Smart Meter = smart move?

[Reorte]

9 minutes ago, hayfield said:

 

It was my choice to have one, as it is your choice not to have one. Far from having one rammed down my throat I was eager to have one. You still cannot bring yourself to agree cheaper rates are available !!!

I have not said that cheaper rates are not available, I have just questioned the reasons for them existing. Those are two very different statements, will you please stop repeatedly accusing me of saying something that I have not in fact said.

 

Quote

Well it would be rude of me to call those who want to keep dumb meters names, and I have accepted you are free to stay with old technology without any derisory remarks

In reality there is quite a push to make that as hard an option as possible moving forwards. It's not an open choice when you're not free to revert, and when incentives and disincentives not related to the different cost of providing the service are present.

 

Quote

The savings are not artificial !! they are available to those who meet the criteria, and my view is the market will open up with more incentives for customers, which has already started

Why aren't they artificial? As far as I can tell they do not stem from it being cheaper to supply someone with a smart meter in their house.

 

Quote

What a strange idea of either the government or the energy spying on you. They get the same data both ways, and the more you use is more beneficial to the energy company as is paying at a higher rate

I didn't say spying. But there is quite a conceptual difference between live-ish measuring and just knowing a final aggregate total.

 

Edited September 7, 2023 by Reorte

[Hroth]

I'm actually sorry for bringing this thread back up the listings!

 

As I see it, "smart" meters merely mean that your supplier can get a reading of your energy consumption without requesting that you supply a reading yourself or making an over-optimistic estimate of your consumption rate.

 

You don't have to pay by direct debit, you can cough up when billed, although there is a slight benefit for direct debit, possibly due to to the provider taking more than is necessary at times and then benefiting from the interest on your cash!

 

The "Nag meter" you get is useful when first supplied for tracking down forgotten items on standby, allowing you to judge if you can do without.  Apart from that, it doesn't help save energy on a day-to-day basis, so it may as well be unplugged and left in a drawer with all your old deceased smartphones and tablets.

 

In the end, its all up to personal preference to have one installed or not.  Until the day when they're made compulsory, and we're not there yet!

 

[hayfield]

8 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Going back to the earlier "rude" comment it wasn't unjustified so I should apologise and try to make the same points in a less unpleasant manner. It's what happens when I feel very strongly about things (encouragement of them produces a knot in the stomach), but that's no excuse for rudeness.

 

 

Thanks, I accept you have you have your own reasons for your views and values, but no one action is right, each route has its own advantages and disadvantages.

 

For me smart meters are essential in keeping my costs down, mainly due to having solar panels (a very budget system)

 

Good luck  

[Reorte]

4 minutes ago, hayfield said:

For me smart meters are essential in keeping my costs down, mainly due to having solar panels (a very budget system)

To be fair I'd missed out on that part, and I can grudgingly admit that a smart meter sounds like it should work better with panels.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Reorte

[hayfield]

Just now, Reorte said:

To be fair I'd missed out on that part, and I can grudgingly admit that a smart meter sounds like it should work better with panels.

 

 

I have a budget system, mainly as I bought it 2 years ago with a 40% discount. I am still paying the same £110 pm DDI for the past 4 years and nearly £600 in credit to pay for winter (I rather lend the money to Octopus than make HSBC richer) My electric bill for the past 2 months has been mostly the service charges. And when the rate changes its correct down to the last penny.

 

I do accept for some the cost of energy is an issue and feel for them. Anything which reduces the cost for all is a good thing.

 

Keep well (and warm in the winter)

[Guest]

Here's a thing I learned today.

The Radio Teleswitch Service uses a BBC longwave signal to switch the rates on quite a few Economy 7 type meters.

They all need to change to smart meters before the BBC turn off longwave.

 

https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/articles/radio-teleswitch-service-rts/

[Nick C]

1 hour ago, 30801 said:

Here's a thing I learned today.

The Radio Teleswitch Service uses a BBC longwave signal to switch the rates on quite a few Economy 7 type meters.

