Back in the day, you may recall a technician from your energy company making occasional visits to your home, awkwardly loitering around the side of your house to find your energy meter and manually reading the number, which indicated how much energy your household consumed over the month. Gone are the days of these tedious, manual, occasional, and often inaccurate energy readings. Welcome to the era of smart meters. 

What are smart meters?

Smart meters are energy meters that use advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) technology to collect information about your household energy consumption every 15 minutes. They are connected to an online network that is able to send real-time information on a continual basis to your energy company, which means you no longer need a professional to visit your home to get a reading. What’s more is that these readings can be read by anyone, not just a professional. 

Did you know?

Texas led the nation’s movement towards switching out traditional energy meters with smart meters since 2016. Today, over 200,000 Texan homes have smart meters, making it the standard way to read your energy consumption. Why have so many Texans switched to smart meters?

Advantages of using a smart meter

Smart meters are the preference for many Texans today because they’re useful for managing your energy consumption, providing you with copious amounts of data about your household trends, which can all help reduce your energy consumption and ultimately save money. How can you achieve this through a smart meter? Here’s how:

• Smart meters can send alerts to customers when their energy usage is higher than normal.
• Smart meters can also send alerts to when there are outages in your area and when your utility company expects that power will be restored.
• Smart meters allow you to receive real-time data about your energy consumption on a continual basis, giving you a clear window into your day-to-day, weekly, or monthly energy usage, allowing you to make decisions about when you should make changes to your energy habits, such as when to use appliances with high energy loads. 
• Smart meters can help you learn about whether the current rate you are paying with your current energy company makes sense for your average energy consumption patterns. Having this data available, accessible as summarized reports, and stored in the long- term as part of your personal consumption history can help you make better, more informed decisions that are just right for you.
• The use of smart readers have streamlined the customer service experience. With data available and accessible to both the customer and the utility company, you no longer have to waste time with long winded explanations or wait for an appointment somewhere down the line in the future. Technicians can resolve problems with relative ease and efficiency. 
• Smart meters have even been known to reduce the number of blackouts and system-wide failures.

Clearly, smart meters are advantageous tools that customers can use to gain and store knowledge and change their energy consumption habits accordingly, especially since energy rates in Texas are constantly changing due to a variety of factors. At Arrow Energy, we strongly believe in placing the knowledge, and the power, in the hands of the customer. Contact Arrow Energy today if you’d like to make the switch to a smart reader or learn more about how we can provide a service plan that fits your energy patterns and habits.