What are the benefits of smart meters for businesses?
As part of the national smart meter roll out, the government wants every business and household in Britain to have a smart meter installed. But what are the benefits of smart meters for businesses?
Save energy and money
A smart meter will give you detailed information about how your business is using energy for every half hour of the day. This makes it easier to identify any areas where you may be wasting energy – helping you to reduce how much energy you are using and cut your costs in the process.
Save time and get accurate bills
Smart meters automatically send meter readings to your energy supplier, meaning you don’t have to remember to provide regular meter readings. This means that every bill you receive will be based on accurate data – helping you to budget more easily.
Help the environment
As smart meters send your energy supplier information about your energy usage as frequently as every half hour, they give the grid a clearer picture of energy usage across the country. Not only does this help to prevent power cuts by balancing out supply and demand, it also helps to increase the amount of renewables in the country’s fuel mix.
At Good Energy, our in-house trading team strive to match our customers’ energy usage with renewable energy for every hour of the day. Getting a real-time picture of energy usage helps us to do this more successfully. We balance out gaps to supply the grid with renewable power equal to your total electricity usage over the year.
Use your data
You could use the data collected by your smart meter to create an energy management plan for your business. This will help you to identify what processes are using the most energy, what could be switched off, and what could be replaced with a more energy efficient solution. An energy management plan is a simple way to help you to cut your carbon emissions.
Be part of a smarter future
As we move out of the energy crisis, we will start offering smart time of use tariffs, which have cheaper rates at off-peak times to encourage you to shift your usage. New ideas are also being trialled where energy companies reward customers for reducing their energy consumption during peak times.
To be part of these initiatives, you will need a smart meter so your energy company can monitor how you are using energy throughout the day.
