In yesterday’s election, the British public was sharply divided politically, failing to elect a majority of any party for the first time since 1974.  Yet on the subject of smart meters, the three parties receiving the lion’s share of votes – the Conservatives, Labor, and the Liberal Democrats – are sharply united in their favor.  If the likely coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats ensues, the UK will likely overtake US advanced meter rollouts and provide new learning regarding centralized meter data management and exchange such as we’re seeing in Ontario, Canada and Texas.

The reason is that both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats favor advancing the current UK goal of complete rollout from 2020 to 2017, for the former (as the Conservatives’ likely Energy and Climate Minister Greg Clark told me in London last year, where I was establishing eMeter’s EMEA operations), and 2015, for the latter (per Liberal Democrats’ leader Nick Clegg).  That’s 47 million meters, including all of the electric and gas meters in the country, nearly all of which are served by the “big six” retailers: British Gas, nPower, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern, EDF Energy, and E.ON.  And similar to systems at Ontario’s IESO and in Texas, the UK Government decided in December that the smart meter rollout will include a centralized meter data communications provider and data exchange in order to capture the scale economies of a central provider.

The US remains in the lead today, with Commission approved rollouts in Texas and California alone totaling 30 million electric and gas meters by 2017 (mostly by 2013).  With the UK’s likely new government soon to be in place, the race is on.