*2.1. Barriers in Using Smart Meter Platforms*

The worldwide roll-outs of SM and the access to the information about the real-time energy consumption create some new opportunities for consumers and suppliers [12,16,17]. The literature provides a number of findings from the recent studies in which: (i) willingness to monitor energy in general, and by means of SMP is investigated [4,8,10,18–20], (ii) factors influencing the acceptance of SM and SMP by end-users are studied [3,6,15,21–25].

There is a great number of barriers to SM acceptance that limit users' willingness to use the enabling technologies, such as smart metering information systems (platforms, SMP) [26]. The barriers include among others distrust in the industry, lack of familiarity, a sense of procedural fairness, and concerns related to privacy and cost [7,23,25]. To focus on benefits of using SM, customers must be willing to accept this technology. Various aspects of community and social SM acceptance have been already explored [3,6,7,23–25,27–29]. As in the case of any other energy technology, the lack of acceptance may lead to slowing or a halting of the development [7,30]. Evidence from SM roll-outs run in various countries all over the world have shown that the widespread implementation of SM is unlikely to be successful unless it adequately addresses the perspectives and needs of the consumers [5,7,11,16,17,31].

Table 1 summarizes the most common incentives and barriers to SM and SMP adoption.
