FIRST HOUSEHOLD IN HORNCASTLE GREEN STREETS PROJECT GETS SMART METER!
Last Saturday, 16th January, Jenny Davey, her husband James Siddle, and their two sons, one and four, became the proud owners of a new Smart Meter, through the British Gas Green Streets project.
British Gas has their first roll-out of these state-of-the art meters underway across the country, preparing for the government target that all homes in the UK have them installed by 2020.
There are a number of advantages to them above the meters we’re all familiar with, mainly that they allow us to see what energy we’re using, electric and gas, minute by minute. This in turn helps people see how to make changes to save energy. For example, it is very obvious how much more energy and money it costs to boil a full kettle rather than just to boil the amount we need.
The other advantage is that your use is updated with your energy supplier every half an hour, meaning that you need never sent a meter reading to them again, and it does away with estimated bills too.
These meters will be going out to all 26 families involved in the Green Streets project, helping them in their bid to save energy as part of the competition to win a further £100 000 for the community. During last year’s Green Streets project, households were able to save around 12% on their normal energy consumption just by making behaviour changes in the home.
While you wait for one of these, anyone with British Gas currently can change to the EnergySmart tariff and they will be sent an energy monitor, which does a few of the same things as a Smart meter, measuring your electricity use minute by minute. Or you can buy one for around £35 – money you’ll easily save through your learnings with the gadget.
For more information, contact Jenny on 01507 524088
Although not part of the Green Streets project, our household uses an energy monitor. We’ve had it for about 4 months and it has had a huge impact on how we use electricity. The most significant immediate change we made was replacing all our light bulbs with energy saving ones. At the time we only had about 50% energy saving light bulbs throughout the house. But seeing how much the non-energy saving lights were drawing was surprising.
Also things like seeing how much the washing machine draws on 30 C. compared to 40 C. ect. Even though on paper we know these things make a difference, actually watching the meter tick by and being able to see how much you have used on a daily/hourly ect basis is very useful.