Smart Meter = smart move?

[Butler Henderson]

On ‎04‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 10:47, Torper said:

Our old meter has been in place for well over 20 years (it was here when we moved in in 1997) and no-one has ever suggested that it should be replaced.

 

I do note that in a recent speech Lord Duncan of Springbank, who is apparently the climate change minister, warned that refusing a smart meter could cause ectricity bills to "soar" as households not using smart meters will probably face bigger bills as the cost of maintaining traditional meters is likely to increase. 

Probably badly phrased but traditional meters need meter readers, the fewer they become the cost of each traditional meter will increase pro rata to the meter readers salary. Just changed to E-On and they are going to contact me re a smart meter. Reading up on them it seems that E-On are supposed to be fitting the second version, any one had any recent experience.

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Probably badly phrased but traditional meters need meter readers, the fewer they become the cost of each traditional meter will increase pro rata to the meter readers salary. Just changed to E-On and they are going to contact me re a smart meter. Reading up on them it seems that E-On are supposed to be fitting the second version, any one had any recent experience.

I keep getting requests from E-on to change to a SM and I refuse each one, but when they first requested I rang and asked the kind lady whether it would be a Smart1 or 2 the latest version, she went away for so long I thought I was stuck in a lift the music was so bad, but upon her return she said......no, they cannot say which it will be, now that was a while ago but you never know, they might now have been TOLD to tell everyone they will be Smart2 versions now, regardless.

 

ps, I am not a sceptic, just old enough 

Edited November 9, 2019 by boxbrownie

[Torper]

4 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Probably badly phrased but traditional meters need meter readers, the fewer they become the cost of each traditional meter will increase pro rata to the meter readers salary

 

Do they?  Our traditional meter hasn't been read for a long time; instead, every three months our provider, Bulb, asks us for a meter reading which we enter on their website.  They seem to accept that, but I imagine someone will come and read the meter at some point.  And surely such small cost as that involves will be offset by the cost of supplying and fitting a smart meter, not to mention the connection charges that presumably have to be paid for use of the mobile network (I assume that they don't get that for nothing).

 

DT

[Butler Henderson]

1 hour ago, Torper said:

 

Do they?  Our traditional meter hasn't been read for a long time; instead, every three months our provider,

I was with SSE and they sent a meter reader round, invariably I was not in and the meters are behind a locked gate so I had a card pushed through the letter box asking for the readings to be texted

[TheQ]

2 hours ago, Torper said:

 

Do they?  Our traditional meter hasn't been read for a long time; instead, every three months our provider, Bulb, asks us for a meter reading which we enter on their website.  They seem to accept that, but I imagine someone will come and read the meter at some point.  And surely such small cost as that involves will be offset by the cost of supplying and fitting a smart meter, not to mention the connection charges that presumably have to be paid for use of the mobile network (I assume that they don't get that for nothing).

 

DT

That's the way we do it,  rarely seeing a meter reader every couple of years or so. 

[PaulCheffus]

13 hours ago, 2mmMark said:

Here's an interesting one.  Apparently we can't have a smart meter because the gas & electricity meters are too far apart. The maximum distance is 32 feet, so I'm told.  The two meters are located at opposite corners of the house, just about as far apart as it's possible to get them. They did used to be close but about 20 years ago, British Gas decided the supply pipe and meter needed renewing and refused to locate the replacement meter where the old one was. Wasn't an issue at the time as it gave us some space in a cupboard.
I'm not overly sad about this but it will become annoying if the best deals become only available to smart meter users. Perhaps in due course the technology will improve and solve this problem.

Hi

 

Interestingly our meters are that far apart and we have smart meters.

 

Cheers

 

Paul

[melmerby]

20 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Probably badly phrased but traditional meters need meter readers, the fewer they become the cost of each traditional meter will increase pro rata to the meter readers salary. Just changed to E-On and they are going to contact me re a smart meter. Reading up on them it seems that E-On are supposed to be fitting the second version, any one had any recent experience.

Eon from my experience seem reluctant to replace any meters.

I originally requested a smart meter maybe 5 years ago.

For various reasons it was never fitted.

Then a couple of years ago they were going to replace the traditional meter with another traditional meter, that hasn't happened either.

Also meter readers seem to be thin on the ground as they rarely call and normally I supply the readings online.

Maybe they could mount some mini cameras to read traditional meters and send the readings to them

Edited November 10, 2019 by melmerby

[boxbrownie]

38 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Eon from my experience seem reluctant to replace any meters.

