Smart meter installed by EDF - a largely pointless change

[Clive Page]

I'd been resisting smart meters for some time, but after EDF told us that our existing meters were past their use-by date and potentially dangerous, I gave in and we had them replaced by "smart" meters on Tuesday. They gave a slot of 8am to noon with no indication of a more exact time which is always annoying. In fact the fitter phoned around 7:30 and actually arrived at 7:55.

The electricity meter was no problem and power was on again by 8:30. But he claimed the gas meter had an old fitting (lead pipe he said, I was doubtful) so he had to consult experts and eventually do some cutting. Then he soldered a new pipe to the old one to allow the new meter to be connected. This all took another 90 minutes, much longer than the standard figure.

As far as the new meters themselves are concerned, they are only marginally worse than the old ones in ease of reading. You have to push and hold a button on the gas meter, and push and scroll down on the display of the electricity meter to get the numbers you want. More modern means worse, as usual.

Then there is the "free" in-house display unit. Ours is a Trio II TouchButton made in China but marketed by Green Energy Options Ltd in Cambridgeshire. Anyone else had the misfortune to be given one of these? It was initially powered by 3 AAA batteries, but these failed before the end of the day, and the instructions book that I managed to download says that it's not wise to run on batters long-term. One can see why. There was a mains charger included, but this means the unit isn't really very portable: as soon as it's moved from one power point to another it takes several minutes to get connected and start working again. There is an "optional" wifi module but, EDF no doubt on cost grounds, chose not to include that.

The main display purports to show current electricity and gas usage. For electricity it actually does this once in a while, e.g. showing our typical standby load of ~200 W, but mostly it shows 0. I'm not sure why, as it seems to get its info updated every 2 minutes. When we had a dishwasher, washing machine or kettle on it did show a few kilowatts briefly. Surprise, surprise, but then went back to zero (not ~200 W soon after).

The gas display is permanently zero, but it with only half-a-dozen button pushes it can show the accumulated gas consumption for the day, so it must be getting data somehow. It looks from the instructions as if it may get gas info only every 30 minutes.

The gas meter obviously has a battery in it but the fitter didn't know anything about this or who was responsible for noticing and replacing it when, inevitably, it runs down.

The indoor display might in theory be useful if it could show the current meter readings: for electricity it can do that in whole kWh which is good enough, for gas it shows just the whole number of cubic meters current 9, while the real gas meter shows 9.019. Since this has to be multiplied by around 11.19 to get kWh, only having an integer value on the indoor display is pretty useless. It can also show accumulated consumption over days/weeks, but currently this is completely wrong, showing a large number of cubic metres consumed on Monday, i.e. before the meter was installed.

All in all I find the in-house display unit to be just about useless. It's such a pity that such huge amounts of tax-payers money has been spent on this pointless exercise. It will, of course, save the energy companies a bit of money in the long term if they are able get meter readings done remotely. But for the consumer it's hard to see any positive aspects at all.

[Andy Burns]

my IHD can only use mains, no batteries, it re-connects quite quickly, but takes some time to receive the whole 12 month history data.

my elderly IHD get elec readings every 20 seconds or so

yes, mine is every 30 minutes, due to the gas meter being battery powered.

Mine has lasted 12 years so far, they're rated for 10 years (D-cell Lithium thionyl chloride)

For elec mine shows live kW, for gas and elec history graphs (24 hours,

7 days, 28 days, 12 months) it uses kWh for both fuels

[Robin]

You've been given a lemon. The IHDs with our first and second meters worked fine. Current (with SEMTS2) gives elec use every 20 secs, gas every 30 mins, meter readings to 3 decimal places, cumulative for day, week to date, month to date, etc. Was never going to generate the savings Ed Davey promised but useful for those who can't read meters or do sums.

[SteveW]

Ours updates every 10 seconds and seems to be right.

Ours is definitely every 30 minutes (presumably to save the battery in the meter).

When it gets low it should start warning you. It is the supplier's problem to renew it.

Ours shows gas, in kW, to 2 decimal places. I assume that it is averaged over that half hour though.

Accumulated usage is also shown in m3 on hours.

Our was a bit odd at first, but looking online gave us a button combination for our model, that allowed me to reset it. Once I did that, everything settled down.

One problem is that having now switched supplier, we are 6 weeks in and the meters have not yet shifted over to the new supplier, so I have to keep giving them manual readings and the display unit has very slightly wrong prices for the tariffs.

[Brian Gaff]

No I have no gas, but the firs meter failed in economy 7 at the first Christmas and had to be totally replaced . However the in home display is a talking one and you can get meter readings there or on the EDF App. I have quarterly bills on real readings and hence do not need to get a sighted person to read it. I can check current usage, though the inbuilt voice is a little annoyingly posh.

Brian

[Mark Carver]

That's interesting because I thought the kWh figure for gas, takes into account the calorific value, which varies according to ambient temperature, and your energy supplier has to resort to Ofgen tables (compiled by the Met Office ?) to calculate daily 'real' kWh figures for your billing ?  The only 'spot' figures available for gas are m^3 values ?

[SteveW]

I have no idea. It might be just a fixed average of the limits that they are supposed to stay within (38 to 41 MJ/m³); it might be an estimate based on past data and most recent data; it might be calculated daily by the company and sent out like the price per kWh is. I'm sure there are more options - but I'm guessing that the first option is most likely.

[Andy Burns]

My actual bills include the m^3 figure as "gas units"

and the formula to convert to kWh as GAS UNITS * CALORIFIC VALUE * VOLUMETRIC CORRECTION FACTOR ÷ 3.6

I get six-monthly bills, the three most recent have shown calorific values of 39.4 39.6 and 39.2, but all showed the same 1.02264 for volumetric correction

I presume the IHD uses some "close enough for jazz" constants for display purposes?

[Mark Carver]

Sort of like using 22/7 for Pi ?   :-)

[gareth evans]

If only I could remember the series expansion for the arctan() function then I could get an exact value for PI down to however many significant digits I required ...

4*arctan(1)

[SteveW]

I always preferred 355/113 - easy enough to remember and reasonably accurate for most purposes (to 6 decimal places).

[charles]

My memory is of 3.14159. You didn't even that accuracy for a slide rule.

[Paul]

In any case, don't make up your own value for it, like these people tried to.

Paul

[gareth evans]

... or else count the number of letters in each word ...

May I have a large container of coffee?

[gareth evans]

... which brings us back to that religion is make-believe because a fact or concept that is true will stand on its own but a falseness can only be propagated through violence or through legislation.

ie, that PI is 3.14159265358979323846 (approx off the top of my head) is true and stands on its own whereas an attmpt to define it falsely as 3 could only be forced through by legislation

[Mark Carver]

What about the PAL s/c Charles ?  (No cheating please) ?

[charles]

4.43 - the rest I can't remember (ends in 525) - it was nearly 28 years since I retired

[Chris Hogg]

The *only* benefit to me is that it stopped the endless emails and letters urging me to get a smart meter installed.

[Clive Page]

I hadn't thought of that. Only 3 days and none of those, so this flow might have stopped. But I've already had 2 emails saying "now you've got a smart meter, here's how to take advantage of it" or similar. I'm resigned to having lots more of these.

[SteveW]

It is very easy to legislate to make Pi integer and be correct - just legislate to switch to using base Pi ... unfortunately, just about everything else then becomes irrational.