Issue 78

The Proposer believes that impending industry-wide challenges around Settlement Performance will stem from Suppliers’ two-tiered customer portfolios:

• Those with smart Meters and thus, in due course, Half-Hourly (HH) Settled; and
• Those without, who will forever remain non-HH (NHH)  

This Issue is already impacting a large number of Suppliers and that will increase with the smart Meter rollout and move to mandatory HH Settlement, as the remaining pot of non-smart and NHH customers will have a greater proportion of hard-to-read (HTR) sites.

Potential solutions include:

• Exclude HTR sites from the performance calculation of 97% (as per P366 ‘Supplier Charge SP08a for hard-to-read sites’);
• Exclude sites from the performance calculation of 97% where ‘all reasonable steps’ have been taken to acquire an actual read and submit it into Settlement;
• Reduce the threshold below 97% to reflect the diminishing number of NHH customers less willing to allow meter reads; and
• Introduction of obligations through the BSC, SLCs or otherwise that incentivise the customer to facilitate a meter read

Issue 78 was raised on 29 March 2019 and the first Workgroup meeting was held on 24 April 2019. It was agree to pause Issue 78 temporarily to align with the PAF review and the second Issue Group meeting was held on 28 August 2019.

The Issue Group discussed a broad range of topics but, made no recommendations at this time as everything they discussed has been included in the PAF review scope of work as a result of input form Issue 78.

The Issue 78 report was presented to the Panel on 10 October 2019.