Learn to Combine the Power of Economy 7 and Smart Meters

Smart meters are ingenious devices supported by the government which will help you monitor exactly how much gas and electricity you use. Smart meters replace your current gas and electric meters with an electronic gauge which records your energy consumption precisely, sending the results straight to your utility company.

One of the major bonuses of smart meters is that they eliminate "guesstimates" from your utility billing, but the real-time monitoring can also help you keep track of your energy consumption, which can make Economy 7 tariffs particularly appealing.

Economy 7 is a specially designed energy tariff designed to lower your utility bills by making energy cheaper to buy providing you use your appliances at off-peak times. The tariff is called Economy 7 because the scheme encourages you to consume your electricity in an off-peak seven-hour period. The idea is that you are rewarded for not putting a strain on the national grid when everyone else wants to use their electricity, thus spreading the demand for energy more evenly throughout the day.

The downside with Economy 7 is that it requires you to use your electricity at unsociable hours. Although the exact seven-hour period changes depending on providers, the most common allotted time period is between 1am and 8am. The benefit of using Economy 7 is that when using energy within the allotted seven-hour period, energy is significantly cheaper than normal. Using energy in "normal" hours is much more expensive. One of the downsides of the Economy 7 scheme is that customers can actually run up a higher utility bill by using excess energy at peak times and hence being charged a premium rate.

The bonus of smart meters is that the real-time electronic updates can monitor exactly how much energy you are using at any time in the day, which should enable you to curtail you peak energy use and make the most of the off-peak hours. Using smart meters to manage your energy consumption effectively will help you maximise the benefits of the Economy 7 tariff and ultimately save you a lot of money.