♥️ I love my smart meter because........

MultiFuelBurner

There are many reasons I love my smart meter but in the main reason is because in the past 12 months it has saved me well over £600 in smart only tariffs and savings events alone.

Tell me why you love your smart meter

Netexporter

Because I can run the house and charge the car for less cash than just running the house on the SVT.

Once I've got solar and batteries installed, I expect to be paid, most months, by my energy supplier. Once bi-directional charging comes in I expect my car to become an nice litttle earner, instead of a depreciating lump sitting on the drive.

Swipe

Because I no longer have to go out in the cold and rain to update my spreadsheet

EssexHebridean

I'm new to the world of smart meters, but so far, I'm quite surprised by mine. I was fully expecting to find that the IHD was largely pointless, but it turns out that on moving in to a new house it's actually quite useful - particularly when all your appliances for the most part are new-to you as they were left by the previous owners. It's been fascinating to discover how much the dishwasher actually used for example (the old one was a built-in slimline with a non accessible plug so we were never able to accurately monitor it) as well as being able to get a proper handle on the sort of running costs we can expect from the central heating. (Another new-to-us thing as many of you might be aware). It's also enabled us to establish where in the house there are still old 50w GU10 spotlights and ensure those got switched out for LEDs - so that will be a solid saving, and far less time consuming than having to examine every individual light fitting to check. (Let's just say that the former owner of our house was an electrician, and there are a lot of that style of lights!)

Even more surprising is that MrEH has always been a bit of a smart meter sceptic - in a "we won't save anything by having one" rather than the tin foil hat type I hasten to add - but even he has been using the IHD to check on running costs for particular things too, and agrees that it is in fact very informative and that being able to get accurate figures for use is interesting. 

ArbitraryRandom

Swipe said:

Because I no longer have to go out in the cold and rain to update my spreadsheet

Yes! And if I lose track of the days then it doesn't matter because it's all there waiting for me; plus I can see exactly how my usage differs when I'm working from home vs the office vs having guests over. 

MultiFuelBurner said:

There are many reasons I love my smart meter but in the main reason is because in the past 12 months it has saved me well over £600 in smart only tariffs and savings events alone.

I moved late, so more modest savings of around >£50 from events so far this year, but I don't have the stomach for the tracker in this uncertain climate  

born_again

Do not have to read meter. Now having a EV & on IO means that are at times charging car during peak periods & house usage is @ 7.5p kWh instead of 29.56p kWh.

Result last month, was a £10 saving after moving to Octopus & IO, which included 180kWh of charge to cars. Compared to the previous month bill with Eon-Next, which was just household usage.

bluelad1927

So I can justify my stomping round the house being grumpy dad shouting 'Close the doors!!' and 'Switch the lights off!!'

Brewer21

I don't have one, I'm not missing anything, we've got everything very muchly tighter than a drum with costs. Led lights, cook on induction rather than gas (incidentally that costs £1.50 more per month than on gas, average) but we like it. Gas heating really efficient but not in use yet.
Eon tariff to fix requires smart meter, saves around £11 per year so not much of an incentive there.
Keep em, not needed I know what we are using.

TheElectricCow

I do enjoy having access to all the data a smart meter provides, and personally do make good use of the IHD. I find even the little traffic light LEDs on mine are useful, green is all good, orange means I’ve made a pot of coffee but got distracted and wandered away, and red means some natural disaster, act of God, or force majeure has caused the heating to come on full blast.

But the biggest benefit by far is, assuming cooperation from the supplier, all the additional tariffs that become available. Being able to switch between E7, single rate fixed deals, trackers, or any of the other ToU tariffs out there (with almost certainly more on the way in future) gives plenty of options for money savings to suit different lifestyles and households.

Not to mention last year’s DFS events covering 1/3 of my annual bill, but that admittedly was always looking like it would only be a one time thing with the now abolished in day adjustment.

debitcardmayhem

I love my smart meter because I have saved £200 on tin foil hats 👀😘

[Deleted User]

Brewer21 said:

I don't have one, I'm not missing anything, we've got everything very muchly tighter than a drum with costs. Led lights, cook on induction rather than gas (incidentally that costs £1.50 more per month than on gas, average) but we like it. Gas heating really efficient but not in use yet.
Eon tariff to fix requires smart meter, saves around £11 per year so not much of an incentive there.
Keep em, not needed I know what we are using.

There's more to having a smart meter than the IHD (in house display) that shows you what you're using. As you say, it sounds like you'd get very little benefit from that if you already have a good system in place - much the same for me.

What you're missing out on is the ability to buy electricity when it's cheap, either through a smart tariff like Agile or through things like the winter DFS events. Having a smart meter is a fundamental requirement for this.

To give you an idea of the scale of saving possible I've paid an average of 7.71p/kWh since I switched to a smart tarriff earlier in the year - i.e. about a quarter of what I would have paid on EON's standard tariff.

And in answer to the question posed by this thread - that's the main reason I love my smart meter :-)