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Ofgem has been urged to draw up a “crisis plan” ready for the 1 July when the Radio Teleswitching System (RTS) is switched off.
Once the RTS is switched off hundreds of thousands of homes across the country will have no power.
Simon Francis, co-ordinator of End Fuel Poverty Coalition warned MPs that the RTS switch is “doomed to failure.”
Older electricity meters that controls heating and hot water that is part of the RTS system will be obsolete and energy firms have been provided with a deadline to change meters by 30 June.
Energy UK has warned that 392,000 households by mid April still have the soon to be obsolete RTS meters.
Francis told the Work and Pensions Committee, “The process is doomed to failure. We are not going to see the RTS switch off on the first of July.
“There’s still going to be hundreds of thousands of RTS meters in people’s homes on the date that they’re saying they’re going to start winding down the signal.
“We don’t know what is going to happen.
“The risks that have been outlined are either that your hot water and your heating are always on and you’re going to be running up a massive bill, or it’s always off, and even in the summer that’s going to be disastrous for people, especially pensioners, in not having access to hot water, or it’s going to fix in to a mode where it’s going to start charging you at the higher rate, and again, that’s going to be a real problem.
“And I don’t think we’ve heard anything from industry about which of those is most likely, indeed, it might be a combination of different factors in different areas.”
He added: “So, it’s really concerning, and we need the industry and Ofgem to present a crisis plan as to what is going to happen on the first of July, to offset this challenge.”
Ned Hammond, Energy UK’s deputy director for customers told the committee, “While the replacement rate has increased a lot, it is clearly not at the point it would need to get to, to get down to zero customers by the end of June.
“We’re working incredibly hard as an industry with Ofgem and Desnz (The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) on a carefully managed phase out plan to ensure than we can replace all the RTS meters over time and minimise any of those impacts on customers.
“We’re very focused on vulnerable customers in these circumstances, in particular as well, to make sure that we are as much as possible trying to engage with them through different methods to help them through that and also be ready to provide them with any support if there are any of those issues.
“We are working very hard on that plan at the moment and we’ll have it in place in time for the end of June.”
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