Advanced Digital Electricity or Smart Meters can save Money?

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1) Update: 23 December 2021:- Worth taking up such a plan now?

21 December 2021

So your electricity market has been deregulated and you can take up an electricity plan to buy electricity from the market.   Have you ever considered taking up an electricity plan that can save money by using electricity wisely?  This article will tell you how.  

How?

Step 1:  Change the conventional mechanical electricity meter to the Advanced Digital Electricity Meter.  Different countries name this meter with different names.  Some call it a Smart Meter;  in Singapore,  they call it Advanced Metering Infrastructure(AMI) for some reasons.

There might be an installation cost of a nominal amount.   Some Power companies or retailers might charge also a small monthly fee for the use of digital lines to transmit and record the usage of the electricity.  

Step 2:   Take up an electricity plan from an electricity retailer and specifically request to "buy" electricity measured in terms of time intervals such as every half an hour.  This is because most electricity plans are fixed-rate plans or tariff discount plans.  They do not have such time-interval measurements.    So far,  there are one or two retailers in Singapore that can provide such a plan.   It is the Singapore Power's Wholesale electricity plan or SPWS and the Keppel's Knight plan.   

How to use Electricity Smartly?

It is always easier said than done.  Simply say,  it is how we can change our habits of using electricity by avoiding using electricity when the price is high.    

How Does it work? 

In the electricity market,  the Generating companies generate and sell electricity to the market in terms of a time period which is usually 1/2 an hour.   

The generating companies will always have varying generation operating costs.  They would sell electricity at a high rate during the "peak hours" when everyone is using the electricity.  Therefore,  if one can avoid using electricity during these "peak hours",   one will be able to save money.

Why I must change my mechanical meter?

The mechanical meters are just measuring how much one has used electricity,  It cannot tell when the amount of electricity was used.  There is no way for the electricity retailer to work out electricity usage in terms of the time intervals. They can only work out one's electricity usage based on a load profile provided by the regulatory authority. 

How much can I save?

If one can avoid using high-power appliances during "peak"  hours,  one will be able to save 30 to 40%  of the electricity bills as shown in the following table.    

How to check how much was used?

The electricity metering companies will usually provide some means for consumers to check their electricity usage.  In Singapore,  one can check electricity consumption through a phone app.  

In other countries,  they might provide some other tools such as the "in-home display unit"

Where to find more information about the meter?

The Grid company or electricity metering company will always have the information where one can find more;  for example, this is a pdf presented by Singapore's SP Power.   Here is a good video from CNA.

One can also find information about the smart meter from this Wikipedia.

How do we go about saving money?

Before taking up such a plan to save money,  one should do some detailed planning to find out how much one could save. To do that,  one could an Excel sheet and the electricity price information given by the supply authorities as shown below to work out a strategic plan as to when is the best time to use what kind of appliances.

One can also use electric timers to switch on and off freezers and refrigerators,  preventing them from starting frequently during peak hours.   One could even go to the extreme of exploring various other options such as using high-power rechargeable battery packs and auto-switching equipment in order to use electricity only during "off-peak" hours.   

Dry runs

Although it is not too difficult to switch electricity retailers or switch to a new retail electricity plan,  one might want to do a dry run before taking the electricity plan.  One can either request for the Advanced Digital Electricity meter to be installed to carry out the dry run.  The alternative is to install self-installed energy monitors that are available commercially at around SGD50/=.

Summary

There is no way we can change how they charge the electricity but we can control the way we use electricity.  We can replace our mechanical electricity meter with an advanced digital meter and take up an electricity plan that will allow us to use the cheaper electricity during "off-peak" hours.   

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Update:  23 December 2021

Is it really worth taking up such plan?

Presently,  there is a natural gas supply problem happening in Europe.  This problem has caused electricity prices in European and Asian countries to go sky-high.   The rate between Wholesale electricity price and another price such as the regulated price has widened,  making it not worth the while to take up a Wholesale plan that one can make use of an Advanced Metering system to save money.  The details have been discussed in these two articles

a)  Why the WholeSale Electricity Rate is so high?  
b)  Why this Global Energy Price Hike?