You may have heard of SMART meters, which give an online indication of your energy consumption at any moment. They’re not new.

In fact, larger users have had SMART meters for years – although they might not have known it.

Meters of over 100 kW capacity are read over the telephone or mobile network service and download their data to the supplier every day. Suppliers offer services to allow users to view the data either as raw information or dressed up as graphs and bar charts on a web portal.

Having access to the metering data can be very useful, especially if you are trying to understand and control use. Looking at use at different times of day, at night, as the seasons and weather conditions change can reveal some strange patterns and lead you to check just what is putting the fuel bill up at any one time.

For the small cost of looking at the web portal, we think it's well worthwhile buying the facility to log on and look at your use. You may be quite surprised.