Smart meters again

Have a (virtual and hence healthy) cigar ;)

It would have been 2 if you'd added "and make more progress to the targets imposed by the coalition government via Ofgem"

If someone is so stupid as to waste electricity by say leaving the oven on when not needed, are they really going to be clever enough to know what a meter is telling them?

Or perhaps knowing the washing machine costs x per fill, stop using it so much? But then you don't need a smart meter to tell you electricity isn't free.

They walk away into the sunset. A friend lives in a spectacularly deep cutting with a nearly sheer cliff on one side. They gave up.

Max Demian formulated on Monday :

Need, no perhaps not, but a SM makes can make it decidedly easier to watch your consumption and reduce it.

If I wished to, I can see my consumption from my armchair, without going out in the cold to look at my meters. If I need more information about my consumption, I can go online and check my half hour updated consumption graphs. Using that I can check what might base load is, overnight when most things are turned off.

The problems are that the whole thing was implemented very badly indeed, with no thought for people switching suppliers, no compatibility, no thought given to situations where there might be no mobile signal and there ought to have been some way for the customer to access the meter's data via wifi.

Some surprising ommisions, are that my indoor display simply cannot display the total meter consumption figure [1] and despite showing a total cost, it only shows a total cost since installation - it takes no account of what you have paid in as a DD each month, so just keeps on increasing daily. How useless is that?

Wish I could do that with our water meter. It's round the corner, in a side street, outside our back gate. And they don't seem to publish anything.

I'm trying to think of a situation where this would help.

Do you really need a meter to tell you to switch off things not in use?

Or do you sit in the dark to save electricity? Have a cold meal to save using the cooker?

Dave Plowman (News) was thinking very hard :

No and no! SWMBO always makes a full cooked meal daily, often a roast and without fail - They are both fanned gas cookers anyway.

It is always good to know where, why and how your moneys goes. Previously, many would be stuck with just a number of Kw used and bill for it. With the SM the granularity of the data improves massively, I can work out how much my bath or my shower costs, how much it costs to heat up the HW tank, how much it costs to cook the Sunday dinner and so on. I can see how often and how much gas is used keeping the place warm.

I made good use of the SM last year, when I invested a bit of money converting our most used lighting over to LED.

But do you then act on it? Have fewer hot dinners? Fewer showers or baths?

Most would realise you could save energy that way - without looking at a meter.

Depends how far your meter is from your "box".

Indeed - my mother used to do that whenever I left a light on in an unoccupied room.

For electricity, how do you know how much an individual device is using, when thermostatically controlled devices are switching in and out? For that matter, how can you tell how much electricity your fridge or freezer is using, integrated over 24 hours?

Do smart meters read watts, or just pence, in which case you won't be able to compare from year to year as unit prices vary?

(My electricity meter is easily accessible, and if I want to see how much power I am using, I can time the number of seconds for each spin of the disc and divide it into 21,600 to give the watts.)

But you knew that anyway.

If you decide an appliance is using too much power, how do you assess the savings, financial and environmental, of replacing it, taking into account both the cost of the replacement and disposing of the old one?

More idiocy

Response

"Thanks for getting in touch with us about your smart meter. It's great to have you back as a customer again.

Due to a few technical problems we can't communicate with your smart meter when your supply leaves and joins us again. This is something we're working on but for the time being you'll need to give us your meter readings.

Your smart in home display will also not show all the options you had before."

;-(

Chris K

A friend's mother moved up to Scotland when she was widowed. Because her home is so isolated, she has no phone line, no mobile reception, no internet, no terrestrial TV and there is a big cliff blocking any prospect of satellite TV. It is to be hoped that she enjoys the scenery, books and the silence!

SteveW

Smart meters do have a considerable operating cost. I would like to see that cost born by the people that have them.

Michael Chare

You hardly need a Smart meter to tell you that LED lights are cheap to run. We had a kitchen with lots of little lights, about 300w. Changing to LEDS reduced the power consumption considerably.

Same here. I could perhaps understand my mother not knowing an electric fire cost more to run than a light (although she did) and need a meter to tell her - but in this day and age?

Wind back a decade and those devices like the OWL were in vogue and did much the same thing. ITR that some electricity suppliers gave them away at one time.

Ours is the first basic one and isn't used now unless a new usage pattern needs to be measured like the missus heated seedling box I made in her greenhouse. I see you can still get them and they have more sophisticated models as well now which seem to do what a smart meter does ( for electric anyway) without the big brother connotations that having one that the electric supplier can access brings.

I expect there are other makes.

G.Harman

I am completely against smart meters. I can see no benefit to me in having one ( fortunately the company I am with has never asked - its small and my OH sends in his readings monthly). One of the things that stops me changin g is the SM deal. I would rather pay a fraction more and not be hassled.

I have E7 anyway and I believe right now they dont have SM's to deal with t hat.

We do have one of those old gadgets that clips on the wires and reads the e lectric. It is the bain of my life and has been since OH got it over ten ye ars ago. The problem with SM's is that some people ( like my husband) will become obsessed with the electricity and trying to reduce the bill. In our case we do not need to. I can afford it and would rather be warm and have c lean clothes , thanks.

These meters, together with eco warriors will lead to unrealistic targets on consumption. My OH already thinks that we have to remain within the DD s et by the electricity company every month and when I cannot ( its getting c older now) he does make me sit in the dark, go to bed, or switch everything off so I am cold.

Its a hateful situation. It caused me to have pneumonia a while back I am sure.It has contributed at least in part to the cold and condensation issue s in my home.

The only other thing SM's will be used for is so that electric companies ca n switch you off at the mains themselves to hit "Eco targets" or will hike the prices according to when they see you use most electricity. Its anothe r government Big Brother initiative. I am sick of them

I dont have a water meter either. I would move house but I dont want a wate r meter.

I am sick of greenies, eco warriors and government climate targets. They do nt work. They just cause obsessions.

When we moved into this house 35 years ago the water was rates based and we paid £350 pa. When our sons left home we had a meter installed (free) and now pay £250 pa. Unless you are heavy users you could save money.