British Gas’ announcement to ramp-up and speed up the roll out of smart meters to 2 million UK households has to be good news.
British Gas seem to be laying down a smart metering gauntlet to the rest of the indusrty, who combined have the taregt of getting the entire UK onto smart meters by 2020 – no easy task!
British Gas estimates that the smart meters will save the 2 million households it’s targeting a combined £1billion over 10 years, which works out as £500 per household over the same period, at £50 per year. Boiling it down to that level, presents a strange insignificance to the saving that might be achieved, but that must not be undermined by what a comprehensive smart meter roll out will deliver to the UK.
It provides home owners with ownership of their energy bills, creating an ability for them to radically decreases their energy usage, by providing a far better understanding and education to them of their actual usage.
This is incredibly powerfully. What’s more powerful is the improved level of intelligence that suppliers and generators will slowly start to have of individual usage habits. Creating tailored tariffs and bespoke charging structures that start to reflect the true cost of the energy that households consume.
This is by no means an easy undertaking, but the key is to start taking the little steps, and pushing the heavy flywheel – it will soon pick up pace when more players join the cause.
