Are you one of the more than two million people who had a smart electricity meter installed? It would help us find cheaper electricity tariffs, we were told. But if the meters are so smart, then why are some of us still paying over €800 more for electricity than we need to?
“Do consumers know how to use their smart meter to get cheaper electricity? The vast majority do not, because it’s a real palaver,” says Alan Smeaton, emeritus professor of computing at Dublin City University.
Indeed, the complexity of accessing data from your smart meter to find a cheaper tariff is enough to put anyone off.
Prof Smeaton’s data analytics team developed a tool where households can upload their smart meter data to find out just how much they might be overpaying for electricity. Thousands have already done so.
Your smart meter records how much electricity you use and at what times of the day – is it during the daytime, at night or during the peak time of 5pm to 7pm?
But with smart meters now in more than four out of five households, at a cost of over €1 billion, there is still no one easy way for consumers to use all the data being collected about their electricity usage to reduce their own bills.
Instead, there is a multi-step process, requiring no small amount of computer literacy . This is leaving many paying too much.
Crunch the numbers
With about 60 electricity plans on the market, it’s no wonder householders are bamboozled. Many of us are on tariffs that are far more expensive than necessary.
“Typically the difference in cost between the cheapest and the most expensive electricity plan is about 60 per cent,” says Smeaton. This is based on data from the thousands of bill payers who have already submitted their smart meter data to the tool his team has developed.
“There is one tariff that is the cheapest tariff for almost 90 per cent of people [based on their usage] who have used our system. When we dig into our analysis, we find it’s even worse. There is also one tariff on the market that is the most expensive one for about one third of people. That’s a trap.”
It’s not easy for householders to know if they are paying over the odds. Many are simply renewing, or signing up to new plans blind.
It’s not surprising. If you don’t have a smart meter, or don’t know how to get your usage data from your meter, you might be using blunt estimates to find a plan.
Utilities regulator the CRU recommends using free price comparison websites to shop around for the best plan. It approves bonkers.ie, switcher.ie, powertoswitch.ie and energyswitch.ie. Many other tools and sites unapproved by the CRU have sprang up too, including the DCU one, Energypal.ie and kilowatt.ie which is useful for EV and solar panel users.
The CRU-approved comparison websites give householders a few different avenues to find a the right tariff.
You can input your annual electricity usage in kWh, or how much you spend on electricity in a year – but how many of us know this?
If you don’t know, you could use the CRU’s “national average” electricity usage estimate to find the best plan. This estimates usage at 4,200kW/h of electricity a year.
But the electricity usage of this “average consumer” doesn’t capture the diverse energy profiles of individual households, says Smeaton.
Some householders use electricity only for lighting. Some use it for everything. Some heat water with it and leave lights on with abandon. Poorer households may use far less electricity than is comfortable, and far less than the “average”. And so, choosing a tariff based on the average usage won’t be the most cost effective for everyone.
This is where your smart meter comes in. Uploading your own specific usage data to a comparator tool should give you the best tariff for you. If you have a smart meter, and don’t use the data it records to find a tariff, that’s not so smart.
Change for savings
If you have a smart meter and your electricity contract is up for renewal in the coming months, using the data could leave you almost €800 better off, as was the case with a calculation based on my own electricity usage.
A few years on from having my own smart meter installed, I uploaded my smart meter data to some comparison sites – you can see the steps in the panel. There were some eye-opening results.
First up, the DCU tool. It crunches your usage over the past 12 months. Within minutes, you receive an email with the cheapest five tariffs for you. The calculations don’t include welcome credits or cashback. The prices quoted are inclusive of VAT.
“Electric Ireland might have 10 tariffs, Yuno might have five, and what we do is run your data against each of those 60 tariffs and come up with a calculation to create a table of five plans which are the most cost effective,” says Smeaton.
“The cheapest tariff based on your usage would have cost you €1,172 for the year, out of the 60 tariffs on offer. The most expensive would have cost you €1,967.”
That’s a €795 difference between the most and least expensive plans on the market – for exactly the same usage.
“Unlike choosing something like a holiday, where there are differences between what you are paying for, electricity is just electricity,” says Smeaton.
While the difference in cost between the cheapest and the most expensive plan for me is 60 per cent, that won’t be the same for everyone as it depends on your own household’s usage.
“Sometimes it’s 50 per cent difference, sometimes it’s 90 per cent difference. It really is worth shopping around,” says Smeaton.
