Smart Meters are the new generation of electricity and gas meters which will bring about the end of estimated bills and meter readings potentially offering reliable and accurate billing based on actual meter reads, which are collected remotely and removes the need for someone to read your meter manually. The meters measure energy consumption trends giving householders and businesses instant information of their usage, both historical and real-time, to allow more energy management; they also provide two-way communication, enabling meters to be easily updated.

How will the consumers benefit?

Accurate bills - not estimated

Your smart meters will send readings automatically to your service providers, so your bills will be accurate - not estimated*. This will enable you to see the usage, price and cost figures for the energy used and thus avoid estimated bills.

If you're generating your own energy, your bills can be automatically adjusted.

More control to help you save money

Smart meters stream accurate information to a small in-home display monitor, so you can see your energy usage, costs and CO₂ emissions. This will enable the users to directly see the impact of your energy usage if you implement your own energy savings techniques. This would include changing lamps from GLS to compact fluorescent or installing energy efficient kitchen appliances.

What can Smart Meters display:

• Current electricity cost per hour
• Actual cost of electricity/gas used for the current week
• Actual cost of electricity/gas used for the current month
• Actual cost of electricity/gas used for the previous month
• kWh used for the current month
• kWh used for the current year
• CO₂ you have created for the current month  
• CO₂ you have created for the current year

When will smart meters be available?

A national roll-out of smart meters across Britain is being planned that will involve replacing 46 million meters in all 25 million homes across the country by 2020. The government intend to start the roll out of smart meter from Autumn 2013.

Time Line

Why are smart meters being introduced now?

Climate change has become one of the key topics for all parliamentary discussions with the British government and EU continuously trying to establish greener ways in which to produce energy. Domestic energy use is estimated to be 30% of all carbon emitted in the UK and therefore the implementation of smart meters is designed to promote energy efficiency in our homes and enable consumers to use less energy.  

For advice on implementing Smart Metering, please contact :

Ian Humphreys : This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it    Tel: 01883 331630