What is smart metering

Smart meters are the next generation of electricity and gas meters which finally put an end to inaccurate estimated bills, infrequent meter readings and a world where you don’t know how much energy your home or business consumes at any given time.

Smart Meters empower both customers to make properly informed decisions about how, when and where they consume energy, not only because the real-time data is accurately recorded and transmitted at frequent intervals to their energy suppliers for accurate billing purposes, but because consumers can access their real-time usage and make informed decisions about how to manage it better.

Smart meters have two-way communication systems allowing the consumption data to be transmitted to both the consumer and the energy supplier by Bglobal, and to allow us to maintain, manage and upgrade the meter more frequently, efficiently and cheaper than it was previously possible to do with old fashioned dumb meters.

Bglobal believes that smart meters enable new business models to emerge and a range of value-adding energy services to be delivered, including:

• The ability for a customer to always be on the very best to get the best financial energy deal in the market at any time, based on actual consumption profiles.
• Delivery of flexible energy tariffs with different prices depending on demand and time of day.
• Emergence of new market segments where customers “churn” freely between suppliers searching for the best deal available.
• Capability for people and businesses with solar panels and wind turbines to sell energy back to the supplier and receive accurate “net billing” rebates from their suppliers.
• Improved accuracy in predicting energy demand at different times leading to more efficient energy networks.
• Implementation of carbon and cost reduction programmes through targeting and monitoring activities within homes and businesses.
• New pre-payment business models to emerge offering significant discounts for advance payment.
• Help for the fuel poor by using low cost technology to end the energy suppliers’ practice of charging the poorest in society the most for their energy.

Smart Meters in Action

Today Bglobal has replaced more old fashioned “dumb” meters with high technology smart meters than any other company in the UK. We retrieve more data remotely from smart meters in the UK’s non half hourly energy market than anyone else.

Every month Bglobal installs thousands of smart meters with in-built remote communications capability. We read our meters remotely over a communications network and provide the energy usage data to customers, providing them with a range of analysis and presentation tools which enables accurate measurement and visibility of electricity, gas and water use as well as other measurements such as temperature and humidity.

Because we are accredited with the Government’s regulator Elexon to install and read settlement meters, we work closely with all the UK’s large electricity companies to provide them with the most accurate data available which they use to calculate customers’ bills and lessen their own exposure to price fluctuations in the wholesale energy markets.

We also provide a comprehensive range of energy services which deliver deeper value and savings to our customers. These range from electricity sub-metering and multi-utility solutions to bill validation, energy procurement and web-based analysis tools for calculating carbon footprints.

We are proud that our customers include Government departments such as DEFRA (the department championing smart metering in the UK), local authorities, not for profits and business organisations large and small across the whole of the UK who share a single vision – to reduce energy consumption and get in control of costs. Our customers all understand that smart metering is a central pillar of their carbon-reduction strategies.

So how could our low cost smart meters can deliver tangible, measurable benefits to your organisation? Why not give us a call or drop us an email and ask us how.

Above all we are working hard every day to make energy count for all our customers. Bglobal can make energy count for you too.