Smart meters

Just had an email from my supplier (OVO) saying that a meter needs replacing and giving me an option to have a smart meter.

Are there any down-sides?

Is there an option *not* to have a smart meter?

Yes, apparently; it's free either way, but you have to ask for a Smart meter explicitly. It seems to be one "meter" for both gas and electricity (obviously, it must have separate parts).

It's not just your Samsung Smart TV that ought to give you cause for concern...

...Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University Computer Laboratories has been banging on about smart meters for years. Read stuff here:

and here:

and here:

..and anywhere else a google search on Ross Anderson Smart Meter may take you

Nick

In the past 14 months, two out of two factory units with 3-phase smart meters have had them fail, leaving no record of the readings. The older ones with rotating wheel digital displays in the other factories are still going strong.

Thanks. Anderson sounds a bit tinfoil hat brigade to me. So how exactly do they communicate? And more to the point, is there some sort of "off-switch" which makes them dumb?

I can see the logic and potential cost saving of automated meter reading. I'm not *that* bothered about having the display, although I suppose it could be useful.

If part of the driver is to set up houses so that "payment defaulters can be switched off at will" then I guess I am a bit more uneasy. Not that I am ever likely to be a payment defaulter, but if that capability does exist one could be a victim of organisational error or, at a pinch, cyber attack.

Sounds like an advantage to me!

Not when the supplier over-estimates the reading and I have to try to get back over £3k they took by direct debit.

Are there any advantages?

I like the simplicity of getting a bill on about the 3rd of every month, covering the actual consumption of gas and electricity in the previous month.

You could not be more wrong. He is an excellent computer scientist and his lab has previously demonstrated major cryptographic flaws in PINs,

The ability to read the meter is fairly harmless. But the ability to for example disconnect supply creates a strategic vulnerability.

It is that latter possibility with hostile nation state players doing it that bothers him. He is definitely not tin foil hat brigade...

Can you transfer your supply to another provider? Not all providers can work with foreign smart meters.

plus (if meter is within house) fewer visits from meter readers and less chance of the meter having to be changed again when (if) the compulsory roll-out of smart meters comes around.

Do you like the possibility that, through no fault of your own, your supplies could be turned off by supplier error or malicious hacking of the network by a third party?

I don't get that impression at all, but I think it's unfortunate that they mixed the bit about sensitivity to the "electromagnetic field from smart meters" in there among Anderson's stuff.

Crikey. I've had a non smart digital meter for many years.

That's what I have without a smart meter. I submit meter readings online on the 21st of the month and a few days later I get an email saying that the PDF bill for the period from the 22nd of the previous month is available for me online. A smart meter would only remove the need for the trivial task of me reading the meters once a month.

Ask them if the meter they are going to supply compatible with other energy suppliers that you may wish to move to in the future. A non-smart meter may mean you have more choice for moving.