currently in the process of contacting all customers impacted by this. If you think may be affected and haven't received any correspondence from us, please email radioteleswitching@sse.com.

If you would like more information on the Radio Teleswitch Service closure, please take a look at our dedicated blog.

A number of our resources are available in Welsh. If you’d like to receive a copy of our Welsh smart metering information, please call 0345-0729-563 and our team can assist you further.

Thanks to the support of Smart Energy GB, we can provide you with free resources relating to smart metering in several other languages, as well as in formats such as braille, audio and large print. Just give our team a call on 0345-0729-563 to find out how we can help.