The Eco Briefing

Smart meters: monitoring your energy use and costs in real time

If you’ve ever travelled in a black cab in London (Hackney carriage), you’ll be familiar with the electronic meter that shows the costs of the fare ticking upwards as the wheels roll forward.

It’s similar to the in-home digital display of an energy smart meter that shows how much energy you’re using, when and how much it costs.

Every home and office in England will have been offered a smart meter by mid-2025 – a total of 50 million gas and electricity meters provided to 27 million homes and offices. A smart meter has two main elements. The meter itself: you get one meter for gas and one for electricity –they’ll usually go where your existing meters are. They use a secure smart data network to automatically and wirelessly send your meter readings to your supplier at least once a month.

Then there’s the in-home digital display (shown in the photo). It’s a small gadget that communicates wirelessly with your smart meters, monitoring what energy you’re using and showing you how much it costs, in near real time. It gives readings in pounds and pence, and kilowatt hours (kWh), so it can help you identify where you can cut back.

If you’ve had smart meters installed over the last few years, or you’re set to get them, you’ll have a secondgeneration (SMETS 2) meter. That means if you ever switch to a new energy supplier, it should be able to see your usage and meter readings, and your in-home display should show you your usage with the new supplier’s costs.

What if you don’t currently have a smart meter? All energy providers have their own plans for rolling out free smart meters to customers. How quickly you can get them will depend on availability in your area. Unfortunately, suppliers don’t publish lists of which areas they’re installing smart meters in, nor a timetable for future roll-outs. The best thing to do is check Smart Energy GB’s website, www. smartenergygb.org, or check your energy supplier’s website.

If you rent your home, you can still choose to have one installed as long as you pay the bills and they’re addressed to you. However, the energy regulator Ofgem recommends you tell your landlord before you get one. That’s because there may be rules in your tenancy agreement about how energy is supplied to the property, including the type of meter that can be installed.

Ancient woodland in North Wiltshire to be saved and transformed into a nature reserve

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has announced the purchase of Great Wood, an ancient woodland near Grittenham in North Wiltshire, which covers 71 hectares.

The transformation of Great Wood into a nature reserve prevents it from being sold off in small parcels to multiple landowners or commercially managed.

It will enable the Trust to protect one of the county’s few remaining large ancient woodlands.

The Trust’s purchase was made possible by a generous grant from Biffa Award, a multi-million pound fund that awards grants to community and environmental projects across the UK, as part of the Landfill Communities Fund. Only 3% of Wiltshire is ancient woodland and there is only 8% of woodland cover in total. Great Wood is in urgent need of restoration to realise its full potential to attract wildlife that has been lost from the area and prevent more species disappearing.

Ancient woodlands have delicate and complex ecosystems that have developed over hundreds of years. They defend against climate change by storing huge amounts of carbon, have far greater plant biodiversity than recently planted woodlands and support a stunning array of insects, birds and mammals. Some species are typically only found in ancient woodlands, including butterflies such as the wood white, Pearl-Bordered Fritillary and Purple Emperor, and birds such as nightingale and willow warbler.

Gary Mantle, Chief Executive of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, said: “I am delighted that we have saved Great Wood as a fantastic place for nature and people in Wiltshire. This is a unique opportunity for us to preserve what is probably the largest collection of wild service trees in the country as well as fantastic stands of oak. We will restore it to a fully functioning ancient woodland ecosystem, increasing biodiversity ensuring it is more resilient

To The Impacts Of Climate

change.”

Under the restoration programme, the non-native conifer plantation, which currently covers around a third of the woodland and does not support much wildlife, will be replaced with a mix of native broadleaf trees such as oak, sycamore and rowan.

Easily accessible from Swindon, Great Wood also offers a tremendous place for local communities to enjoy nature, relax, learn and volunteer.