How Do Smart Meters Work

Smart meters are the next generation gas and electricity meters—wireless-enabled and designed for the consumer as much as your supplier. Under the smart meter roll out, every home in Britain will have been offered a smart meter by their energy supplier by 2020.

Old meters, whether analog or digital, display your energy consumption merely as an opaque series of numbers and required you, or a meter reader, to manually submit readings.

Smart meters operate over mobile or radio networks, to automatically provide your supplier with live updates about your energy use, and while they’re at it, to give you those readings too: both on the meter and on a digital in-home display (IHD).

You won’t just see the indecipherable series of six numbers old ‘dumb’ meters provide. Smart meters are designed to be accessible and to make your energy easy to comprehend: it displays your energy both in kilowatt hours and pounds and pence, so you can easily translate your energy using behaviours—leaving the lights on while you’re out of the house and running half-empty loads of laundry—into impact on your bill.

Some can even relay that information to a smartphone app, so real-time information about your energy use will always be in your pocket—and you might just be able to detect if your children have cranked up the heating while you’re at work.

The Technology of Smart Meters

A smart meter is actually a network of devices, encompassing a electricity meter, for gas or electricity; a communications hub that relays the information that meter gathers to the other parts of the network: an in-home display and sometimes a smart phone app.

The communications hub also use a secure national communications network—the Data Communications Company (DCC) network—to transmit those readings to your supplier.

Smart electricity meters are plugged into the mains and provide real-time readings to your IHD, smartphone, and supplier.

The technology used by the communications hub will depend on where you live: in the south of England, they use the mobile network and wireless mesh technologies. In areas further north, smart meters transmit readings over long-range radio networks.

Smart gas meters are battery powered and switch on every half hour to provide readings.

Some people have raised concerns that smart meters emit radiation. Smart meters do give off low radio frequency emissions: it’s via this mechanism that they transmit readings to your IHD and your supplier.

However, Public Health England (PHE) says that smart meters give off lower levels of radio frequency emissions than standard appliances like microwaves and TVs and doesn’t pose a risk to health.

Smart meters are subject to the same safety regulations and testing that other wireless devices like mobile phones and baby monitors. According to Smart Energy GB, the smart meters being installed in British meter boxes exceed every EU and British safety regulation.

Can I Switch Supplier with a Smart Meter?

 All consumers are encouraged to keep on top of their energy tariff, searching for a new supplier whenever a fixed-term contract expires to avoid being reverted to an expensive default tariff. Energy comparison sites have eased the process of switching, and new companies promise to automatically search for and switch you onto a better tariff. Ofgem has found that switching from a standard variable tariff to a fixed-deal one with a different supplier can save customers up to £320 a year.

You may worry that accepting a smart meter from your supplier will tie you indefinitely to them, preventing you from seeking out a better deal elsewhere. And it is true that switching can stymie first generation smart meters.

Smart meters don’t prevent switching, however, and upgrades are on the way to make smart meters work for savvy shoppers and switchers.

There are currently two types of smart meters installed in the UK. First generation smart meters, or SMETS1, can ‘go dumb’ when you switch supplier, losing some functionality.

They’ll still show you real-time information about your energy consumption via your IHD, but will no longer relay that data to your supplier. In that case, you’ll need to provide manual readings to your new provider. But A remote upgrade is scheduled to make these meters compatible with multiple suppliers, making switching easier.

Second generation smart meters, or SMETS2, are compatible with all suppliers and the DCC, but rollout has been limited thus far. If you’re concerned about switching, ask your current supplier what generation smart meter you’re receiving.