They all need to change to smart meters before the BBC turn off longwave.

 

https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/articles/radio-teleswitch-service-rts/

Interesting - in my old flat I had SSE 'economy 10' but that was done entirely within the meter, there was no outside comms (and it didn't switch to BST, so my winter cheap times were different to summer)

[JJGraphics]

20 hours ago, Hroth said:

The "Nag meter" you get is useful when first supplied for tracking down forgotten items on standby, allowing you to judge if you can do without.  Apart from that, it doesn't help save energy on a day-to-day basis, so it may as well be unplugged and left in a drawer with all your old deceased smartphones and tablets.

 

It is interesting to see the not inconsiderable number of those things thrown in the "electronics scrap" bin at our local waste disposal site. There were quite a lot of them in the bin when I went there last week and I'm aware that the bin gets emptied fairly frequently. It is normal to see a number of then in the bin – I know as I use it regularly to dispose of electronic scrap.

Listening to what friends and neighbours have told me probably gives a clue to the reason for this – that the displays go wrong and the supplier then will not/cannot replace them. Others fail to show the rate actually being charged for electricity or gas and thus become useless. Others are just forgotten about or get in the way and gather dust and get thrown out.

[hayfield]

1 hour ago, JJGraphics said:

 

It is interesting to see the not inconsiderable number of those things thrown in the "electronics scrap" bin at our local waste disposal site. There were quite a lot of them in the bin when I went there last week and I'm aware that the bin gets emptied fairly frequently. It is normal to see a number of then in the bin – I know as I use it regularly to dispose of electronic scrap.

Listening to what friends and neighbours have told me probably gives a clue to the reason for this – that the displays go wrong and the supplier then will not/cannot replace them. Others fail to show the rate actually being charged for electricity or gas and thus become useless. Others are just forgotten about or get in the way and gather dust and get thrown out.

 

My consumer unit has been playing up a bit, but is still a useful tool when I need a quick recap of usage. For most customers its a bit of unnecessary electronics

 

However its a customer display unit you are talking about, not a smart meter. The smart meter is still working away in the background 24/7

[JJGraphics]

5 minutes ago, hayfield said:

However its a customer display unit you are talking about, not a smart meter. The smart meter is still working away in the background 24/7

 

I did not say it was a Smart Meter. My comment referred to the post by Hroth which mentioned the "Nag meter" and commented, "it may as well be unplugged and left in a drawer with all your old deceased smartphones and tablets.

[Hroth]

20 hours ago, Nick C said:

Interesting - in my old flat I had SSE 'economy 10' but that was done entirely within the meter, there was no outside comms (and it didn't switch to BST, so my winter cheap times were different to summer)

 

There was an "Economy 7" timer on the immersion heater in the old house, which switched it on during the Economy 7 period overnight* so there would be a tank full of hot water in the morning.  The electricity meter had two displays, one for normal consumption the other for Economy 7, and merely switched from one to the other at the appropriate time, though I don't know how it knew!  There certainly wasn't a big receiver box next to it, and it didn't have an apparent clock.  If you didn't have an E7 tariff, you just supplied the "Normal" and "Low" readings.

 

* If E7 heating was selected on the timer.  Otherwise it remained switched off.

 

[Metr0Land]

Getting back to smart meters and assoc factors......

 

I haven't been on here for some time as I was a long term refusenik for 2 reasons:

a/ There was no mobile signal here in 2014 and sending in meter readings for a smart meter when I was already doing that for a dumb terminal was dumb.

b/ The concern that the ultimate goal was time of day pricing.

 

Since 3rd August I've been on a smart meter!  Last Dec I got a PHEV just as prices hit their highest, and there was no competition in the market.  In early summer I became aware that mobile signal here had become reasonably robust, also people were encouraging me to join Octopus who have a Go tariff for overnight charging and also anyone who recommends them gets £50 credit to their bill and the recommendee also gets £50 credit.

