Mr. John Melvin:

The information from the meters will be transmitted through telecommunications infrastructure to ESB Networks, which is the distribution system operator. It will hold that information. The information will be pulled a number of times a day back to ESB Networks. This all assumes that the customer has opted in and has allowed the information to travel on that basis. That will record the consumption every half hour. That information is then passed on to the supplier of that customer. CRU will not be getting these data on a minute by minute basis.

On the question of whether the customer will see a bill for the installation of a smart meter, the answer is, "No, they will not." However, the meters cost money. There is already a meter in place. The paying down of the cost of that and its maintenance is inbuilt into the distribution system tariffs that form part of a customer's retail bill. No one will approach customers and present them with a bill for the new smart meter, rather it will be a case of providing them with their new meter. They either will have opted in, in which case the data will flow, or they will have not, in which case only the standard amount of data will come.

As for getting that price information to the consumer, there are many different methodologies and mechanisms. For example, the half-hourly price is available on our website today. One of the ways in which this might work, and it is only one such way, is for the customer to have an app in their home that is connected to the Internet that knows the price in this half-hour and that, essentially, could turn on the immersion now because the price is very low and there will be hot water when X, Y and Z comes home. These sorts of decisions can be made without human intervention. When we did the customer behaviour trial, essentially, as Ms MacEvilly said, the technology was not that sophisticated and it required customers to decide themselves that they would not turn on the dishwasher or the washing machine until after 7 p.m. or that they would get an item of work finished before 5 p.m., if they were home before 5 p.m. Even that required level of human intervention allowed people to shift nearly 9% of the peak most expensive consumption out of that area. People had the simple information that the period from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. was expensive and could move consumption from that period. Those who participated were able to move activity away from the more expensive periods into the cheaper periods. Also, by being able to see their information over the past week, they could see, for example, that the immersion must have been on all day and no one was in the house. The provision of such information to the home, possibly by way of the Internet of things in the future in a more sophisticated way, will allow people to cut their overall consumption by around 3%.