Your readers will no doubt have been asked by their electricity suppliers to have a smart meter fitted, or seen adverts urging this on social media, if they don’t already have one. Many are wondering though what more can possibly they do as they are already very careful with switching things off
What many don’t realise is that having a smart meter means you can get a smart tariff, and this is where big savings can be made without actually reducing how much electricity they use. This might seem odd, but it’s all down to how the wholesale electricity market works
The national grid is operated by the Electricity System Operator (ESO) who make sure there is always enough power flowing into the grid to match the power being used. This means buying power from different generators, at different prices, at different times, with the result that the wholesale price of electricity sold to your supplier changes every 30 minutes. When it’s very windy out at sea, and the wind turbines are spinning furiously, more electricity than is needed may be produced, so the wholesale price is very low and everything not needed is exported to other countries
However, a typical tariff is a fixed price per kWh at all times of day – unless you have a smart tariff! There are many on offer from different suppliers including ones that have a different price every 30 minutes every day, and sometimes the price is so low your supplier will pay you to use electricity (eg Octopus Agile). If you are able to move when you use electricity, eg when you put on the washing machine or dryer (known in the jargon as demand shifting) you can move from an expensive time to a cheap time, without actually using any less electricity. We reduced our electricity bills by 1/3 doing exactly this, without reducing how much we used!
As renewables become more and more dominant as suppliers to the grid, in particular the huge offshore wind farms which will be the majority of supply in future, the benefits of smart tariffs, only possible to those with smart meters, will get greater and greater.
The sooner your readers get themselves a smart meter and a smart tariff, the sooner they can start saving money
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