“There is one tariff that is sold by one of the providers which just happens to be the cheapest for the vast majority of people,” he says.
I uploaded the same smart meter data file to the Bonkers.ie comparison tool. This comparison tool asks a few more questions than the DCU tool.
To compare plans, I needed to name my current supplier, my current plan, or the unit rate of electricity I’m paying, or the discount percentage I’m getting.
If you don’t know this, you can provide an estimate of how much electricity you use, either in euro or kW/hs.
I was able to provide the name of my supplier, and the cost per unit of electricity in my contract.
It also asks whether you are under contract – as switching while you are in contract can mean an early exit penalty.
The best tariff for me, based on my smart meter data of my usage patterns over the past year, came in at €1154.79 for the year. This was a “time of use” smart plan. The price was within €18 of the tariff recommended by the DCU tool, which was not a smart plan.
The price includes €100 cash back, and it requires me to pay by direct debit and use online billing over a 12-month contract.
Based on the same parameters – my usage patterns, paying by direct debit, using online billing over a 12-month contract – other plans came in at up to €471 more for exactly the same electricity usage.
The most expensive plan – again based on exactly the same electricity usage, came in at €1,983.83. This 24-month “pay as you go” contract works out at €829 more expensive than the cheapest option.
Not so smart?
Are the two million people with smart meters making enough use of them to get cheaper electricity?
“Not really”, says Daragh Hickey of Bonkers.ie. “The majority of households have yet to do anything with it really.”
Many households are still on standard electricity plans, and a lot of people have yet to even sign up to the ESB Networks account that would enable them to download their smart meter data.
“So the smart meter is there in people’s homes but households aren’t getting any insights or data on their energy consumption, or any real-time use from it yet,” says Hickey.
Despite having a smart meter, many households haven’t moved to a smart tariff either.
“They are afraid they will end up paying more. That’s understandable as smart tariffs charge different prices at different times of the day, and some early smart plans weren’t the best value,” says Hickey.
Uploading your smart meter data will show you the best deal for you, he says.
“In most cases now, that will be a smart tariff. And then when you are on that tariff, you can save even more by moving some of your usage to different times of the day when it’s cheaper.”
Suppliers can also give you data on your usage through a mobile app and you can use this to make positive changes.
“At the moment, someone who is paying standard rates [not smart rates] and uses an average amount of energy could save around €450 to €500 a year by switching their electricity and well over €300 by switching their gas.”
If you use gas and electricity, it’s not always cheaper to get them from the same supplier.
“It might be more convenient, but it’s often cheaper to go with two separate suppliers and avail of distinct offers,” says Hickey.
Smeaton says smart meters are not making a huge difference at all to the population as a whole. “It’s only those of us who are bothered enough and computer literate enough to access their smart meter data, who can harness it to get cheaper electricity.”
The process should be a more user-friendly “one click” for everyone, he says.
Analysing 4,000 years of smart-meter data, the DCU tool shows there is a single tariff from one supplier that is the cheapest for 91 per cent of customers, Smeaton has said in response to a CRU consultation paper. This tariff – cheapest for most people, if they could find it – is a “time of use” tariff.
Time of use tariffs don’t just enable you to save money; moving to a cheaper, offpeak time also makes room for renewable power in our national grid, says the CRU. This cuts our CO2 emissions and lowers our reliance on fossil fuels.
Indeed, for 95 per cent of customers a “time of use” tariff will be their cheapest, says Smeaton.
An electricity tariff that’s cheaper for most people and is better for the environment – why not make it easier for consumers to find?
“The [smart meter] data is being used by ESB Networks to track and predict usage, but for the ordinary customer choosing the best tariff, I use the analogy of trying to pin the tail on the donkey.”
How to use your smart meter data for cheaper electricity
1. Create an account at esbnetworks.ie
2. Once you’ve set up an account, or logged in, you’ll need your “MPRN” – this is located at the top of your bill. It’s a different number to your account number.
3. To get a file containing your smart-meter data, click on “My energy consumption”, and then click on “Downloads”. You are given the option of four files to download – click the first option, “30-minute readings in kW”. You’ll know you have chosen the right option when the file name starts with something like “HDF_kW_” and the file extension is “.csv”.
4. Download this file to your computer, taking note of where it is saved.
5. Upload this file to a comparison website to help you find the best tariff.