 

I applied to Ovo to get a meter fitted and was surprised to get a bkg in just 2 weeks or so.  A very nice man duly came, and fitted said meter which seemed to work ok.  As I knew the man was coming and I knew I wanted to move to Octopus and I was  in credit with Ovo, I tried to reduce my monthy DD from £140 to something quite low but hit the 'computer says no' syndrome.  The computer would only allow me to go to eg £90 pcm so I rang them up and man on the phone said 'we can only reduce 15pct below what the computer says'.  They can't stop you from cancelling DD but will put you on a paper bill, and higher rate (which was more or less what he rate was before the recent reduction).  I was happy with that as I knew I wouldn't be on that rate for long and by the projected time of cutover I'd owe them money rather than them sitting on my money.  In the event I owed them just under 11 quid which was better than them sitting on 80 quid of mone for an indeterminate time.

 

On Monday 7th Aug I logged onto Octopus and requested change, and was amazed to find I'd been cut over on 9th.  They put you onto standard tariff for a while before they'll put you on the Go tariff which I've been on since 01Sep (4hrs overnight @9.5p and daytme rate/standing charge pretty much industry standard).

 

A couple of poss snags with Octopus.  When you apply to join them they ask your annual usage (~4000kWh) and put you on standard tariff for a while and estimate (in my case) £91 pcm for DD.  They don't ask you to split between night and rest of 24hr period (which for me is ~2400kWh 'normal' use and ~1600kWh night usage) so my DD is already too high.  Not sure what grief they'll give me when I try and reduce DD going into winter.  I've been checking usage avidly as you can see daily how much you've used, but it only shows by kWh and not cost as some 24hours periods are heavier usage than others but not neccessarily more expensive.

 

Ref the in-house display which would be common to any supplier... I don't feel I've changed much as it more or less shows empirically what I believed but it has been useful to get almost live data.     One thing I've noticed this week is what happens 5pm onwards.  I feel like my house faces south but in reality faces SE.  Even with the sun and high temps this week, at this time of year I've noticed solar panel production tails off faster than I realised at 5pm when the sun faces the end gable even though it seems very sunny.   It's still producing >1kW but it's something to bear in mind if I want to run things in the afternoon rather than morning.

[57xx]

On 12/07/2023 at 14:30, hayfield said:

like the water meter which despite being a gardener still saves me money rather than being unmetered. having a smart meter for most users is a real benefit, agreed its not for everyone and by all means don't have one

 

 

You keep repeating this strawman. Moving from a fixed water charger/rate based on your property to a water meter is not comparable with changing the type electric or gas meter you have. For gas and electric, I have always paid for what I use. Moving to a water meter did allow me to save money, but only because I was being overcharged for my actual usage before on the fixed charge. Totally incomparable and trying to claim otherwise is extremely disingenuous.

[hayfield]

2 hours ago, 57xx said:

 

You keep repeating this strawman. Moving from a fixed water charger/rate based on your property to a water meter is not comparable with changing the type electric or gas meter you have. For gas and electric, I have always paid for what I use. Moving to a water meter did allow me to save money, but only because I was being overcharged for my actual usage before on the fixed charge. Totally incomparable and trying to claim otherwise is extremely disingenuous.

 

You are most welcome to your views, however I take dislike to the word you have used as I am not "not candid or sincere", or "typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does."

 

I have no idea whether you have used a smart meter, but thousands of us are using them and reaping the benefits they bring. If all of us listened to Nay Sayers who are reluctant to any change and more importantly scaremongering the use of modern technology we would be back in the dark ages. 

