Pelican Smart meter from Eseye

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The “wee folk” have been busy this year in Reigate, England—an historic market town in the London metropolitan area. Fifty Christmas trees have been decorated with fairy lights (as holiday lights are called in the United Kingdom) and are on display at the town’s annual festival, which runs through December 15.

This year, however, the festival trees—each decorated by a local community group, from sporting teams to charities to theater troupes—will hold something in addition to lights and garlands. Each tree will carry its own smart electricity meter, so that the energy used during the festival can be documented.

The new Pelican Smart Electricity Meter probably got its name from a mythical characteristic of the bird that dates back to medieval Europe. At that time, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing her own blood by wounding her own breast when no other food was available. As a result, the pelican became a symbol of Christianity.

The Pelican meter represents the result of a joint venture between Surrey, England-based Eseye, a machine-to machine (M2M) strategy developer ,and Devizes, England-based T.H. White Energy Ltd. All of the necessary metering components have been built into one IP55 protective enclosure box—which comes pre-wired and pre-tested to ensure a quick installation. And because the meter uses Eseye’s AnyNet SIM, it can operate on any cellular network, so it is ready to go and reliable.

Unfortunately, the smart meters will not also measure the energy involved in removing the decorations and disposing of the trees in an eco-friendly way. However, stay tuned to this channel to find out how much energy 50 Christmas trees use over the course of five days.