Editorial Comment:

Harnessing the digital economy should be about exploiting the vast potential of a new era of connectivity to ensure we are more productive, happier and, crucially, better off. Yet new research shows that in some cases today it can actually be about the exploitation of consumers and making them poorer. So-called smart meters, which have been installed in millions of homes across the country, were supposed to herald a bright new dawn of precision energy monitoring. Instead, it turns out that the good old-fashioned rotating silver discs of years gone by were often more reliable by far. The irony is that it is a new technology – LED lights – that are causing the smart meters to go on the fritz, producing readings that can be up to seven times higher than real levels of electricity consumption.

There are two issues are stake here. The first is that energy companies must immediately launch internal investigations to measure that impact of these new findings on their customers. Refunds may be due. The second, more profound, point is that whatever the hitch in this case, there is no stopping the digital revolution. In coming years our homes and lives will inevitably be ever-more ruled by smart meters and their like. Yet what, for example, is the point of a “smart fridge” that can communicate directly with a supermarket to ensure you never run out of milk, if you are then charged for 4,000 pints of silvertop a day?

Once consumer trust is shattered, it is very hard to put the pieces back together. Yet to thrive economically in the years ahead, Britain must be driving, not rejecting, innovation. Here’s one promising idea: a tech start-up that makes smart meters that actually work.