EDF keep pestering me about installing a smart meter. I really don't want one.
Is it compulsory these days?
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2 years ago
Smart meters (2023 Update)
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2 years ago
I was with EDF until the end of the last 12-month contract; I understood you could contact them and ask to be taken off the smart-meter list. It seemed to work for me...
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2 years ago
No.
If they won't take no for an answer follow their formal complaints procedure, citing Ofgem (e.g.
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). Of course in the long run you may end up on a £1/unit tariff. But then again you may be dead first.
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2 years ago
The energy companies are under an obligation to meet a target of supplying x number of smart meters over y number of years so they are getting increasingly panicky as time goes on. Customers are under no obligation (yet) to accept them.
Some companies (I only know the T&Cs of Eon-Next) decline to offer their best energy prices unless you already have or agree to accept a smart meter.
Nick
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2 years ago
I don't think so. They get fined for not having installed their quota of the things which is why they are so keen for you to have one.
FWIW Scottish power keep mithering me too. But then my prehistoric gears and dials classic meter has just clocked itself back through 000000.
I don't expect them to get a mobile signal to the meter. It is right in the core of the house with multiple thick walls in every direction.
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2 years ago
It's not compulsory in OFGEM terms, but if you've agreed to an EDF tariff that specifies a smart meter, then they can insist, or you could leave.
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2 years ago
Of course if this automatic switching comes in, there's no way they'd automatically switch you to a smart-meter tariff, is there?
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2 years ago
Yep, you need it to be able to fit your heat pump :)
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2 years ago
That doesn't matter. They can still be read manually. I have a pair of Ovo meters that I've had to read manually since I left Ovo about three years ago. Lately I've taken to photographing the meters on the phone to save writing the readings down.
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2 years ago
No, and Symbio energy don't nag me to have a smart meter.
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2 years ago
But it does matter if you ever want a ?smart tariff? with variable rates depending on time of day.
Tim
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2 years ago
Scottish Gas bribed me with £50 and as usual all the scare stories came to nowt ....
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2 years ago
The (3-phase & 2 tariff) smart meter in our village hall require multiple button presses to read. Do the smart meters in homes?
That could be fun since the guy will have to levitate to press the buttons. You can just about read it stood on a chair but you cannot reach it to touch without step ladders. Installed just below ceiling level in the hall with a very high ceiling. Its always been there...
Not as bad as the phone master socket which is installed at the far end of the loft though. Problem of services coming in on overhead wires.
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2 years ago
No, but I have one. If you are going to switch suppliers though, I still don't think the transferrabilityis baked into the firmware. I mainly went for it cos I cannot read meters any more due to eyesight and hence I'd have to get it read and during covid that has been difficult. I also got a talking terminal unit so I can hear what is going on when I want to. It had problems at the start with not communicating with the network correctly, but it seems to be fine now. the crunch will come at bill time but then since none of the tarif on any supplier seems to come without gotchas, I am expecting a price rise anyhow. Brian
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2 years ago
Well when a meter gets to a certain number of hours it has to be changed to be refurbished. A lot of the old mechanical ones apparently are no longer serviced. In the end a smart meter has two parts. A replacement electronic meter much like we all had but with a data connection, and the smart bit with all the clever stuff that reads the data. You can still read the meter bit via an lcd apparently, just like the old ones. The issues have been around the smart bit and its software. Of course it is also capable of controlling the electronic meter to cut off power etc, as this can often be needed in vacant premises.
Brian
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2 years ago
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2 years ago
It happens that Peter Johnson formulated :
Not tried that yet - the reading doesn't remain on screen very long and I do them weekly - I find it easy to just push button 9, then remember the reading long enough to write them down.
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2 years ago
In that case the supplier would have to change the meters.
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2 years ago
That was how I ended up with one - bit like some people end up with Amazon Prime, having failed to negotiate Amazon's check-out carefully enough.
I'm not too bothered, since I was always ambivalent: I hated the idea of _more_ "surveillance", and of being pestered and pestered to accede to their demand; otoh I see the values, for the grid management, of us all having one.
Incidentally, at next renewal time I switched from EoN to OVO -- mainly because I'd been with EoN for too many years (and because people here urged me to change). (I'm old enough to remember that the longer you'd been a customer of a firm, the more care they took of you ... what a laughably quaint notion that is, these days.)
John
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2 years ago
Before my smart meters reverted to dumb, I could control whether readings were taken monthly, daily or every half hour. Since I'm not on E7 it made no difference to me, only to "them".
Even now they're dumb, I can still see the fine-grained usage for recent hours/days on the display, and I don't have to go and furtle about under the stairs and in the garage to get readings.