Loop Energy - Smart Meter App

After my energy company went bust and I was moved to another utility supplier, I have been nothing but disappointed. Not only did my smart meter not work with the new company and I have misplaced my plug in monitor, but getting in touch with my utility company is nothing more than useless. Their app is awful, most of the information is missing and to be honest the company customer service is a total shambles. All this said I have been desperate to find a way to keep a track of the energy that we have been using and after a quick google search I stumbled across ‘Loop Energy’. I quickly set about reading the reviews and to be perfectly honest I was a bit dubious as the reviews were that good I thought it was too good to be true. Anyway here I am a week later adding my own review to their app. This app is fantastic so easy to set up and gives you so much information about what you are using hourly, daily, monthly and yearly. I have already found a source of extra energy being used that I have managed to stop. Thank you ‘Loop Energy’ your app is first class and does exactly what it says on the tin.

We came across Loop when the IHDU from Bulb stopped communicating to the app they had recommended we download to track daily usage. It was easy to set up and we can monitor our gas and electric throughout the day which was what we wanted to do. With Gas we were able to work out how much our aga and central was using. As a result of that the central heating went off as way too expensive and we kept with the aga to help heat the home. With electricity it isn’t really possible to identify what appliances are costing to run and probably a plug in unit would be more useful for this. It does talk ALOT about Phantom load sometimes it tells us we are average and other times we are in the top 20% of ??? We did look round our house though and made a few adjustments but not enough to really lower it substantially. Have we saved 10% off our energy as they say? Possibly …. But it is a useful tool and does what we want it to do. Would recommend giving it a try.

We have different suppliers for our electricity & gas (use to be a lot cheaper) & have ended up with British Gas supplying electricity & EDF gas, following others going bust & no longer being able to switch. They fitted smart meters earlier this year. The elec in house display was sporadic (& their App didn’t work for months) & the gas in house display never worked (& their App wasn’t available to us as we only had gas supplied by them). I wasn’t sure the gas smart meter was transmitting properly, the supplier said it was, but then would ask me for meter readings!! With Loop I can now graphically see our usage for both energies & it’s far easier to explain to the rest of the family & show them too! It doesn’t provide live usage, there’s about a 3 hour lag. If you want live usage of an appliance you need to get those individual socket monitors. But Loop will help you identify any usage spikes you’re not expecting & hence help you narrow down if there’s a problem. I can also see now that the gas meter isn’t providing readings constantly & there are periods most days when no usage has been sent - probably due to the gas meter being some distance from our electricity meter & the transmission being interrupted. I also like the solar simulation you can request on Loop, which can help you work out if solar would be beneficial for you.