 

I’ll send you the requests to change they send me every few months, even though I keep refusing a smart meter install and they say my denial request is on record, E-on keep asking me to change......bloody idiots.

[Butler Henderson]

42 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Eon from my experience seem reluctant to replace any meters.

Bit different to their new customer terms in that every package they offer bar the one I took seemed to have a compulsory smart meter installation; maybe they have full workload installing those.

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

Maybe they could mount some mini cameras to read traditional meters and send the readings to them

 

You joke but it would be technically possible (where there's space), and probably a lot cheaper than smart meters!

[Nick C]

I believe they are legally required to inspect the meter every two years, and I don't think smart meters are excluded from that - though I'm sure our convention ones haven't been read by anyone except me for longer than that!

 

I too suspect that it won't be long until the best deals are only available on smart meters - they'll quietly start increasing the prices on the conventional tariffs...

[Rowsley17D]

One of my small churches had a smart meter fitted by SSE late last year. They sent an estimated bill for several thousand pounds in the new year which we refused to pay and we have not had a bill since!! The church is only used once a month so when SSE do catch up with us it will only be a couple of hundred pounds going on past usage.

[jcm@gwr]

We (as a club) have been enquiring about a smart meter for a while now,

it would save opening up to meet the meter reader as they never seem to

be able to organise it for when we are open!

Trouble is, they say that because we don't have a good mobile signal or our

own Wi-Fi, we can't have one, yet.

[Bernard Lamb]

4 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

I’ll send you the requests to change they send me every few months, even though I keep refusing a smart meter install and they say my denial request is on record, E-on keep asking me to change......bloody idiots.

The last time I posted in this thread was about E-on coming to fit a smart meter and being unable to do so due to their being not enough space between where the supply enters the house and the consumer unit.

They were going to get the firm that does the street lighting to alter the wiring.

Not a word since then.

Next time I get a request about fitting a smart meter I will agree and let them make another wasted journey.

Bernard

 

[Reorte]

23 minutes ago, jcm@gwr said:

Trouble is, they say that because we don't have a good mobile signal or our

own Wi-Fi, we can't have one, yet.

 

The no mobile signal thing (I hardly call it a problem ) would keep them out of here even if I wanted one. If they work with wifi I suppose there's that, but I'd say no to it, especially if they're not offering to share the bill!

[Torper]

22 hours ago, Nick C said:

I too suspect that it won't be long until the best deals are only available on smart meters - they'll quietly start increasing the prices on the conventional tariffs...

 

While I tend to agree with that, it is nevertheless the case that there is now a lot of competition in the electricity supply market and while the Big Six may decide that their actually not-so-cheap tariffs may only apply when a smart meter is fitted, their smaller competitors may see a market opportunity and take a different approach.

 

DT

Edited November 11, 2019 by Torper

[SHMD]

This article is what (so called) Smart Meters are about :-

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49986191

 

Whilst it mentions variable pricing for electricity, it does not mention some of the disadvantages of second-by-second pricing - big infrastructure investment, cyber security, lack of electric on demand, suits-in-the-city making money by treating you as a commodity (I know they already do but..), reducing further the (electric) car's battery life, etc etc...

 

/QUOTE/

Consider a smart electricity grid fed by intermittent power sources such as wind and solar power. When a cloud covers the Sun, your laptop might decide to stop charging, your freezer might switch itself off for a minute, or your electric car might even start pumping energy into the grid rather than sucking it out.

But all that would require those devices to respond to second-by-second price changes.

/QUOTE/

 

 

I did like the Coca-Cola example, when they tried variable pricing :-

 

/QUOTE/

...it flirted with a vending machine that on sweltering days would raise the price of an ice-cold Coke. It was so unpopular, the company had to backtrack

/QUOTE/

 

 

Kev.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On ‎09‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 13:02, Butler Henderson said:

... it seems that E-On are supposed to be fitting the second version, any one had any recent experience.

My first pair of smart meters having been found 'dead' following a series of power outages, I now have a meter fitter booked for 27th November to install replacement meters.

 

On ‎10‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 09:26, melmerby said:

Eon from my experience seem reluctant to replace any meters...

Perhaps Eon don't know how many meters they have, or where they are, or whether they work?  Eon 'discovered' as a result of my call to report that the little read out unit had ceased to function following the power outages, that neither the electric or gas meters have been working from their perspective since May 2019 - exact date to be defined - and this despite the work top unit reading normally and predictably at my end. Now I don't mind this: what they couldn't or didn't meter was never supplied, is going to be my going in position when the negotiation begins.

