Does a smart meter save money on energy bills?
Run an energy comparison to get started. Uswitch takes a look at the research available to help answer that question. Smart meter energy savings  Smart Energy GB, the organisation that runs the awareness campaign for the national roll out, put out a report in May 2019 that found that 85% of smart meter households made changes to their behaviour that resulted in making an energy saving. Those surveyed reported finding the in-home display valuable in understanding how their behaviour  such boiling the kettle or running the dishwasher  impacts their consumption in real-time. A smart meters in home display also computes that consumption into pounds and pence by linking it to your households energy tariff. So, if you are paying 16 pence per kWh of electricity, and have a daily standing charge of 22 pence, and use 2 kWh to boil the kettle several times a day, your smart meter in home display will calculate this activity into an easy-to-understand, pounds-and-pence figure you can view daily, weekly or monthly. The aim in providing this visibility is that households will change their daily behaviour based on a new level of understanding of how that behaviour impacts their consumption and their costs. Smart meter energy bills savings  There are a few ways that smart meters could help you save on your energy bill costs. Firstly, as mentioned, by adjusting your behaviour to use less energy day-to-day based on feedback received from your smart meters in home display, you may find savings on your bill. Smart Energy GB have calculated that, collectively, the savings could be as much as 560 million if everyone in Britain changed to a smart meter. This savings figures was further broken down regionally as part of their summer campaign to promote the benefits of upgrading to a smart meter, with the following results:  Londoners could save up to 69.6 million a year if each household (583,083 homes) had a smart meter installed  Scotland could save as much as 51.1 million a year if each household (544,719 homes) had a smart meter installed  West Midlands households could save as much as 49.1 million a year if each household (585,694 homes) had a smart meter installed  The above numbers were calculated by Smart Energy GB based on a 2% average energy consumption saving per household per year, which equates to 21.17 when calculated in line with fuel prices published by the Energy Saving Trust in March 2018. This is then multiplied by the number of households per region, which was then rounded. Secondly, by automatically sending your meter readings, your supplier wont have to rely on estimated consumption and youll be paying only for what you actually use. By switching from estimated billing to more accurate energy bills, you could avoid shock bills at a future date. Live savvy tip from Hubbub  We've teamed up with environmental charity Hubbub to bring you one last tip on how a smart meter could help you live savvy. #LiveSavvy tip: If youre looking into getting a smart meter, spend a little time looking into different types of energy deals as well. Check out renewable energy deals and ethical energy suppliers, they could actually turn out to be cheaper for you!