Smart gas meters

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.Am I old fashioned in wanting a web interface rather than a smartphone app to access the IHD? I probably am ;-) I like to get values that I can copy and paste from a browser page into an Excel spreadsheet. Not possible with Android - or at least you are at the mercy of the incredible cumbersome select-by-touchscreen prelude to being able to copy and paste.

Download and install "Bluestacks" onto your PC. Ignore all the game related promotions, the underlying application is an Android phone (or tablet) emulator.

I've just used mine to manage my "Digital Lidl Clubcard" on my PC. Oh, and I've printed their 2d barcode onto an actual card. Oh +1, I managed to sign up without disclosing my real email address or mobile phone number.

yes they use batteries

they replace it - AIUI either (a) routine cycle or (b) when it stops reporting

to save the battery the gas meter sends readings to the comms hub only every 30 minutes

yes

Modest potential benefits: more accurate bills without having to send readings; access to lower tariffs.

And I've added "OT" to the subject as I hope you do not plan DIY on your gas meter.

You don;> > AIUI, they don't power gas meters from mains electricity, due to risk

yes...

an engineer is needed

Its the same display. According to this British Gas should update your existing display to show both gas and electricity..

It sends every 30 minutes, electricity ever 10. The Gas sends the data via the electricity meter. This contains a hub and the In house Display only talks to this not the gas meter.

no idea.

it helps your supplier meet government targets, avoids them being fined and charging you more.. .. and as it only updates every 30 minutes less exciting....

lots of info here:-

Interesting, thanks - looks like they're well on the way, although a large number of those are SMETS1.

How do they calculate the CO2 emissions saved?

More accurate bills? I suppose there are those who get estimated bills and just pay them, but anyone who can read a meter can supply that reading and get an accurate bill. Unless, of course, you're on DD and don't bother to check what you're being charged. Isn't that more likely with "smart" meters than old meters, as you may have to sign up to DDs to get the best tariff? Or does that apply to old meters too?

What about the potential "benefits" of being disconnected remotely or having varying tariffs applied over which you have no control?

Not to mention the extra cost to all of us for the country-wide installation -perhaps £50 a meter (as an aside, I didn't know until just now that there are no plans to install smart meters in Northern Ireland. Anyone know why?)

It's potentially more accurate with tariff changes. eg tariff changes 1 January. If you submit your readings on another day (eg 10th of the month), they will have to estimate your usage between 10 December and 10 January in order to work out how much you used on the old tariff.

And of course there's the old palaver about them not telling you a bill is due, sending out an estimated bill, you send in a reading, they then send another bill which doesn't replace the estimate but just applies an additional correction subsequent to it, etc.

If you're the type that spreadsheets your consumption weekly then this is not a problem to you, but many people aren't.

We've all had tariffs applied over which we have no control, it's called the energy market.

Has anyone had their supply disconnected except for non-payment? Were you hoping to do that?

Maintaining traditional meters / meter readers has a cost too.

Lack of a functioning government and an executive stuck in limbo just keeping the lights on, presumably.

Theo

Generally using Abbotomathics

I don't have a spreadsheet and it's not been any problem for me. As I don't have a smart meter or pay by DD, I know that whatever happens I will always pay more (but I won't overpay and let the suppliers use my money to get interest for them).

I was thinking more of a system where quick changes are made to tariffs depending on how well the supplier can react to charges to them by the power generating companies, and pass them on to the customer. They might, for instance, change peak times to something which doesn't suit the customer, who had originally signed up to a time-variable tariff because it was right for them.

It won't affect me as I pay as soon as get the correct bill. But, if remote disconnection is possible, you can be pretty sure that mistakes will be made. Those "mistakes" cannot take place without warning with non-smart meters.

I doubt many customers have had meters replaced until they've reached

One might assume that, but it has been looked at, and the installation of smart meters will start in a few year, but for electricity only. From

(Full report is recent, and can be found here:

At the end of the day, the supplier is reliant on the customer sending in readings (because meter readers are too expensive). Customers are neither reliable nor trustworthy, so I can see why they want to take them out of the equation.

That seems unlikely for gas, where it comes from a hole in the North Sea (or elsewhere). There's not much concept of 'peak' or 'off peak' gas - if the pipeline is big enough to feed everyone it doesn't matter whether it comes out of the hole now or later today. It's more peak=winter, offpeak=summer, maybe you could get a discount for running your heating in the summer?

True.

