The introduction of smart power into Midlands Electricity plc

Whilst the Smart Power meter is a highly sophisticated electronic device operated by an 'intelligent' smart card, its ancestry can be traced back through the token meter era of the 1980s and 1990s, to the days of the coin-operated meter. With the benefit of many years practical experience operating a coin meter system Midlands Electricity (MEB), UK, became well aware of their disadvantages-mainly theft from meters and/or MEB employees-but there were also many other customer related problems. To eliminate these difficulties, during the mid 1980's they began the transition to token meters. However, token meters brought with them their own 'special brand' of problems. Token fraud became rife; the cost of tokens and customer plastic cards was prohibitive; it was difficult to gain access to read and re-set such meters; and the number of special calls became unacceptable. Here, the author describes how MEB set out to solve the problems created by token meters by introducing a meter which was user friendly and incorporated the best features of 13 different types of token meter used by MEB.