There's a theory that suggests that the supplier can/will control your supply remotely.
If that is a concern I don't see why the OP (etc.) can't block the meter's communication by wrapping it in foil or something.
The text in that graphic is "CSP Central and South" without the "region" leaving unclear if it is one or two. Elsewhere they and others make explicit it's plural.
Spot on: see the 1st link
Yes nothing changed there. I guess its par for the course. I do now pay on readingvia DD, and keep an eye on the bank statements because any kind of manual intervention can make the system default back to monthly amounts it seems. Thames water obviously use similar software but somewhere, somebody has to set this default if a glitch occurs, and in my view the fact that they do not bang off a letter,email or text at least is sharp practice. Every now and then things can go wrong but compounding the error with a default smacks of profiteering. Brian
I did phone them, they didn't help, my electricity meter hasn't reported for years. However, I don't see why a phone call should be necessary, the suppliers know when a smart meter isn't reporting. They know there is a problem. Presumably, suppliers get government money for installing them, but they then have little incentive to ensure they actually work.
On 17/09/2023 20:42, Pancho wrote: Presumably, suppliers get government money for installing
Do you think the £400 cost for each smart meters comes from money supplied by the Government?
OK, instead of getting money to install smart meters, they get a penalty for not installing smart meters.
My point remains essentially the same, there is governmental economic pressure on energy companies to install new meters, I can't see any government economic pressure on energy companies to ensure they work.
Without government pressure, the economic benefits of smart meters, to the energy company, must be small. They have little incentive to fix a faulty meter. So it is yet another example of poorly designed regulation.
So yes, I could phone up the energy company, write them letters, complain to the ombudsman, and eventually... the utility company may make an effort to fix my meter.
My preference would be to have a government that was operationally competent. i.e. If the government thought it worthwhile for people to have working smart meters, they should have introduced rules that targeted reporting/working smart meters, rather than installed smart meters.
If the government had had any sense they would have given the whole job to the companies who manage the supply network not the middlemen who merely bill you for usage.It would then have been a simple matter of replacing old type with new type which can be read remotely. None of this bullshit about saving you money. Same type of PR blunder as with HS2.
That option was considered. But it would have meant reversing the change in 2003 to make suppliers responsible for metering - a change made in part 'cos of complaints about monopoly DNOs giving poor service and poor VFM.
My supplier told me my meter was out of calibration, and they needed to replace it.
I called them up, and said "OK, but I don't want a smart meter, and IAC they probably don't work around here, no mobile signal."
tap..tap... "Yes, we have had some failed installs around there. Goodbye."
Hang on I said, what about the calibration?
"Oh, that doesn't matter".
Ring a bell?
Andy
It probably means the error is biased in their favour .
Brian
No its just a ruse to allow Octopus to force a smart meter install. The companies have been fined for not installing Smart Meters so are resorting to other means. British Gas has been using a "your meter will catch fire"
SES £700k NPower £2.4M Eon 2015 - £7m British Gas 2016 - £4.5m
Dave
I'm a reluctant BG electricity customer (transferred from a 'bust' former supplier) but although my non-digital meter is well over 20 years old I have not yet been 'offered' a smart meter. The criteria for changing seems odd.
I would not be averse to having a SMETS2 smart meter to be able to take part in Peak Save and other cost reducing tariff options but to date BG show no interest in offering me one.
Have you tried requesting one?
Can I ask about how well people have found that smart meters communicate with the In Home Device (console) and the central database (for the company's app and web site)?
We had a smart electricity and smart gas meter fitted in June. To begin with they both gave complete records (no missed readings) but after a couple of months the gas meter stopped communicating with the IHD (*) and the app/website or only updated once every couple of days. The Octopus app often lists "we are waiting for today's results" or some such wording - and some days those readings *never* arrive, or else they are partial - usually the bar chart is complete for the first few hours after midnight but no subsequent readings.
Octopus have done something remotely (maybe forcing something to reboot) which cures the problem for a few days but it then comes back again. They are sending someone to investigate, but I wondered whether anyone else had experienced this?
In general, how long should it take for a day's midnight-to-midnight elec and gas reading to show in the app? I find that usually by about 10 AM the previous day's elec reading shows up, but sometimes nothing gets updated until maybe 16:00-19:00. In the meantime I usually see two readings for
00:00 and 00:30, but nothing more - and then eventually the whole day's bar chart readings are there, together with the midnight-to-midnight daily usage.Would you normally expect that a day's midnight-to-midnight usage figure from the app should agree fairly well with a 10:00-10:00 (or thereabouts) reading of the meter's own LCD display? Do smart meters tend to under-read on the midnight-to-midnight usage results? I realise that it is the cumulative reading every week/month that the elec/gas companies use for working out the real bill, rather than using the sum of consecutive midnight-to-midnight readings that the app might report.
My general impression of smart meters has been rather underwhelming: I expected both the IHD and the app/web to give continuous up-to-date meter values and usage so far today, rather than the app/web reading only being updated once per day, and often a loooooooooong time after midnight when the previous day's reading has ended.
(*) The IHD has a "Meter" menu option which reports the cumulative elec / gas meter reading which should be the same as the readings on each meter's own LCD display. For elec there is good agreement; for gas the IHD may report the same value for several days and then suddenly jump up as if it only occasionally gets an update.
There are other suppliers…
Doesn’t guarantee a quick smart meter fitment though and fitting time seems to vary widely in different parts of the country.
Tim
My SMETS1 meters were paired to each other and the IHD before the installer left my house, the various stories of it taking weeks after installation to get them talking all sound wrong to me.
Mine talked fine to e.on until the day I changed supplier, then of course they went dumb, the meters still talk to the IHD properly though.
my elec meter gives "essentially live" updates, a few seconds at most from e.g turning on a greedy appliance, and seeing watts go up on the IHD
Gas usage is only reported to elec meter and then to the IHD every 30 minutes to preserve battery, heating hasn't kicked-in here yet, so only one period per day shows any gas usage for hot water. But once heating season starts, it records the usage as it should twice per hour.
My experience is much as Andy Burns save that our SMETS1 meters survived the first switch of suppliers. SMETS2 have survived 3 so far.
And if push the button enough times you can find interesting stuff like the power factor of the current load.
Our first SMETS2 meter lasted about a month before packing in. Took about six months to get a replacement but, TOUCH WOOD, it’s been fine since.
(Probably a fatal mistake to say the above).
Not personally since our second meter but your experience isn’t uncommon. The tech seems decidedly flaky.
Not sure to be honest. I have an Octopus mini that uploads data transmitted to the IHD to the app (presumably via Octopus servers) so I see all my usage more or less instantly without having to wait for Octopus to receive the encrypted data sent to the DDC.
Tim
Yes, obviously.
Yes I know that but who wants the aggravation of switching when almost all suppliers are offering price capped products?
Nothing is guaranteed these days. (except death and taxes)
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