Prepayment SMART meters
a new generation of sim-free smart meters
What are SMART Meters?
Smart meters are the biggest improvement to the UK energy system in decades. They provide a forward-thinking service by recording electricity and gas consumption at regular intervals and then communicating the logged information back to the user, landlord or Property Manager for monitoring and billing purposes.
Smart meters have been a preferable electricity and gas monitoring option to commercial settings for a number of years. These include commercials settings such as Holiday Parks and multi-occupancy accommodation, yet now they are becoming more commonly used within residential settings.
This is due to the smart meter rollout, a government initiative to install smart meters in every home in England, Wales and Scotland by 2020. But with 26 million homes to supply, this is by no means a small task (in total, that’s around 53 million gas and electricity meters).
They help to save time and money; time is saved reading the meters, a task that can be extremely timeconsuming in a commercial setting, as well as time being saved on energy bill queries, with smart meters making data usage simple to read.
They accurately measure energy consumption; many leisure industry customers have chosen to take advantage of the latest forms of pre-payment smart metering in order to provide an energy supply to their consumers that is accurately metered in an unobtrusive way.
SIM-free smart meters or PLC (Power Line Carrier) smart meters use the existing electricity cable network as a reliable, hi-speed data carrier. PLC smart meters offer FREE comprehensive remote data collection and meter configuration functionalities without the need for SIM cards used by traditional smart meters.
SIM-free smart meters can be used to encourage customers to use energy outside of peak hours to help reduce pressure on the system as a whole and to assist in taking advantage of lower price periods. But what are the other benefits of using the newly launched SIM-free smart meters?
- Gain a free high-speed communication along existing mains cables, meaning no SIM Card required
- Ideal for concentrated installations such as Holiday Parks and multi-occupancy accommodation
- Available in both single phase and three phase formats
- New WAN communication options via an advanced data concentrator using Ethernet, GSM/GPRS or 3G
- Multi-energy connections
- Access to meter reading data 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week via a cloud based portal - Can be connected to your Wi-Fi network to present real-time energy usage direct to your Smartphone or Tablet with use of a mobile app
Going forward, smart meters will change the way that you use power. They provide the ability to track your usage resulting in smarter utility management, lower bills and a more stable energy network overall. This simple piece of technology will have a serious impact on how energy is used both commercially and residentially.
The crucial difference a smart meter will make is the ability to say goodbye to estimated bills. No more large, unnecessary bills to hit your doormat. Instead, energy suppliers will receive automatically-delivered details via the smart meter and gain up-to-date, accurate data based on your usage.
The smart meter will also show when you use your energy most, and enable you to change your habits so you can benefit more from off-peak usage and potentially lower tariffs. Better accuracy of usage will not only benefit homes and businesses throughout the UK, but the country as a whole could become a better place for it.