Smart meters are a new and exciting revolution, and they’ll help offer customers a much better service. They give customers control of reducing their energy consumption and their bills.
The Government has set a goal of having smart meters installed in each of the UK’s 27 million homes and commercial property businesses by 2019 – one of the biggest projects ever undertaken by the energy industry.
Although energy firms don’t have to begin fitting smart meters until 2014, energy giant E.ON has dedicated itself to the installation of 1 million smart meters by the end of March 2014. This puts them at the forefront of delivering the full benefits to their customers.
With this in mind, E.ON has recently launched a new offer designed to help attract energy-conscious small and medium sized commercial property businesses to its three-year ‘Business Electricity Plan’ contract.
The company announced that the first 850 small and medium sized commercial enterprises (SMEs) to commit to the tariff will receive a free Asus Netbook worth around £2,491, and the company’s Business Energy Manager smart meter package.
Iain Walker, Head of Business Sales at E.ON said in a statement: “We know that businesses need all the help they can get with their energy bills right now.”
He further added: “that’s why we’ve launched a package that not only offers competitive prices, but also the tools to help businesses get energy fit by really appreciating how and where they’re using energy in the workplace.”
The Energy Manager package contains a real time energy monitor for tracking energy usage in a building and easy to use software that allows commercial property businesses to understand and track their electricity usage online.
To increase the mobility, commercial property business customers can also download E.ON’s mobile phone app to allow managers to track energy usage and bills in the office using their smartphone devices. The app is available to residential and business customers and is free to download from the Android Marketplace and the iTunes App Store.
Speaking to BusinessGreen, Tina Cowley, E.ON’s SME propositions manager, said that SMEs would be able to use the energy monitor and the free netbook to identify areas where money can be saved.
Cowley said: “Once you have the system in place for 30 days you can download the data to the netbook and then see your energy use in graphical form. That will allow customers to see how and when they are using energy and identify areas where they can save energy, such as using it overnight, for example.”
She added that the offer was available to all customers on 03 and 04 profile meters who use more than 10kWh of electricity a year.
Highlighting the importance for small and mid-sized commercial property enterprises to take a proactive approach to energy consumption, research for E.ON of more than 1,100 SMEs revealed that 87 per cent of respondents believe their colleagues behave irresponsibly with their energy usage.
With almost nine out of ten of those surveyed stating their commercial property company’s approach to being environmentally friendly affects their workplace happiness, the subject of energy management for SMEs is a top priority for commercial property businesses.
E.ON is one of a number of organisations to offer free smart meters to both corporate and domestic customers, as part of the UK’s plan to ensure all commercial property buildings have interactive smart meters set up by 2018.
For instance, only last week British Gas begun a free smart meter programme for small commercial property businesses, arguing that new monitoring devices can help commercial property businesses recognise that almost half the energy they are consuming is being wasted.
Energy giant E.ON has already built up a great deal of knowledge with the smart meter technology in a number of international projects. It will soon fit 1.8 million smart meters across Europe. A million smart meters are already being used in Sweden and around 752,000 more will be fitted in Spain by 2014, making E.ON one of the European leaders in this promising technology.
Smart meters work similar to a standard gas or electricity meter. The key difference is that they can talk to one other, talk to the smart energy display and communicate remotely with the energy supplier. They converse using SIM cards – the same kind of technology that a mobile phone uses.
Smart meters offer a wide range of benefits including:
However smart meter technology is about much more than just a new meter. In the future, this kind of technology will open up all sorts of opportunities to save the homeowner and commercial property business customers’ money, energy and time as new services, products and tariffs will be designed and personalised to their needs.