 

On ‎10‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 10:10, Butler Henderson said:

...maybe they have full workload installing those.

I imagine this is why the earliest appointment to fit replacement meters was nearly a month from my contacting them?

[Jonboy]

The worst bit about the Coca Cola example is if instead of increasing the price on hot days, it offered “a discount” on cold days it would probably have worked on increasing sales...

Edited November 14, 2019 by Jonboy

[Sir TophamHatt]

I plan to delay getting a smart meter for as long as possible.

I'd rather have the latest version that may have something more useful with it than the v1's.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

I think the V2s were more useful than the V1s...........

[pmackinnon2004]

If you want to be on first name terms with your meter reader......get one fitted. Our last house we saw the meter reader once a year if lucky. We either read it ourselves or it was estimated. Moved house eighteen months ago, had a Smart Meter fitted and he arrives every three months to read it.

 

Tells me all that I need to know, a tick box exercise paid for by us. Really don't know why I was surprised though, good old SSE.

 

Peter

[Brit70053]

After my wife got fed up fielding the bombardment of calls offering instalment of a smart meter (they confirmed multiple times we didn't have to have one ) we grudgingly gave in and allowed  installation in early October. I nevertheless received the monthly email requesting a reading the following week, but ignored it following guidance on the website.

This morning my wife took a call informing us they would need to visit again because they've found the 'smart' meter isn't working as they think it should.

Not happy bunnies, especially considering the original engineer managed to (accidentally) dislodge the electric connection which fires the central heating boiler, but didn't diagnose the problem, rather) suspecting a valve needed replacing and leaving us to solve the problem.

Our own qualified engineer sourced such valve at his own expense, but thankfully found the loose connection before attempting installation. Mercifully he was happy to take the valve (£90 +) into stock and made no charge for the 5 minutes he was in attendance. ( He's a long time friend and we did 'tip' him for coming to our rescue).

Almost fortunately I'll be out when whoever calls to rectify the malfunction, but I don't envy the engineer if they encounter, or cause  further problems, my wife is already well fired up in advance.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On ‎13‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 09:45, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

My first pair of smart meters having been found 'dead' following a series of power outages, I now have a meter fitter booked for 27th November to install replacement meters.

Turned out the meters were fine in terms of recording, had simply gone uncommunicative. Both rebooted, but the gas meter had to be changed anyway because the previous installation was made with push fit connectors and that is now a discontinued practise, and when that happens a new meter is fitted as part of the rectification, apparently. And the good news is that the new gas meter is more compact, and she asked how I would like it located; so it is now very neatly placed, enabled by the smaller size.

[Silver Sidelines]

We had an extension built this summer and 92 days later we have finally had a meter installed.  Beggars cannot be choosers and in the excitement of the meter fitter arriving I forgot to check what type of meter he was installing.  I had never been asked to choose but yippee it was Smart meter - which I didn't want!

 

We have a rural location and a 4G mobile signal is only recently available.   All the 'bars' light up on our old steam powered mobile phone and visitors seem able to access to their networks in the existing house.

 

The meter fitter said it would take him about an hour to fit and that he would come and get us to show how it all worked.  Sure enough an hour went by and we were summoned for a demonstration of the new installation.  The fitter was a little surprised because whilst the date and time were correct on the little black box - nothing else was available - it hadn't connected with the wireless network.  The fitter assured us that it WOULD connect and  he prodded his laptop and mobile phone.  Perhaps the display unit was faulty - he would change it and speak to his manager.  He was 'floored'.  "Well looks like the Smart itself is faulty!!!"  Good - we have 'dumb' Smart Meter.

 

Seemingly sometime in the next three months 'it will be noticed that it is not sending back data' and we should be asked to arrange an appointment for a replacement meter.  If we don't want a Smart Meter we can apparently ignore the requeset and keep the dumb meter.

 

Now here's a thing.  The extension has had to be built to the latest environmental standards.  The whole building is wrapped in breathable foil and then there are multiple layers of aluminium faced insulation board in the walls.  Inside the building there isn't actually a viable mobile signal.  Speaking to our architect he is not surprised and muttered something about Smart meters needing their own external aerial in rural area to enable them to connect to their wireless network.

 

As with so many things today - no joined up thinking.  You can have a properly insulated building or you can have a Smart meter but in areas with weak wirelss signals - don't expect both.

 

Cheers Ray