The smart meter: read it and use it smartly

Where the old Ferraris meter only kept a balance, the digital meter measures consumption and injection separately. It therefore records both the electricity you draw from the grid and the electricity your solar panels feed back. In addition, it measures your consumption per quarter of an hour: the capacity tariff is calculated on the average of your monthly peaks, whatever time they occur.

That split lets you follow your self-consumption and see how much electricity you feed into the grid without using it yourself. That exact figure is interesting if you want to know whether storage or control is worthwhile in your case.

The figures on the meter display are divided into registers for consumption and injection, usually with codes such as the day and night reading. You can read them directly, but the digital meter also has a port that makes your consumption available in near real time. Through that port, an energy management system can read along and control appliances.

If you want to understand your consumption more deeply than individual readings, we link that readout to a control system. That way you see not only totals, but also when you peak and where your self generated power leaks away to the grid.

With the reversing meter, your meter literally ran backwards when you injected, so injection and consumption offset each other. That scheme has been phased out. Injection and consumption are now billed separately, and the value you receive for electricity fed back is usually lower than what consumption costs you.

That makes it worthwhile to use as much of your generation yourself as possible at the moment it comes in. You can increase self consumption by scheduling loads smartly or by using a home battery that stores daytime electricity for the evening. Whether that pays off for you depends on your consumption pattern and your generation, and we will assess that on site.