 

You may think you were being overcharged for water. But simply you were on the wrong tariff, I could have moved onto a water meter at least ten if not twenty years before I did, simply I thought it would cost me more (too much listening to the Nay Sayers) how wrong I was in acting on advice

 

By all means keep to your own matrix of beliefs, I have no issues with you using old technology, but please don't stop others moving on 

 

By the way my usage of water meters is spot on for two reasons as it simply relates to what is happening to energy

1 Moving to new technology can save money

2 If dual pricing come in (and its here now !!) Having a smart meter will give you access to a lower rate. Having a dumb meter at worse will keep you on a composite rate or worse move all usage to a high rate

 

Disingenuous no, realistic yes

 

Calling me names is just childish

[hayfield]

I am glad to report that the meter reader is alive and kicking, even though I have smart meters. (who was it claiming mass unemployment of meter readers !!!)The meter reader called employed by a third party company to read my meters !!! I guess everyone still gets their meter read, probably more to check all is in order than anything else. Especially I assume in my case that except for a 3 month period, my DDI payments have stayed much the same for nearly 4 years,

 

This pas week I received a letter from Octopus with the new rates from October, the standing charges have remained the same despite calls increasing for a radical change to these charges, more importantly energy rates are decreasing, gas more than electricity, which will have a bigger effect on reducing our bills in the short term as the bulk of gas usage occurs over the next 5 or 6 months.

 

As for my DDI payments, I have a nice choice to make, I can either reduce my payments or reduce my credit balance. Even Octopus forecast application is projecting a credit balance in 12 months at todays rates.

 

I have to accept that its not the smart meters that have saved me money, but they do keep me informed of my usage, but more importantly gives me access to an advantageous (for my circumstances) rate 

 

Plus it must be a good thing rates have come down again for the third quarter

[black and decker boy]

On 08/09/2023 at 16:28, Metr0Land said:

Getting back to smart meters and assoc factors......

 

I haven't been on here for some time as I was a long term refusenik for 2 reasons:

a/ There was no mobile signal here in 2014 and sending in meter readings for a smart meter when I was already doing that for a dumb terminal was dumb.

b/ The concern that the ultimate goal was time of day pricing.

 

Since 3rd August I've been on a smart meter!  Last Dec I got a PHEV just as prices hit their highest, and there was no competition in the market.  In early summer I became aware that mobile signal here had become reasonably robust, also people were encouraging me to join Octopus who have a Go tariff for overnight charging and also anyone who recommends them gets £50 credit to their bill and the recommendee also gets £50 credit.

 

I applied to Ovo to get a meter fitted and was surprised to get a bkg in just 2 weeks or so.  A very nice man duly came, and fitted said meter which seemed to work ok.  As I knew the man was coming and I knew I wanted to move to Octopus and I was  in credit with Ovo, I tried to reduce my monthy DD from £140 to something quite low but hit the 'computer says no' syndrome.  The computer would only allow me to go to eg £90 pcm so I rang them up and man on the phone said 'we can only reduce 15pct below what the computer says'.  They can't stop you from cancelling DD but will put you on a paper bill, and higher rate (which was more or less what he rate was before the recent reduction).  I was happy with that as I knew I wouldn't be on that rate for long and by the projected time of cutover I'd owe them money rather than them sitting on my money.  In the event I owed them just under 11 quid which was better than them sitting on 80 quid of mone for an indeterminate time.

 

On Monday 7th Aug I logged onto Octopus and requested change, and was amazed to find I'd been cut over on 9th.  They put you onto standard tariff for a while before they'll put you on the Go tariff which I've been on since 01Sep (4hrs overnight @9.5p and daytme rate/standing charge pretty much industry standard).

 

A couple of poss snags with Octopus.  When you apply to join them they ask your annual usage (~4000kWh) and put you on standard tariff for a while and estimate (in my case) £91 pcm for DD.  They don't ask you to split between night and rest of 24hr period (which for me is ~2400kWh 'normal' use and ~1600kWh night usage) so my DD is already too high.  Not sure what grief they'll give me when I try and reduce DD going into winter.  I've been checking usage avidly as you can see daily how much you've used, but it only shows by kWh and not cost as some 24hours periods are heavier usage than others but not neccessarily more expensive.

 

Ref the in-house display which would be common to any supplier... I don't feel I've changed much as it more or less shows empirically what I believed but it has been useful to get almost live data.     One thing I've noticed this week is what happens 5pm onwards.  I feel like my house faces south but in reality faces SE.  Even with the sun and high temps this week, at this time of year I've noticed solar panel production tails off faster than I realised at 5pm when the sun faces the end gable even though it seems very sunny.   It's still producing >1kW but it's something to bear in mind if I want to run things in the afternoon rather than morning.

