I buy both gas and electric from British Gas. Got a letter today from them / "MPE MARKETING" saying that a nice person would be visiting me to chat about giving me a smart meter. In the past I have always blown the tele sales people out when they rang me. But now that I'm very old and have difficulties getting on my knees to read the meters I'm considering the smart ones. Has anybody any expedience/views of these meters?
Taa
no problems got both changed with Scottish gas...of course thet bribed my with a £50 amazon vouchure....ask for one...
I am with British Gas for both and have had a smart meter for two years. The only thing I don't like is that BG don't charge me often enough and at the moment I am £600 in credit and I have to keep an eye on my direct debits to make sure I don't get hit by a massive bill. I do this by looking at my daily usage which is about £3 a day, so I pay £100 pm. According to my online account, this is enough.
In my experience smart meters have the lifespan of a Mayfly. First two died within weeks of installation, waiting for a third one.
Don?t be too surprised if you still have to read them though as communication is often flaky. As long as they?re still logging your consumption they can be read manually. You might get lucky and not have to do manual readings. My experience perhaps isn?t typical.
If you?re on a simple tariff, apart from perhaps not having to read meters, there?s no particular advantage to them. If you want a tariff that varies through the day, a smart meter is the way to go.
No harm asking if the meter couldn?t be placed somewhere that you?d find easier to read without having to get on your knees.
Tim
I had a letter from EDF last Friday pushing s smart meter, and an identical letter today! No wonder electricity prices keep going up with the money they keep spending on these letters.
I remember how they had to remove the claim that a smart meter would save you money. I see on the latest FAQs on the back that one of the questions and answers is: "Will I have to provide meter readings when I have a smart meter?", with the answer "No. Smart meters collect information remotely, so we'll no longer have to ask you for meter reads". So with your experience, and probably others, that isn't accurate either!
I have to get out some steps to read my electricity meter!
Jeff Layman laid this down on his screen :
The vaste majority of installed meter will and do get a signal, so that is true for almost everyone.
Maybe. Far from my experience though. My meter has signal, it uploads my gas usage. The electrical metering seems to be fecked though.
Tim
Experience: first pair fitted in 2012 worked with 3 out of 4 suppliers without problems; second pair (SMETS2) fitted 2019 have worked with 4 suppliers.
Views: concerns about smart meters are often exaggerated. But then I have a Henley block, spare tail which are longer than those to the meter, and the delusion I could in an emergency use them to bypass the meter.
Similar situation, supplier can read Gas meter but I get no Gas data on my in house display. Supplier cannot read electricity meter, but i DO get data on my in house display !!
I used to get them from EDF so I contacted EDF's smart meter dept. and asked them to stop. They said sure. They continued to push them. Next time I made a proper complaint to their complaints people and I never heard about smart meters again from EDF.
I started getting emails about them from my current supplier. Contacted them and said till I want one or they become legally mandated don't bother me. Sure they said. Two weeks later and email came starting with "Hey, we mailed you about smart meters and haven't heard from you. Perhaps you were busy....." Rang up, contacted complaints, got removed and got nice apology for ignoring request to not be hassled. So far they have kept their word.
If you want one, get one. If you don't want one, make a noisy complaint such that your supplier realises it will be troublesome to keep pestering you and they will stop.
You choose. Well choose whilst you can.
I have both Gas and Electric smart meters, installed by EON three suppliers back. EON could never get them to work and I was constantly having to photograph and read meters. Like you I am very old, 83 years, and find it very difficult to get on my knees to read and phtograph the bloody things, so much so I told my present supplier that if they want a meter reading to send a meter reader to get them. In their favour they've got the electricity meter to transmit it's info OK, but the Gas meter is non-op. I wish I had never seen either of them. They are a PIA squared! Peter
Well, there are several posters in this short thread who have had a problem. But I think it fair to say that if you ask a question about problems you will get answers referring to those problems!
On a separate issue, the letter I got from EDF says that the smart meters communicate via a GSM Sim. According to the wiki, GSM is 2G. A number of countries have switched off or will be switching off 2G, although at present the UK isn't amongst them (
On 22/10/2021 07:54, Jeff Layman wrote: <snip>
No.
But FWLIW I'd be surprised if 2G were turned off for a fair few years. It's used for lots of apart from smart meters - including the EU-mandated e-call system for cars to call for help. Not a good look when e.g. young mum and baby die in a car in a ditch 'cos someone turned off the 2G.
Sorry, that was ambiguous. I meant no they (or pedantically the communications hub that sits on top of the meter proper) can't use 4G.
Our VH one lasted all of three months before going AWOL. The second one failed after about the same period of time. Being in a mobile phone almost not spot doesn't seem to help them. Activating them was a PITA for the installer since his own mobile phone wouldn't work inside the building either. They have given up and do manual reads.
The new "smart" one is somewhat tedious to read requiring lots of button presses. OTOH the old one had the two tariffs crossed over and a cryptic channel 1 is #2 channel 2 is #1 on the front (moulded into the plastic).
I think it depends a lot on how good the local mobile phone signal is. If you have a metal meter cupboard or really thick walls then forget it.
They installed the VH water meter in the cellar and according to the job sheet were not going to install a remote read function. I said fine but don't expect me ever to read it - not going to happen. The installation guy decided to put in a remote read display on the outside of the building. So far none of the cowboys they subcontract to read the damn thing has ever found it so they take random guesses at water usage.
luddite
No. But the southern UK meters use 900MHz GSM run by O2. A modern base station can coexist support for 2G/3G/4G/5G in the same frequency bands. While the operators will eventually turn off 2G for phone calls, they can still keep 1% (or whatever) of that spectrum running 2G for low bandwidth machine-to-machine comms like smart meters. They can dynamically remap the spectrum between different standards based on requirements (subject to regulatory consultation etc etc).
It's just software, at the end of the day.
The northern meters use a separate network from Arqiva in the 412-414MHz band, which isn't GSM (due to there being more hills, I assume).
Theo
Robert submitted this idea :
Odd situation, because the gas data is sent to the electric meter and the electric meter sends both the gas and electric consumption data on to the supplier. Why would it omit the electric data?
Isn't that the "old hat" way of doing it, I thought they had a separate "communications hub" nowadays? My smartmeters have been dumb for years, but it still saves me crawling under the stairs or going out to the garage.
Gas meter sends its data to the comms hub on top of the elec meter for onward transmission. That data can go through even if the elec meter is failing to provide data. I think.
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