Have you thought of opting for a water meter?
Today, I chair the last meeting of the Customer Challenge Group at South East Water which has spent three years critiquing the company’s customer engagement programme and resultant business plan for 2015-2020. However, I have signed a two-year contract to chair a successor Customer Panel which will monitor how well the company actually fulfils this business plan.
South East Water is half way through a 10-year compulsory metering programme and Southern Water has just completed a five-year compulsory metering programme. Customers of other water companies can always opt voluntarily for a meter which could cut their water consumption and water bills.
University of Southampton research has shown consumers reduce their water consumption by 16.5 per cent after they receive a metered connection – based on the study of a five-year programme to install nearly half a million water meters in the south-east of England. This reduction is far more than the national average of ten per cent and is mainly achieved very quickly after a meter is installed.
Economists Dr Mirco Tonin and Dr Carmine Ornaghi have been working with Southern Water to examine the impact of the company’s five year universal metering programme (UMP). They examined the consumption habits of more than 200,000 UMP customers over a period of four years from 2010. The researchers found that in total customers were making water savings of more than one and a half times the predicted ten per cent.
March 3rd, 2015 at 9:44 am
A lot of people seem to get very steamed up over water meters as though it’s some sort of invasion of privacy. I was brought up in Malvern, Worcesteshire which has been metered since the year dot and everyone accepted it as a fact of life. I’m also not surprised there are substantial saving for most people; water companies are bound to set their rates so that they don’t make a loss, and the average consumption usually results from a larger number of people consuming a bit less than average balanced by fewer consuming a lot more. Have you noticed that with an equally shared bill in a restaurant, more participants feel hard done by than quids in?
March 4th, 2015 at 7:36 pm
Good points, Janet. I’m going to request a meter myself.
March 4th, 2015 at 11:39 pm
We have a water meter and receive quarterly water bills. The charges are broken down into State Bulk Water Charge ($2.55 per kL), and fixed Local Government charges including Water Access Charge ($45) and Sewerage Access Charge ($129). There is also a “usage” charge that rises if you go above a certain level of usage.
The bill has a bar chart showing current period water use, previous period and same period last year. A second bar chart shows “Your water consumption”, “Your local area average” and “Brisbane average” (about 450 litres per day). This is per household not per person.
I never read our meter (it is on the footpath down a hole with a lid that is very difficult to get off, and is usually crawling with ants), so rely on the bill to show me our usage. I do a quick check to see our usage is fairly stable and in line with averages. I am not motivated by the charges to reduce usage.
Brisbane household water use fell significantly during the drought about 15 years ago, when all garden-hose use was banned, and there were big public campaigns such as the Four Minute Shower campaign. I believe water use has not returned to previous levels- people got out of the habit of watering their lawns, and water-needy plants died out. Many households, including ours, installed rain-water tanks for garden use.
March 5th, 2015 at 10:43 am
Interesting, Nadine – especially the provision of the information in the bar charts.