About smart meters for small businesses: the benefits

Smart meters are being installed in small businesses across Britain. They give you the information you need to better manage your energy usage, helping you to manage your budgets. This includes businesses with separate business premises, and those based at home that use a separate gas or electricity meter for their business.

If you currently have a shared meter in your business space, ask your landlord about getting a smart meter for your building. When it’s time for your installation, your energy supplier will work with you to find a time that’s convenient for you both. They may even offer installations on a Saturday, or in the evening, to minimise disruption to your business.

Many small businesses can get a smart meter at no extra cost, but contact your supplier today to find out more about what they are offering and to see if you are eligible.

Upgrade to a smart meter and soon your business could be enjoying a smarter future.

Jordan: My name’s Jordan Prada and my small business is Kilo. We’re a zero-waste shop based in North London. We sell pantry goods, cleaning products, oils and vinegars, all loose and by weight so you can by exactly what you need and reduce packaging waste.

Josh: Hi, I’m Josh and I’m one of the co-founders of The Syrup Room. Me and my business partner, Jamie, started The Syrup Room a few years ago now out of a scrap yard. So, we used to salvage metal, old lights, lamps…polish them up and sell them into the antiques trade.

Jordan: So as a small business there’s always highs and lows and it takes a lot of hard work to be successful and you know sometimes it feels like you can’t get anything right and then all of a sudden, things just fall into place and you find a formula that works for you.

Josh: There’s definitely been struggles in business and some of the main ones have been: unquantifiable bills, admin fees and all the things that kind of creative people find hard.

Jordan: The past few years have been particularly challenging but there’s a few things we’ve done to overcome those challenges and success. It’s important to us to be smart with energy, obviously, as a business the more money you can save, the better. So having things like LED lights keep our energy bills lower than having standard light fixtures. Also from a sustainability perspective, our shop runs on renewable resources.

Josh: we have to be smart with our energy savings. We run a totally electric fleet of cars and vans, so we are really really particular about how much energy we have to use. One of the ways we do this is with our smart meter. It enables us to keep a visual eye on what’s actually going out energy wise and prompts us to turn things off, use lower energy and only keep the heating on when we need it.

Jordan: To help us continue to grow in the future we’ve applied for a smart meter. We’re hoping that that just helps us only pay for exactly the amount of energy that we’re using, so saving us money, helping us understand exactly how much energy we’re using and see if we can reduce it anywhere.

Josh: Our future holds some really exciting projects. Bigger projects, crazier projects, international projects. Just a lot of fun hopefully.

Jordan: Hopefully next for Kilo, we’d love to have more shops. We are constantly listening to our customers so we’re always expanding our product range.

Josh: If I was to advise anyone starting a new business, I would say definitely keep your outgoings low. That’s been one of the main issues when the work doesn’t come in, you do have times where the bills still go out.

Jordan: Be patient and trust that it’s going to happen in its own time. It will work out.