Talking energy, taking control, thinking smart

The ongoing energy crisis has prompted people to adopt a more mindful attitude towards the impact that everyday lifestyle habits can have on the amount of energy they consume in their home. However, being energy efficient does not mean turning things off, going cold or doing without things that are essential to comfort, health, and wellbeing. It’s about making small changes that have a notable impact on energy usage, and it’s about taking control.

One such way of taking control, is by signing up to a Smart Meter plan to experience the benefits of this new technology with Electric Ireland’s Home Electric+ 24hour plan. Currently, over 1.1 million households have a Smart Meter installed and this figure will increase to 2.4 million by the end of 2024 as part of the National Climate Action Plan.

We sat down with Dublin-based couple Amanda and Tony Reilly to hear how they started their smart meter journey with an Electric Ireland Home Electric+ 24hour plan.

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU MADE THE TRANSITION TO A SMART METER PLAN?

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It was an easy transition to make once we discovered benefits like advanced energy insights which were available on the Home Electric+ 24hour plan with Electric Ireland. Because the Smart Meter is designed to send readings directly to your energy company, it eliminates estimated bills and instead, gives you accurate monthly bills. This allowed us to see exactly how we used electricity, and when, and how much! And the Electric Ireland online portal gives personalised usage data and insights to help us monitor and then adjust energy consumption around our home so that we can address excessive or expensive usage accordingly.”

“So, while energy prices are out of our control - we can control our usage, and we have moved away from how much it costs and now look at reducing our usage instead.”

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO ANYONE RELUCTANT TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN THEIR SMART METER JOURNEY?

“Don’t be afraid to switch. Our Smart Meter has helped us change our habits; we’ve become more aware of our energy usage and made changes in our home to increase our energy efficiency – which we could physically see when we logged onto the online portal. When we were upgrading our home, we could look at the graph to observe what areas of the house were saving on energy. If you want to get your house as efficient as possible, having that Smart Meter plan is essential.”

“With Electric Ireland’s Home Electric+ 24hour plan, you don’t have to commit to using electricity at a particular time of the day as they give you a standard 24-hour rate so that removed all the concerns we initially had around having to use the bulk of our electricity at the same time every day, for example if we were on a cheaper night rate or weekend rate- which does work for some people but for us, we needed to learn about our usage first.”

To learn more about Electric Ireland’s Home Electric+ smart meter plans, visit Electricireland.ie/smart-meters/plans

The Reilly family are using a Home Electric+ 24hour smart meter plan from Electric Ireland and have received a gratuity for their time.