With fuel bills on the increase and initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint underway across the country, it’s more important than ever to conserve energy and bring your bills back down to earth.

At the beginning of March, each of the companies within The Guinness Partnership introduced ‘Home Energy Monitoring’ pilots. This is where customers use a device to show how much electricity their home uses, minute by minute.

OWL monitors show how much electricity is being used in ‘pence per hour’ with costs based on the customer’s tariff. The monitors are now being used in homes across the Partnership to see if customers change or reduce their energy usage.

With several Care Homes also included in the pilot, OWLs will help us identify ways to reduce the Partnership’s own electricity costs.

Andy Mackay (Executive Finance Director at Guinness Northern Counties) comments, “This is a clear demonstration of our commitment to supporting our residents to get out of fuel poverty and will work alongside the ongoing insulation and boiler replacement programmes.”

The pilot launch included installation of the monitors and a visit from our OWL Coordinator who carried out a demonstration of the device and gave some energy saving tips.  OWL coordinators will continue to support customers throughout the pilot. 

Many participants have agreed that the OWL meters already make them more aware of the electricity that they are consuming. Some have found that just by switching off all of the things they didn’t need to have on, they could save a penny an hour – that’s 24p a day, or, £75 a year!

We’ve purchased 160 monitors to date and early positive feedback indicates customers are becoming increasingly interested

The devices are portable, so once the pilot has ended we plan on reusing them for the benefit of other customers. If you would like to become involved in a Home Energy Monitoring pilot, please contact your company OWL Coordinator, Mick Boaler

by email to mboaler@ncha.co.uk.    or by telephone on 0161 219 7000