How to read your electricity meter
Learning how to read your business electricity meter is important to ensure you are receiving accurate bills from your supplier. If you follow this quick and easy guide on how to read your electricity meter, you will be good to go with submitting your meter reads.
What are the types of meters?
- Digital Meter
- Electronic Meter
- Dial Meter
- Smart Meter
How to read a digital electricity meter
Standard meter
To read your digital electricity meter, you need to read the numbers from left to right, always ignoring the last red digit. If your tariff is a day rate, you will just have one read as shown below.
Day and Night Standard meter
If your tariff is day and night, there will be 2 reads. Day and night meters record your day and night-time usage separately. If you are on a nightsaver tariff, you will pay less for any units used during night-time hours.
Again, you will take the reading from left to right, ignoring the last digit in red.
How to read an electronic electricity meter
An electronic meter will display the reads electronically. The readings from this meter will either be displayed one at a time or together on the same screen. If they are displayed one at a time, you can use the button to alternate the reads. Electronic electricity meters will indicate which rate the reading relates to.
Take your meter reads from left to right, ignoring the numbers after the decimal place.
How to read a dial electricity meter
Dial meters can be a little bit trickier to read. With a dial meter you need to take your reading from left to right. Dial meters typically have six dials, but you will only need to read the first five as the last dial is to be ignored.
If the dial is between two numbers, round down to the lowest number. If the dial is between 9 and 0, round down to 9.
If the needle is on a number exactly, you should write it down and underline it. If the underlined number is followed by a 9 in the next dial, then you should subtract 1 from the underlined number.
How to read a smart meter
ESB has started the rollout of smart meters across Ireland. These meters can communicate directly with your supplier and send them real time data regarding your energy usage. From 2021 readings will begin to be taken automatically. However, if you would like to take a manual reading you can read the numbers displayed on the screen from left to right.
