It was interesting to read your article on Smart Meters in the April edition of the Mature Times. We’ve had a Smart Meter for a couple of years now. As was explained, it comes in two parts – there’s an actual replacement meter and also a screen that reports on your energy usage.
The replacement meter itself is great, it sends full information about your energy usage to your supplier and you can use various tools on their website to compare it to the same period in previous years. It provides information on a monthly basis rather than quarterly and so you can see seasonal variations well too. It also allows comparison to similar customers in your area.
The home information screen we had running for a few days but after that it’s been in the cupboard! It has a feature that tells you if you are using energy efficiently and has a green/amber/red signal for how you’re doing. The trouble with it was it went red as soon as you switched the kettle on! If we’d left it on for a couple of hours it might have been excessive but making a cup of tea…
We’ve recently changed energy supplier (a long story) and our new supplier apparently can’t access our smart meter so it’s back to giving them meter readings. Your article did say that the meters are compatible with all suppliers so maybe one day they’ll start to read it, we’ll see.
Charles Etchells by email
