Going Green - Making savings on rising bills using a smart energy meter

Q: Can my smart meter help me save money on my bills?

It can help you keep on top of your energy use.

In itself, it can’t cut your bills, but it provides you with a great tool to understand where and when you can reduce your energy consumption.

Knowledge is power!

Here’s the lowdown ...

Smart meters measure exactly how much gas and electricity you’re using and transmit this information to your energy supplier via a remote connection.

They mean you are only paying for the actual energy you’ve used rather than an estimate.

More than 40 per cent of all domestic and small business meters are now smart.

Every home and office in England, Scotland and Wales will have been offered one for free by mid-2025.

Second generation smart meters are compatible with any supplier so you can still switch your provider.

Smart meters can help you reduce your energy consumption, save money and lower your carbon footprint.

Using the info from your smart meter, you can make savings around your home.

For example, you can identify times and situations when you’re using more energy.

This can help you work out which appliances are using up energy unnecessarily, such as computers or televisions on standby.

You could also work out how much energy your washing machine saves by switching to eco mode or line drying instead of tumble drying.

To get the most out of your smart meter, it pays to get to know your in-home display (IHD), the small screen that shows your energy usage.

It lets you know your energy consumption in terms of kilowatt-hours (kWh) and pounds and pence.

On most displays, you can choose to see this data as daily, weekly or monthly.

You can also see real-time data, allowing you to work out the energy consumption of particular appliances.

Some meters show energy usage in graph form, so you can see peaks and troughs over time.

Finally, you can use the display to check if your spending is higher than usual, as it shows historic consumption.

Having a smart meter will allow you to take advantage of ‘time of use’ tariffs, meaning it will cost you less to use energy at off-peak times.

You might even get paid to use electricity, for example on a windy day, when there’s a lot of energy generated by wind farms.

We’re already starting to see some of these tariffs, such as Agile Octopus from Octopus Energy.

Former Manchester United footballer Chris Smalling has launched a venture capital fund to invest in eco-friendly start-ups.