We’ve been with Octopus on various EV tariffs for 3 years or so and never had any issues with them. Get their App, you can amend your DDI on that (it’s locked close to payment day but accessible most of the month). They still want you to generate a surplus at the end of summer but do take into account your average day/night use when recommending your DDI. You just need to build up a history of readings they can base it on.

 

 

we had solar fitted in Spring and have reduced our DDI by £100/month in stages as our credit now sits close to £500 on a recommended DDI of £130/month.

[black and decker boy]

On 08/09/2023 at 20:13, hayfield said:

 

You are most welcome to your views, however I take dislike to the word you have used as I am not "not candid or sincere", or "typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does."

 

I have no idea whether you have used a smart meter, but thousands of us are using them and reaping the benefits they bring. If all of us listened to Nay Sayers who are reluctant to any change and more importantly scaremongering the use of modern technology we would be back in the dark ages. 

 

You may think you were being overcharged for water. But simply you were on the wrong tariff, I could have moved onto a water meter at least ten if not twenty years before I did, simply I thought it would cost me more (too much listening to the Nay Sayers) how wrong I was in acting on advice

 

By all means keep to your own matrix of beliefs, I have no issues with you using old technology, but please don't stop others moving on 

 

By the way my usage of water meters is spot on for two reasons as it simply relates to what is happening to energy

1 Moving to new technology can save money

2 If dual pricing come in (and its here now !!) Having a smart meter will give you access to a lower rate. Having a dumb meter at worse will keep you on a composite rate or worse move all usage to a high rate

 

Disingenuous no, realistic yes

 

Calling me names is just childish

There were no ‘tariffs’ for water. There is no switching for water.

 

your choice is meter or fixed rates

 

the only variance in the fixed rates comes about if you have more / less bedrooms and / or are a single occupier. You could also challenge the rateable value if wildly inaccurate.
 

There are no differences for time of day. You do not pay for actual use but for an average based on properties of similar rateable value.

 

rebates were available if you weren’t on mains sewerage.

 

so no, water metered and smart electric / gas meters are not coming from the same starting point. They do change the charging regime but water meters can see costs rise as actual use exceeds the previous fixed charge which is based on an average for a given number of bedrooms in and size of a property. Smart gas & electric meters do not change the fact you have always paid for actual consumption so bills should not increase given no change in tariffs.

 

 

 

 

[alastairq]

40 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

the only variance in the fixed rates comes about if you have more / less bedrooms and / or are a single occupier.

 Indeed, my water company won't even reduce their charges for sole occupancy, where a water meter isn't feasible to fit....

 

I have applied for a meter, but owing to covid, and a backlog, that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

 

No reduced rate  for single occupancy either...

 

 

[tigerburnie]

I was ambivalent about having one, my wife took more notice of the in house unit than me, but it now lives face down in a corner, we carry on as we always have, don't switch the telly/sky off from standby and we are not bankrupt, it has zero impact on our day to day lives.

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, alastairq said:

 Indeed, my water company won't even reduce their charges for sole occupancy, where a water meter isn't feasible to fit....

 

I have applied for a meter, but owing to covid, and a backlog, that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

 

No reduced rate  for single occupancy either...

 

 

Be careful what you wish for.

 

They converted our street to meters, we weren't given any choice.  My usage bill was astonomical  so I challenged it. and refused to pay.  Man came out, said silly s*ds have installed it back to front.  So a few months later another gang dig up the street again and turn it round.  Next bill no better than the last one.  So I call them again.   They eventually sent somebody out and between the two of us we worked out it wasn't even feeding my house at all.  It was acutally measuring the total supply to several other houses further down the street.  So I'm still on bills based on the way out of date rateable value.  They said they'd need to survey the street to find out where mine comes in.  About a year later they did actually find the pipe they should have put it on - and dug up the road again.  It took ages, though I am at last getting lower bills, even though I do water the garden.

