OREANDA-NEWS. November 23, 2015. SSE SWALEC today welcomed Energy Minister Lord Bourne to its state-of-the-art smart metering training centre in Treforest, South Wales.

The facility plays a key role in SSE SWALEC’s roll out of smart meters to every customer’s home in Wales.

Lord Bourne met with some of the company’s latest recruits who are being trained as highly skilled engineers.

The installation of smart meters across Wales, England and Scotland is a massive infrastructure project that will see every single household in Great Britain having one installed over the next five years.

SSE SWALEC will be training more than 160 additional staff in South Wales to take forward the vital roll-out with many of these being trained at the Treforest site. Many of these will be new jobs and the rest current employees who will be given new training and skills.

Lord Bourne, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Wales; Energy and Climate Change, said: “Smart meters are being installed in homes across the nation to bring an end to estimated bills, make switching suppliers faster and easier, and give bill payers more control of their energy use.

“We need even more people with the necessary technical skills in South Wales and beyond, so it’s great to see SSE investing in its training facilities and upskilling engineers for these vital new roles.”

Smart meters enable customers to see, in near real time, how much they are spending on gas and electricity, helping them understand how they can use energy more efficiently.

SSE SWALEC’s teams in South Wales have played a leading role – more than 16,000 smart meters have already been installed in the region and the number of staff working on the roll out is likely to more than treble over the next few months.

Sara Jane Asquith, SSE’s Director of Metering and Smart Transformation, said: “It is a pleasure to welcome Lord Bourne to our Smart Energy Centre in Treforest. Our teams in South Wales have made strong progress in recent months. We have recruited more staff, updated our training facilities and installed thousands of smart meters in customers’ homes – all great news for the South Wales area.

“We are continuing to ramp up our Smart programme over the coming months and Treforest is playing a key role in this. The smart meter roll out is a major national infrastructure project and it is important that everyone, companies and government, work together to get the best results for customers.”

Smart meters will transform how customers use and view energy in their homes and SSE SWALEC is working with Government and other stakeholders to take forward the roll out efficiently, keeping costs and inconvenience down for customers.