Why Smart Metering is Key to Reducing Energy Consumption

An active metering solution is key to reducing your demand on natural resources and reducing your utility bills.

By including metering and a method to easily viewing this data, such as on a Smartphone, as part of your KNX installation you will be able to review both live and historical water, electricity and gas consumption. Having this information easily at hand leads to increased awareness and has proven to be key to reducing energy usage, as visibility will encourage energy efficient use and behaviour by the whole family.

Tracking energy consumption as you make changes to your home reinforces and encourages further experimentation. For example, by reducing the temperature throughout the house by 1 degree you may save around 30% on your gas/oil bill. Without being able to see this you won’t know if the changes you have made really have helped. Once you can see the consumption levels dropping before your eyes you can then fine-tune comfort vs. efficiency to find the compromise that suits you and your family. The same is true of other systems in the home, dimming the maximum level of lighting in your home by 10% will be hardly noticeable for the occupants but may lead to significant electricity savings, so it's worth trying. KNX metering and visualisation make this easy.

Being able to compare data from different billing periods can quickly flag up problems in the home, for example a leaky toilet may lead to a spike in your water consumption. Normally this wouldn’t be picked up until the next billing period, if at all. With the ability to easily compare your past consumption with the live data you will be aware of problems much earlier and resolve them before it starts to cost you and the planet.

KNX is the perfect system for accurate metering as you can choose the best product for each application. You may end up using one manufacturer for the electrical metering and a different one for the water metering. With KNX you know that all the devices will communicate seamlessly and you have the peace of mind that any new device will also be supported. KNX devices are manufactured to strict standards and are backward compatible with all previous KNX products, so you can be sure a system installed now will last for the lifetime of the building.