How meters can affect your bills

Small businesses with a traditional ‘dial-display’ or ‘odometer-display’ meter get charged a flat rate for electricity. This is because these old-style mechanical meters cannot tell what time of day you’re using electricity – they only monitor accumulated electricity consumption.

This flat rate is currently the most common form of tariff, but over time this will change as more businesses have electronic meters installed on their premises.

Dial-display meter and odometer-display meter

Every half hour, these electronic ‘interval’ meters or ‘smart’ meters can record how much energy a business uses. This information is then sent from the meter to the energy retailer.

As these electronic meters can tell what time of day you’re using electricity, it gives retailers the ability to offer different prices at different times of the day. This is called ‘time-of-use’ pricing.

If your business is given the option to switch to a smart meter and ToU pricing, you need to firstly check that you can take advantage of cheaper off-peak power. Using an energy monitor or app, analyse your energy use throughout the day. Then check that against the ToU tariffs being charged in shoulder, peak and off-peak. After analysing how much ToU could change your bills, if it doesn’t reduces them, stick with your current meter.

If ToU pricing can reduce your energy bills, ask your electricity retailer to install a smart meter. 

In the coming years, more and more of these smart meters will be installed across Australia. If you’re not familiar with them yet, it pays to understand how they work, as they could potentially change the size of your energy bill. 

Smart meter and interval meter