Energy firms to introduce smart meters

The modern world is increasingly reliant on data - internet usage is tracked and recorded, phone calls are logged and billed - but what about the raw enabling product itself: electricity?

Although most of the world's households and businesses still receive rough estimations of back-dated energy bills, there are moves afoot by governments and power companies to record exact consumption by installing smart meters at every door.

Smart meters communicate with utility companies almost constantly to build a detailed picture of each household's electricity consumption and are hoped to encourage, if not a reduction, then at least a plateauing in electricity use.

This is the "smart grid" and the big data it will create is crucial. The International Energy Agency reports that global energy consumption is increasing by two per cent a year, which effectively means a doubling in demand for electricity every 35 years. With the onset of an era of electric cars, the pressure on existing grids could be immense. But there's a less obvious demand at play, too.

"What's starting to happen all over the world - in the US, Japan, Britain and most of Europe - is that consumers are demanding basic information about consumption," says Nakul Duggal, vice-president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, which helps utility companies link smart meters to grids using existing cellular networks.

Once smart meters are in place, smartphone apps that track exact usage will probably become available for every consumer, though the main way of interacting with the utility company will be via an in-home display mounted on a wall. Utility companies are likely to use this information to analyse energy usage to produce detailed advice for each customer on saving energy, perhaps based on comparisons with similar-sized households located in the area.