Smart meters

My current meter is just weird. Gas meter data gets uploaded to Octopus (so clearly communication is working), electricity data appears on my IHD but don?t seem to get relayed to Octopus.

Tim

Well, I have the talking interface on an electricity only one and it seems to be working OK, if a little annoying at times since it reminds you how much you are using of course, which I'd say is the general idea! Lots of other info as well as the current kw cost per hour and meter readings though, many go over my head rather. You can set a budget which one assumes you can keep an eye on, but really if you are cold or you really need a bath you are going to break in any case as you have no idea of what the cost implications of the rising prices will be, just keep some of your budget spare for it and hope for the best.

Mine is with EDF. Brian

as an "optional" modification, moving a meter usually costs mega-bucks

mine just works

and I can go online to see my usage split up into half hourly chunks (if you might have any need for that) and I no longer have to get the Estate manager to let me into the meter cupboard to collect a reading

Unfortunately, the distance between the gas and electric meters is such that they cannot talk to each other, so I'm stuck with a dumb gas meter which I have to manually read (fortunately in a cupboard that I do have access to.)

Don't know why people are against the personally (though I do agree that the suggested savings are fictional)

Not if you can time-shift a sizeable bit of power consumption and are on a variable tariff. The savings then are very real.

Tim

How does a smart meter help?

We are on a (not smart) economy 7 tariff and thus do as much as we can on the night rate, I fail to see how a smart meter would help us do any better.

In theory an economy 7 tariff could do the same as my current tariff but I doubt that the difference is as great as 15p/5p for peak and off peak. I only get 4 hours but that?s enough to put 100 miles into my car. Of course my rates will go up at the end of my current contract .

Octopus have other tariffs that vary half hourly throughout the day and night. You definitely need a smart meter for those.

Tim

Thanks to all that replied. I'm swinging towards the smart meters. There could be a time when I can't get up from my knees.

Some of the Octopus E7 tariffs are horribly expensive e.g. day 40p/day 25p ok, they're not a 3x factor between day and night.

Octopus's agile tariffs probably were worthwhile a couple of years ago, but along with normal tariffs they've been on an upwards trajectory, and their "fabled" we pay you to mop-up excess electricity hardly ever happen.

Why? If they told me the tariffs I could adjust my consumption as required, the smart meter doesn't help me in the slightest.

And Octopus should just take it on trust that you shifted your consumption to a cheaper period?

I was quite tempted by their Go Faster tariff, which is cheap rate from

You'd obviously need a smart meter recording hourly readings with that

- you couldn't reprogram an Economy 7 meter to be an Economy 3 meter with a new start time.

Unfortunately those tariffs now have a non-cheap rate of about 24p/kWh which makes it somewhat risky to step off the price cap tariff that everyone is landing on.

Theo

Isn't Economy 7 mainly of benefit to those with storage heaters and few people have those anymore?

Andy Burns expressed precisely :

Not that I am aware of. The gas meter has to operate on a built in 10 year battery, they do not have the spare power for making cell communications, so they report to the electric meter, which is mains powered and has the mobile sim installed in it, to enable it to phone home. My understanding is that you cannot have a Smart gas meter, without the Smart electric meter, for this very reason.

That's what I refer to as the "old hat" way, the gas meter still has a battery, but it now talks to the hub, and the electric meter also talks to the hub (likely powers it too), the IHD also listens to the hub, and the hub uses either the phone network, or the arqiva network, or can mesh to a neighbour who has signal when you don't.

, which is mains powered and has the mobile sim

Do you go hungry until the cheap tariff cuts in so you can start cooking?

It's because companies keep going on about them. Like all advertising, it pisses them off.

Are you sure you haven't accidentally draped a faraday cage over it?

I'm not familiar with gas meter installs, but I thought it was the other way around. SMETS1 meters had a separate comms hub, on SMETS2 meters it sits on top of the electricity meter:

In your 'new hat' way, how is the gas comms hub powered? Is it off your consumer unit, or a separate fuseway off the main supply (like the tapoff for a second consumer unit)? Does it get turned off if you open the main switch?

Theo