What is a Smart Meter? Smart Meters: Explained
What is a smart meter?
A smart meter is basically your old energy meter with a big brain. Unlike old, clunky analogue meters, they track your gas and electricity usage in real time, half-hour sprints, automatically sending the data to your supplier.
Forget estimated bills or surprise visits from your energy supplier, you get live, precise data – and more importantly, accurate bills.
For comparison, think of it like the next generation of an iPhone, for example, the iPhone 16, against an iPhone X. A smart meter has more features, more data and significantly better tech.
Where do I find my smart meter?
If you’ve recently had a smart meter installed on your property, you’ll find it exactly where your old meter lived.
New to the property? Explore the traditional places you’d usually find gas and electricity meters: under the stairs, in the kitchen, in your cupboard, or out in a meter box on the side of your house.
What does a smart meter look like?
Picture a small digital box with a screen, buttons, and numbers – usually in a sleek black or white colour. That’s your smart meter. They all have an LCD display, too.
Typically, you get an in-home display (IHD), which is more user-friendly. It’s a portable screen that shows your usage in pounds and pence, so you can see exactly how much you’re spending.
How do I know if I have one?
There are only two types of meters: smart meters and traditional analogue meters.
As mentioned before, you’ll have an in-home display if you have a smart one. You won’t have this with a traditional meter.
Still stuck? Go to your main meter. Does it have a digital display? If not, you’re looking at a traditional meter.
How do you read a smart meter?
Technically, you don’t have to read one; it will do the work for you and automatically send meter readings where it needs to go.
That said, if you prefer to manually browse, you can:
- View the portable In-Home Display (IHD) that usually comes with it. Imagine checking this from the comfort of your sofa.
- Look directly at your unit’s display. It shows you how much energy you’re using right now, plus handy daily and monthly totals.
Are smart meters compulsory?
In short, no, smart meters are not compulsory in the UK. But don’t be so quick to snub them.
Energy companies are reaching out to customers to offer smart meter installation as part of a national smart meter rollout with this year (2025) as the deadline.
With this, some UK homeowners have been asking – Will smart meters be compulsory in 2025? The answer is also no.
That said, if your meter is broken, your energy supplier will automatically replace your traditional meter with a smart one.
Are smart meters good?
At the end of 2024, there were almost 38 million smart meters in the UK. So, we can confidently say that UK homeowners are enjoying the benefits already.
Here are just some of the key perks:
- Better budgeting: Discover how much you’ve spent on your gas and electricity with detailed analytics, and make more informed decisions in the future. Switch up to dry your clothes at night. Turn off the lights when you’re out of the room. Saving you money by crafting personalised budgets.
- Manage your carbon emissions: Similarly to your usage, you can easily check your home’s carbon emissions, then opt to use your energy more efficiently, and make better, eco-friendly decisions on your energy usage going forward.
- Save with an EV charger, EV tariff and smart meter: Charge for as little as 7p per kWh with certain EV chargers, tariffs, and a smart meter, such as the Intelligent Octopus Go.
- Accurate bills: No estimations. No guesses. No funny business. Only real-time, accurate readings to your energy supplier. So, you’re only charged for what you use.
- No manual meter readings: Long gone are the days of trudging outside or venturing beneath your stairs, brushing cobwebs and dislodging the occasional spider out of the way to do a meter reading. Your meter readings are all done automatically with a smart meter. Sending readings just got easier. Score.
How do I get a smart meter?
It’s easy: contact your energy supplier. Typically, they are free to get and free to have installed, so don’t worry about the cost of the upgrade.
E.ON, for example, offer a free smart meter, installation and set-up. British Gas also offers free smart meter installation, as long as you are with them for your energy.
Another point to note is that if you have a second-generation version, you won’t have to have a new one installed if you switch suppliers, too.
Do smart meters need WiFi?
No, they don’t need Wi-Fi as they operate on their own mobile network.
Are smart meters accurate?
Yes, they are 100% accurate, providing automatic real-time data on your usage rather than estimations.
How do you pay?
Two ways: One, Pay As You Go (a prepayment from the customer) or credit (pay after).
EV chargers and smart meters: Can I have one without the other?
Technically, you don’t need a smart meter if you have an EV charger. You can have one without the other. But beware, you would be missing out on cheaper, greener electric car charging if you don’t combine both.
Case in point, you can sync your EV charger with specific EV tariffs that offer discounted rates – but most EV tariffs require a smart meter to do so. With the home EV charging set-up, you can charge during eco-friendly off-peak hours for mere pence per kWh.
Here are some of the available EV tariffs and their price per kWh:
The Final Verdict
You don’t need a smart meter; it’s not compulsory. But would we recommend one? Absolutely, especially if you’ve got an electric car and a home EV charger.
Of course, they come with their own universal benefits: accurate bills, no more crawling under the stairs with automatic meter readings, better control over your energy use, and easier carbon emission management.
But the main benefit lies with electric car drivers. Specifically, with EV tariffs.
As mentioned above, smart meters unlock access to EV tariffs, special plans that let you charge your electric car overnight at cheaper, greener discounted rates. Think low-cost electricity while you sleep.
The catch? Most EV tariffs require a smart meter to work.
So if you want to charge your EV for cheaper and greener, installing smart meters is the only way to go.
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