Smart gas meters

[NY]

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.

[David Wade]

If you are going to do that perhaps go the whole hog and monitor multiple circuits...

(thats another Dave) Dave

[NY]

Interesting. I'll try some of those apps. I hoped that the IHD would have a web interface that allowed access to live usage data. The daily usage graph in the IHD (this one

is pretty useless: it displays the usage as a bar chart (one bar per day), but without a scale: all it labels is the numerical usage for the day with the highest value, so you have to interpolate from that. Why not a table or else a bar chart with a number for each day.

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.

[David Wade]

No I find it annoying as well.

Me too,

Dave

[Robin]

You can do that with n3rgy- see the link.

[alan_m]

I'm sure that these days they could turn off a whole area with the click of a mouse button even to those without a smart meter.

[Roger Mills]

So how does this work if, like the OP, you have different suppliers for gas and electricity? If all the data goes to the electricity supplier, how does the gas data get to the gas supplier?

[Theo]

I'm saving about £15-20 a month thanks to my smart meter. Octopus have a pilot scheme where you get free electricity where there's excess generation in the local grid, and at the moment it seems to be 2-4pm a couple of days a week (you get emailed the day before with the times and an link to opt-in). Move the hot water / dishwasher / washing machine / dryer to that period and it saves about £2.50 a day.

Interestingly this week it was Thursday and Friday, days not known for their sunny weather. So the wind farm down the road must be contributing too.

Theo

[alan_m]

My supplier, Octopus, gives me hourly/daily/monthly usage graphs on their web site. If I require, I could also download the same information to put into a spread sheet.

[alan_m]

The nature of a mistake says they can take place without warning. Someone comes to your house with a court order and physically disconnects your meter, or more likely changes it for a pre-payment meter.

[Chris Hogg]

My understanding is it all goes to DCC (Data Communications Company) in the first instance, who presumably then re-route it to whichever electricity or gas supplier the customer is using.

[alan_m]

Yep, they started off by falsely claiming that people could save £100s/annum and then a year or two later had to admit it was more like £15. This also coincided with many people swapping to lower energy light bulbs supplied free of charge - but actually paid for by customers as a stealth green tax/levy on their bills. Average savings = nil.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its written in python Nuff said

[Jeff Layman]

I'm sure almost anything can happen, but it's a very long way from having the whole country under the control of smart meters, and the suppliers having a computer program which has "enter smart meter number here" then click on "disconnect" button. Simples...

[David Wade]

So I missed out that Data does not go distinctly to the suppliers. The electricity meter contains a communications hub sends the data to the DCC..

who store it and make it available to your energy suppliers and third parties that you authorise to read it....

... and given the way government contracts work, I envisage that the cost of running the DCC far outweighs any gains from using Smart meters, although if schemes that lower peak power requirements work the overall savings could be huge. The marginal rates charged by the suppliers of last resort can be huge...

Dave

[David Wade]

So I missed out that Data does not go distinctly to the suppliers. The electricity meter contains a communications hub sends the data to the DCC..

who store it and make it available to your energy suppliers and third parties that you authorise to read it....

... and given the way government contracts work, I envisage that the cost of running the DCC far outweighs any gains from using Smart meters, although if schemes that lower peak power requirements work the overall savings could be huge. The marginal rates charged by the suppliers of last resort can be huge...

Dave

[alan_m]

It also replaces employing meter readers.

[Tim+]

Not that I’ve noticed. They still seem to turn up.

Tim

[charles]

I only get someone who wants to read our water meter. I usually have to show him where it is. (under a bush across the ditch from the road)

[Chris J Dixon]

You could put your name on the list for

<https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/>

"What exactly is the Octopus Home Mini?

The Octopus Home Mini is a small, palm-sized device that beams live readings from your smart meter to our cloud-based platform Kraken, so we can show you up-to-the-minute smart insights via your Octopus Energy app."

"Accessing your live data is easy.

You just need to plug the Home Mini in, follow the setup journey in the Octopus Energy app and you'll soon be able to see your electricity consumption and what you're spending in near real-time and your gas every 30 minutes."

I have one, and it seems to work pretty much as advertised.

Chris