Smart Meters: Monitor Your Energy Consummation
When you open your bill from your British gas electricity provider, chances are that you wince some months. Whether it’s because you had to keep cool and turn on the air conditioning, or because you had company and everyone brought their computers, your bill has far too many zeroes on the end for your taste. But how were you supposed to know? After all, you don’t know how much money you’re going to owe until the bill gets there, do you? Well, with smart meters that’s not necessarily true, and they can help you cut down on those expensive power binges by making you aware of just how much you’ve spent.
What is a Smart Meter?
A smart meter is a lot like a traditional power meter, except that it’s digital instead of a spinning gauge. However, the other big difference is that it can send messages through the grid and back to your power company. In fact, every 15 minutes a smart meter sends a message to the grid, letting them know how your power usage is going. These gauges help energy providers tell when there are outages much faster, and it means they don’t need to send meter readers out to check those homes that have smart meters. The meters check themselves, after all.
How Does This Help Homeowners?
Because your meter is constantly updated, it allows you to see just how much power you’re consuming, when and where. For those people that want to try and curb their energy spending, they need something to show them what the more expensive habits are. They also need a way to tell if what they’re cutting out, or turning off, is actually saving them enough money to make it worth while in the long run. With a more traditional gauge this can be hard to see, and more homeowners end up relying on their bills to see a pattern, which can take a great deal longer and cost a lot more.
It really is that simple. You simply look at your activities throughout the day and compare them against your smart meter. It will tell you how much you spent and when, so you can pinpoint the biggest energy expenditures in your home and start to curb them. Maybe it’s something as simple as turning your computer off rather than leaving it in sleep mode when you leave the house. Maybe you need to open up your blinds and leave your lights off as long as you can. Whatever you do, it’s important that you make sure you can check to see how effective it is.
These meters give you near instant feedback so that you can curb your energy bill in days, rather than months. It will allow people to be more responsible with their energy usage, and it will let them see exactly what they can expect to pay when the end of the month rolls around. You can’t ask for a more effective gauge than that, can you?
Kim has done a lot of research on dual fuel prices like British Gas Electricity, which provides the lowest and best prices in UK energy market.