[The Johnster]

My British Gas Electricity/Gas smart meter is of no use to me whatsoever.  The power cable is broken, not my fault it's not made strong enough to cope with more than a year or so of normal usage, and on battery power it switches itself off to save the battery just before it boots up to show me how much actual credit I have left for leccy and gas.  If I want to know this information, and I do towards pension day to check there's enough to last before spending the last of my pittance on not starving to death, I have to go outside in the rain to the front garden and check the actual meters, in cupboards at ground level on opposite sides of the double frontage.  I'm getting on a bit now, and having to get down to ground level in the wet and then struggling to haul my sorry carcass back into something resembling verticality is becoming painful and leaves me out of breath; can't believe it's doing me any good!  As I'm in a rented flat, I have no choice over where the meters are put, or how low they are positioned; the gas isn't so bad as it faces upwards, but reading the leccy is very difficult, actually better done in the dark when the rather dim backlight helps a little.  I'm dreading the poorer weather coming in the winter!

 

Contacted Britgas, who tell me they don't supply replacement power cables and I'm on my own, but were at the same time unable to give me any information as to what sort of power cable is needed.  It's their meter, not my property, how is replacing their part for their meter my responsibility!  'Stards.  I'm only a poor pensioner, you know...

[Hroth]

The current BG Nagmeter is powered through a "standard" USB cable and a PSU with a USB socket, so is easily replaced. If your device has a different supply option, then the 'stards must have taken on the myriad complaints about faulty cables. I bet that cable is tethered to the wallwart PSU* too...

 

So long as this isn't egg-sucking territory, if its a pre-USB Nagmeter, you'd have to look at the PSU to see what the voltage/current output is, and the back of the device to check the polarity of the input plug. The dimensions of the plug itself can be measured, then the bay of e's is possibly your friend...

 

* I daren't believe that they could be so cruel to have the Nagmeter hard wired to the PSU...

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Hroth

[hayfield]

On 24/09/2023 at 03:28, The Johnster said:

My British Gas Electricity/Gas smart meter is of no use to me whatsoever.  The power cable is broken, not my fault it's not made strong enough to cope with more than a year or so of normal usage, and on battery power it switches itself off to save the battery just before it boots up to show me how much actual credit I have left for leccy and gas.  If I want to know this information, and I do towards pension day to check there's enough to last before spending the last of my pittance on not starving to death, I have to go outside in the rain to the front garden and check the actual meters, in cupboards at ground level on opposite sides of the double frontage.  I'm getting on a bit now, and having to get down to ground level in the wet and then struggling to haul my sorry carcass back into something resembling verticality is becoming painful and leaves me out of breath; can't believe it's doing me any good!  As I'm in a rented flat, I have no choice over where the meters are put, or how low they are positioned; the gas isn't so bad as it faces upwards, but reading the leccy is very difficult, actually better done in the dark when the rather dim backlight helps a little.  I'm dreading the poorer weather coming in the winter!

 

Contacted Britgas, who tell me they don't supply replacement power cables and I'm on my own, but were at the same time unable to give me any information as to what sort of power cable is needed.  It's their meter, not my property, how is replacing their part for their meter my responsibility!  'Stards.  I'm only a poor pensioner, you know...

 

Go to the Ombudsman (if you are talking about the smart meter, not the consumer display unit)

Edited September 25, 2023 by hayfield

[Jonboy]

They only warranty the in house display for 12 months and are under no obligation to replace that part of it( I believe they class it as “gift”).

 

There is an app called Bright from a company called Hildebrand that can connect to most smart meters, or they do replacement IHD for around £50 that they send preconfigured to your meter.

 

(Alternatively some people sell their IHD on eBay and you could discard the meter and just use the cable)

[The Johnster]

4 minutes ago, Jonboy said:

 

They only warranty the in house display for 12 months and are under no obligation to replace that part of it( I believe they class it as “gift”).

 

The gift that keeps on taking!