Background: The Government’s vision is for every home to have smart energy meters, empowering people to manage their energy consumption and reduce their carbon emissions. Businesses and public sector users will also have smart or advanced energy metering suited to their needs. The roll-out of smart meters will play an important role in Great Britain’s transition to a low-carbon economy, and help us meet some of the long-term challenges we face in ensuring an affordable, secure and sustainable energy supply. The necessary shared infrastructure for smart meters to operate across competing energy suppliers will be provided by the Data and Communications Company (DCC) and its service providers. The DCC will provide messaging services between the 53 million smart meters in 30 million premises and the business systems of energy suppliers, network operators and other authorised service users. Up to three regional Communications Service Providers (CSPs) will provide the communications infrastructure between the DCC and consumer premises and a single Data Service Provider (DSP) will manage the large volumes of transactional data that flows through the system. The establishment of the DCC and its services will involve creating a new GB-wide entity with reach to the gas and electricity meters in every home and smaller non-domestic premises. To deliver the early establishment of DCC's services, the Government has decided that it will initiate procurement of the two major service provider contracts in parallel with the DCC licence application process. This will bring forward the date at which DCC services can be provided. These procurements are being conducted on behalf of the future DCC Licensee by the Department of Energy and Climate Change and are at the detailed solution stage. Requirements: The supplier is required to provide independent technical assurance of the communication solutions proposed by CSP bidders in order to support the DECC’s technical evaluation of detailed solutions and final tenders. The areas where DECC will seek independent technical assurance are expected to include the following: • Spectrum availability and interference – to confirm, in conjunction with Ofcom, the initial and enduring availability of spectrum required by bidder solutions and to assess the risk of interference; • Bandwidth – to assess independently the claims (and supporting evidence) bidders have made regarding the ability of the primary, secondary and any further technologies chosen for their solutions to accommodate a range of traffic volume scenarios; and • Coverage – to assess independently the claims (and supporting evidence) bidders have made for the geographic reach of the primary, secondary and any further technologies chosen for their solutions to reach communications hubs in domestic and non-domestic premises across the full range of geographies, meter locations and property types. This assessment should include the robustness of proposed solutions to connect to hard to reach meter locations, such as those found within Multiple Dwelling Units (MDUs), where meters may be located in basements or other locations that are typically challenging for communications technologies. To provide assurance on these areas to DECC, the supplier shall be required to perform an expert technical review of evidence, submitted by bidders in support of their solution proposals. It is expected, therefore that the supplier shall have sufficient expertise to carry out such a review and that this expertise shall include: • A deep theoretical understanding of the principles of wired and wireless communications technologies; • Detailed knowledge and practical experience related to designing, testing and delivering wired and wireless communications technologies that are directly relevant to SMIP; and • The ability to collate and analyse large volumes of detailed technical evidence provided by bidders to provide a robust and timely assessment as to whether such evidence is viable in support of solution proposals.
Ref: 139/03/2011,
Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)
LG ,1 Victoria Street
London
SW1A 2AW
Andrew Wilson
0300 068 6073
andrew.wilson@decc.gsi.gov.uk
United Kingdom
Contract value: 50000.00 - 100000.00GBP
Published: 7 Nov 2012, Receipt by: 16 Nov 2012
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