Because the six I had installed in three properties didn't work. Each had to be replaced at least once and I suspect some are still not working. The starngest thing is that the gas meter would work and that depends on sending a signal to the electrcity mter to be forwarded on but it was the electricity meters readings thay didn't get but they did get the gas ones. We don't have good mobile signals here.
Two years on I've given up and wait for them to request a reading.
Jonathan
The current amount of data breaches suggests that other systems are also vulnerable, leading to such possibilities as a hostile State Actor turning stuff off, such as your smart meter.
It's not a matter or paranoia, it's the way they are promoted. If they had just said the purpose was for remote meter reading so they could sack all the meter readers that would have been all right. I object to the claims that it helps you to monitor your electricity consumption and possibly save electricity, neither of which are true.
I suppose the best version of that would be if he turned off the reporting part, but left it passing gas or electrons without interference.
Not to mention the Post Office Horizon scandal and the dogged determination to claim that their faulty systems were right and the innocents out there must have been wrong.
In my opinion, smart metering completely changes the client/supplier relationship and yet, as far as I know there's been no Parliamentary legislation to recognise this. I don't even think there has been any significant change in the terms and conditions offered to consumers by the energy companies to recognise these facts. A while ago I sat down and read through my energy supplier's Ts&Cs and found nothing relevant to smart metering in them.
I would be much happier about accepting a smart meter if there were a robust legal framework around them.
Nick snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.ca
I once received an electricty bill showing higher readings than the actual.
Turned out the meter reader was sitting at home making up the readings, most people never noticed but I did, otherwise he may never have been rumbled!
Do you have specific concerns?
I ask as the basic legal framework for smart meters is much the same as for dumb ones. That includes requirements to certify meters and rights for customers to have them checked. That's not really surprising given the "meter" bit of a smart meter is fundamentally the same as the electronic-but- dumb meters that came before.
I'd say they fall into three main areas: billing, disconnection and liability (eg, for misuse by a third party). In a sense that's nothing to do with the meter itself but the opportunities opened up by the new ways of exploiting information.
Please correct me if I am misunderstanding any of the following:
I believe that recently some smart meter owners were offered the opportunity of a rebate or something for reducing their usage at certain times. Being able to adjust pricing by the hour or by the minute offers potential possibilities but possible potholes too. The Texas power crisis of 2021 showed what happens when suppliers have the freedom to charge what they like, when they like so I think new market regulation has to be brought in before that sort of variable pricing can become normalised.
AIUI power companies don't need a magistrate's warrant to disconnect a supply, they need it in order to gain entry to property to disconnect that supply. Disconnection via smart meter skips that requirement and leaves the customer more vulnerable. Disconnections aren't always the fault of the customer. For example, I don't pay a regular monthly amount, I pay for what I've actually consumed at the end of the month I consumed it. So far, so straightforward - except somehow my energy company have managed to recalculate my bills and have decided that they owe me upwards of GBP1000. How can that be? When I get the time I plan to audit my energy accounts and try and work out what's happened. But what if they'd calculated that it was me who owed them? Maybe GBP1000, 10,000 or even perhaps GBP116,000
And, yes, the energy suppliers or their subcontractors ought to be liable for losses caused by their systems or the hacking or exploitation of their systems and data but lets see that properly legislated too, please, rather than having hapless consumers needing to battle their way through years of litigation to get things put right.
Nick snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.ca
You mean... North Korea might turn off the electricity, halfway through Coronation Street? Let's bomb the $%^&* out of them before they get the chance to act!
And the Police and CPS deliberately withholding evidence from defence barristers, which has resulted in many people spending years or even decades in jail when they were innocent.
A few pence for making your tea later?
If that was the only advantage I probably wouldn’t have one but a smart meter opens up the opportunity to move to whole new swathe of tariffs to choose from. The best tariff will depend greatly on your usage profile and whether you have solar panels, home batteries or and EV.
It’s not just about one off discounts. It’s a lot more nuanced than that. My current smart tariff gives me at least 6 hours at 7.5p per kWhr every night which works very well for folk with EVs. When I get a home battery I’ll be able to charge my batteries overnight and effectively shift the vast majority of my daytime consumption to my night time tariff.
In practice it’s done in 30 minute slots.
Was that dependant on having a smart meter?
As you can probably guess I like the opportunities that having a smart meter opens up. It’s saved me quite a bit of money over the last year and made for very cheap motoring in fuel terms.
Tim
A few pence? I earned £15 by simply cooking dinner later. Wasn’t a big issue. How much did you get back for doing nothing?
Tim
I am unclear how that analogy works when, as I mentioned, you can ask an independent, statutory body to check your meter.
Over how many days?
In my case it was around 10 one hour slots over a few months in the winter.
8 days. It wasn’t hard to do or particularly inconvenient.
I doubt rewards at that level will be repeated, I’m sure it was more a social experiment to see how flexible in their usage some customers could be.
Tim
I spend less than £2/day on electricity (well, that excludes the standing charge) so offering discount of £1.87/day just for time-shifting one hour's worth of usage can't make sense.
Indeed, I saw an article (Guardian so it must be true) that they had to bump up the discount offered by a factor of 6x what they originally proposed, in order to get people interested ...
Send ‘em back to the Stone Age, eh!
Oh…wait a minute…
I know of several people saying similar things. Seems to be a drive on. I was told y someone that if they force a smart meter on you, put it in a Faraday cage. Stops it sending out.
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