The government has asked all of Britain's energy suppliers to install smart meters into every home in the country by 2019. These will replace existing electricity and gas meters. Smart meters are the next generation of tariff meters and are supposed to give you more control over your energy use.
Unlike standard meters which have to be read manually, either by a meter reader, or you the consumer, smart meters send the reading to the supplier without anyone having to manually read the display. This means that estimated bills should become a thing off the past.
Conventional meters measure how much energy you have used, but they do not show when you used it most. The new smart meters will be able to access accurate and up to date information about how much energy you are using, which should encourage some users to be a little more economical, switching off lights and appliances off when not in use. These new meters will still offer credit or prepayment methods, giving the flexibility and choice required in today's economic climate. In addition to the smart meter, consumers will be offered an energy display unit which will help them understand and hopefully reduce, their energy consumption.
You away already have one of these new meters in your home, for others the full scale roll out is due to start in 2014.
The NICEIC, ECA and The Electrical Safety Council lobbied Parliament and the energy suppliers to include isolation switches on the new meters. The additional cost was negligible if installed during the manufacturing process but the safety implications to electricians are huge. As usual all the relevant parties buried their heads so far in the sand that the proposal was rejected. Apparently the safety of electricians etc is not important enough to enable us to turn off the electricity when changing consumer units etc. Thanks Westminster and all the energy suppliers, that's really helpful!
For more information about smart meters, Consumer Focus has a section on it's website with a series of questions and answers. Go to http://bit.ly/smartmeters