It seems like the smart meter programme has been botched in numerous ways, not least that there's strong incentives on suppliers to install them but not so many to keep them working, as well as a mess of intermediaries (hello Capita) to make it worse.

Interesting. NI only got a gas connection in 1996, and it now connects

Theo

The biggest problem that we have with our smart meter (installed by Octopus) is that there is a very long delay between the end of a day (at midnight) and the daily and hourly electricity/gas usage figures appearing on the Octopus app and web site. If we are lucky, day N's data is visible before the end of day N+1, but occasionally it's taken 2 days for it to appear. We always see 00:00 and 00:30 figures for day N very quickly, almost always by

How long *should* it take? What prevents the 24-hour usage figure from being available almost immediately after midnight?

It should be available early that day. I guess the issue might be load on the DCC or Octopus servers...

.. there are other options that read data direct from the DCC in real time...

I wonder why the meter has to send readings as frequently as every 30 minutes. Surely daily readings would be more than enough for accurate billing?

My understanding is that the gas pipeline system is used as a form of storage: pressure being raised overnight or during low consumption periods.

I had a 48" gas main run through some of my fields. During the compensation discussion they didn't like my request for a gas *storage* payment:-)

That has been normal for 10+ years. In general, cheaper tariffs have always required a DD and often an on-line account with paperless billing. Before the fuel crisis some cheaper tariffs were only available to those who had a smart meter, or were prepared to have one fitted within a short time of the contact starting.

You always have the option of changing supplier if you don't like the tariff or the way it is applied. Despite all the negative publicity last year it's always been the case that the supplier can put you on a pre-payment meter or get a court order to cut you off for non-payment of bills. Nothing has changed with a smart meter except that entry to the premises may not now be required.

From memory more like 10x that amount but there has always been an industry target, that was never met, about replacing traditional meters every 10 years for calibration purposes.

As NI is still in the EU it will be a policy decision made in Brussels :)

That's the point. They can just do it by the click of a mouse. As happened recently (erroneously) with the supply to the communal areas of my block.

If they had given that as the reason for smart meters that would have been fine. But they claimed that you could save money using them which is false, as they don't give people relevant information: just the total current power usage, not the consumption of individual appliances and average/total consumption per appliance. In any case, savings are a result of people replacing appliances with more economical models when they stop working.

At a pinch, I can determine the total power consumption by timing an old fashioned spinning disc meter.

Thanks for all the replies, both on this and the OT thread - much is explained. I have one more question: my in-house display (IHD 6, I think) shows no sign of gas readings at the moment, even zeros or blanked out or messages such as 'not available', no matter what buttons I press. If/when the smart gas meter is fitted, will the gas data magically appear, or will I get a new IHD that can display both gas and electricity?

Mmm. I may at some stage pop a split toroid round the mains input wire and wind a secondary for it to monitor current, stuff it and some scaled down mains volts into some sort of wifi equipped Pi thing and make my own smart meter.

I doubt it. In Spain SMART meters are compulsory and chargeable and they are in the EU...

I pay 0.026630 €/day for mine. You don't get an in-house display either... ... and I have a maximum load of 5.75kW and if I exceed that it trips... .. I could have more but its about 0.10€/kW/Day ....

Dave

Dave

The problem is that very often DD is synonymous with budgeted accounts where you pay an amount that the energy company predicts you will use, rather than paying (monthly or quarterly) what you have actually used. You end up in credit for ever-increasing amounts of your money that they have.

I was with a company (I'm not certain which one it was, so I won't name them in case I'm wrong) and they gave me two choices:

- pay actual metered usage, but had to be done online or by cheque at a bank

- pay budgeted amount, but could be done by DD

I was not impressed with my company. They refused to refund any money that I had overpaid because I'd been charged at the normal rate but then had ended up living with my girlfriend while I was recuperating from a heart attack, so had used very little fuel at my house. I had to threaten to involve the ombudsman before they would refund me. They tried to persuade me to get my girlfriend to change to their company when I married her and moved in with her and was terminating my own accounts, and said that if I did this it would be "so much easier" because my credit would just carry over to the new address as if it had been a house move.

I was very unimpressed with the inflexibility of the company and the way I was held to ransom - you can only pay by DD if you opt to pay an estimated rather than actual amount, and they were exceedingly unwilling to reimburse when I was in credit.

We're with Octopus now and they seem to be an exceptionally good company. I just wish their app/website was updated sooner after the end of the day that the data relates to, so I didn't have to wait 12, 24 or even 36 hours to see a day's usage.