As part of the government’s smart meter rollout initiative, every household will soon receive one of these devices to replace traditional meters and automatically report your gas and electricity usage directly to suppliers for invoicing purposes – effectively ending estimated bills!
Smart meters can also give you insights into how energy-saving light bulbs or tumble dryers impact your consumption and bill; but not all kitchen additions such as smart meters are created equal.
Tibber Pulse
Tibber Pulse is a small device that connects directly to your electricity meter and displays real-time usage data, helping identify energy-hogging devices and reduce usage. Setup is simple and works seamlessly with existing smart home devices; plus it syncs up automatically with energy providers so that you’ll always know exactly how much money is spent each month!
This solution is both innovative and attractive in design. It connects directly to your meter via infrared lightwave technology and offers you access to data regarding your electricity consumption. While not as accurate as some of our previous solutions, this one still works to save you money on energy bills.
Tibber Pulse’s great feature is its ability to display real-time power consumption of all your appliances and electronics in real-time. This feature makes it easier than ever before to see which appliances use up the most electricity at which times of day and save money by turning them off during certain parts of the day.
Tibber app is compatible with both Android and iOS platforms and features third-party integrations as well as energy saving tools such as Power-Ups to help save energy consumption. Furthermore, users can monitor battery levels of smart devices.
HomeWizard Energy
HomeWizard may be best known for their Smart Home controller introduced in 2013, which proved quite innovative at that time. Since then, however, their focus has shifted toward energy products like P1 meters and Watermeters.
The P1 meter provides insight into your gas and electricity usage. Measuring up to the second, it displays daily, weekly and monthly usage along with costs in an easily understandable format. Furthermore, its conscious energy choices feature allows users to set energy targets while viewing usage in relation to tariffs they select.
With the HomeWizard Energy app and Watermeter in tow, it is now easier than ever to gain real-time insight into your water consumption. Installation takes only 2 minutes and works on batteries or an optional cable (sold separately). Connect it directly to an Actaris, Elster, Honeywell or Itron analog water meter for ultimate visibility into its usage within HomeWizard Energy app.
Your solar inverter from SolarEdge, GoodWe, Growatt, SMA or Huawei can easily connect directly with HomeWizard Energy app for real-time energy monitoring and production tracking. Once connected you will see both an Energy Display showing your consumption data as well as a Solar Production graph showcasing how your production compares against consumption over time.
Energy Sense
Sense is an orange box that sits in your power breaker panel and provides in-depth insight into how your home uses electricity. It begins by measuring current coming into the home through clamps attached to one of two main “hot” wires entering your panel (this must be installed by a licensed electrician).
Machine learning enables Sense to recognize each appliance by its electrical signature, taking time and sometimes needing users to shut off and restart appliances for it to fully learn about them. Over time, machine learning will only get better and Sense will continue to get smarter over time.
The Sense app presents real-time moving graphs of your energy usage that provide detailed insights into how each appliance is using power. It can detect vampire power users like laptops and woodshop devices that draw vampire current and also identify when you have left an appliance running – for instance if the oven remains on or an appliance fails. Furthermore, integrations with smart assistants such as Amazon Alexa or Google’s Assistant allow users to ask queries regarding electricity usage such as whether your garage door is open or you forgot to turn off a dishwasher.
Smart Energy
Wi-Fi or Bluetooth-enabled appliances and smart energy systems have revolutionized our homes, creating more sustainable, energy efficient spaces with cleaner power sources such as solar panels. Smart energy systems monitor individual circuits’ usage to help make smart decisions; they provide real-time data to monitor individual energy use; they even notify us if something goes amiss – especially helpful if electricity consumption spikes unexpectedly, signalling potential issues to address.
These new, more advanced meters can track both your electricity and gas consumption and relay that information wirelessly to suppliers – usually using DCC, a national communication network that does away with physical visits to your home or business. Some models even come equipped with displays for viewing how changes to usage affect monthly bills.
These smart meters differ from regular energy meters in that they’re specifically designed to be accurate and efficient, accounting for peak time of use rates when utilities charge more for electricity to meet demand. By shifting usage towards lower cost times, these smart meters can help save you money – not only that, many include energy-saving programs which automatically optimize appliance power usage.
