Are Smart Meters Smart?

Smart Meters primarily benefit the energy providers by saving them the expense of sending a man out in a van to read your meter. There is still a benefit to the energy provider’s customer as it eliminates the estimated bill which in itself was an appalling way of charging customers. Can you think of any other large bill you pay that is a calculated guess as to what the charge on the bill should be.

So the reason you have a smart meter is for your energy provider to send you an accurate bill. However, because the meter can take readings at half hourly intervals, this can possibly help with understanding how you consume energy. For example, you can compare day and night consumptions or last year with this year’s consumption. However that’s really it, you have no detail. Smart metering is being sold as an energy management tool but few companies have received real value from this half hourly data. With the smart meter their energy saving programme can only be a calculated guess at to where the energy is being consumed within the business - effectively trial and error. There is an awful lot of monitoring happening, but remarkably little targeting. Not a good business tool to promote investment into energy saving.

So the logical next step to drive down the energy consumption is to install lots of smart meters (sub meters). However, these smart meters are invasive, expensive and still only sampling at half hourly reporting level. So, still not a good option but there are now alternatives emerging. There are now new technologies that use low cost sensors which are far less expensive and sample to the sub-second.

An example of this new technology is NoWatt intelligent energy monitoring. They believe that the data collection by Smart Meters is not where the value sits but it is how you use this data to achieve change that counts. NoWatt is a software system that is fed by an inexpensive data collection system. It can, and does use meters, for very large loads and for other utilities such as gas and oil where they cannot use low cost CT sensors.

They describe themselves as technology leaders in the monitoring and targeting sector. They not only enable their clients to understand where, when and what is using energy. They can tell their clients what they should be using by comparing usage of other similar clients. NoWatt enables businesses to not only see what appliances are consuming what energy but it also helps to run the business with a granular detail of how much energy is being consumed down to the individual plug if needed.

So is the Smart Meter Smart? Well not really is the answer. It is better than the estimated bill but it does not give any insight into where the energy is being consumed. We are at the stage where energy management is beginning to mature and as energy costs rise we now need to split the energy bill into manageable cost centres that can be allocated as any other variable cost. The NoWatt intelligent energy management system is tomorrow’s energy monitoring tool and the smart meter will soon be consigned to history with its old friend the estimated bill.

Published on behalf of Intelligent Energy Saving in Bristol, suppliers of the NoWatt Energy Management System