Electricity meter running backwards!!!

[Andy Dingley]

Well it might be in my house (certainly the workshop), but _typically_ ? Hairdriers and incandescents aren't.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Remote meter reading has been around for 25 years. It has however consistently failed to deliver, and that's certainly not from want of trying. That's not to say it will always fail, but it's starting with a track record of 25 years of complete failures. This is not just a UK issue either. Indeed some other countries have done substantial roll-outs of remote meter reading, only to abandon it all. The reasons tend to be social and commercial, rather than techincal.

It also opens the possibility to have different suppliers at different times of day, or to change your supplier on a minute by minute basis, based for example on their current rates, as is currently done by the grid itself, or on your environmental beliefs e.g. expensive wind power when the wind is blowing, but cheapest non-carbon source at other times. The suppliers are not so keen to see this happen, of course, but it may (and should) be forced upon them when the technical infrastructure is in place.

[The Medway Handyman]

No idea how it worked. It was about half the size of a bag of sugar & heavy, which made me suspect a coil of copper wire.