British Gas Free Offer of Smart Meter

Primrose

We've just had this British Gas offer of free installation of a Smart Meter sjpposedly worth £34.99. BG estimate this could save an average customer £110 a year through increased awareness.

Has anybody had one installed? Do you think you're making these savings?

[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]You have to be billed monthly. BG promise to discount a further £40 from the bill after 12 months if you sign up for duel fuel. Does this mean that anybody who has already signed up for dual fuel misses out on this £40 discount?
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Bark01

The first question I have is are you a new BG customer or will they make you change tariff to get a 'EnergySmart' meter?

Energysmart is not availabe on BG’s cheaper tariffs so you could probably save over £110 by switching to one of their competitors online products. If you are on one of their older tariff such as click energy then the saving you will make switch to a competitor will be less but will still outweigh the cost of buying the Energysmart meter yourself.

Also don't be fooled into thinking this is a 'Smart Meter' it is not. You will still need to manually take down your reads and input them onto a computer.

elaina79

I don't see that these are going to benefit the customers at all. I have a electricity monitor on my meter to show me how much I am using. Since I have put it on I haven't saved any money at all. I still have to use the same amount of electricity as I did before, unless I sat in the dark and don't use my oven.

These smart meters are only going to save the companies money.

spiro

elaina79 wrote: »

I don't see that these are going to benefit the customers at all. I have a electricity monitor on my meter to show me how much I am using. Since I have put it on I haven't saved any money at all. I still have to use the same amount of electricity as I did before, unless I sat in the dark and don't use my oven.

These smart meters are only going to save the companies money.

It is the government that thinks if we all have these meters we will cut consumption by 10-20% because we all see how much it costs us day by day. The reality is that most people on this site will already be doing things like not leaving TC on standby, energy saving bulbs etc so these new meters wont save us much money. For some the cost doesn't matter and for others they will always blame the energy companies even if they could cut their bills by 10-20% by not wasting it.

SailorSam

If these smart meters are sending readings back in real time , so that everybodys consumption is constantly monitored, will that mean the end of the meter reader.

Bark01

spiro wrote: »

It is the government that thinks if we all have these meters we will cut consumption by 10-20% because we all see how much it costs us day by day. The reality is that most people on this site will already be doing things like not leaving TC on standby, energy saving bulbs etc so these new meters wont save us much money. For some the cost doesn't matter and for others they will always blame the energy companies even if they could cut their bills by 10-20% by not wasting it.

You seem to be assuming that the people who use this site are a good measure or the general population?

The Smart meters are not aimed at the already savvy, they are aimed at the clueless majority.

SailorSam wrote: »

If these smart meters are sending readings back in real time , so that everybodys consumption is constantly monitored, will that mean the end of the meter reader.

There are plenty of posts on here that show that just because someone comes round and reads your meter it doesn't mean that that read will actually be used or assigned to the correct meter. Not a fault of the Meter readers themselves but more of the system.

WestonDave

What British Gas is giving out is not really a smart meter. A smart meter replaces your existing calibrated electricity meter, and communicates electronically both with the supplier (for billing purposes) and also often some kind of visual display in the house to enable graphic display of consumption to be viewed real time. The idea of the last bit is that being aware of consumption might make you look around to see what you can turn off.

British Gas are sending out a monitor which has a transmitter which clips on your supply cable, that sends information to a small display unit. It is not strictly accurate and not accurate enough for billing purposes, but it does via the display supposedly enable you to see what you are using real time which a standard meter doesn't really. It does not communicate with British Gas.

In practice having had one for a couple of days, it does have a degree of novelty value, and does tend to make you knock lights off that you might not otherwise, but realistically its not going to save vast amounts of money in a home where most things are already pretty efficient. Turning off efficient lighting will only save pence. For free (plus a possible £20 cashback) its an interesting gimmick, but I wouldn't lose sleep over not getting one!

penrhyn

Primrose wrote: »

We've just had this British Gas offer of free installation of a Smart Meter sjpposedly worth £34.99. BG estimate this could save an average customer £110 a year through increased awareness.

Has anybody had one installed? Do you think you're making these savings?

[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]You have to be billed monthly. BG promise to discount a further £40 from the bill after 12 months if you sign up for duel fuel. Does this mean that anybody who has already signed up for dual fuel misses out on this £40 discount?
[/FONT]

As pointed out, it is NOT a Smart meter it is an electricity monitor.
I suggest you go on to the British Gas site to find out more about it.

I'm on Click 6 for electricity and have one of these monitors, its a bit of fun, not very accurate ( it reads about 15-20% high), but does serve the purpose of making you more aware of your consumption.
The estimated savings are complete b*ll*cks.
http://www.britishgas.co.uk/products-and-services/energy/our-products/energysmart.html?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=e100101

The monitor you get is the minim.
http://www.greenenergyoptions.co.uk/product_range/home_energy_hub/

SailorSam

Where i use to live, my next door neighbour drilled a hole in his electric meter and stuck a nail in to stop the wheel going around, that must be the sort of thing they do when you hear about these people who set up canabis farms and tap into the power supply illegally do. A monitored system would stop a lot of that going on.

hansi

Primrose wrote: »

We've just had this British Gas offer of free installation of a Smart Meter sjpposedly worth £34.99. BG estimate this could save an average customer £110 a year through increased awareness.

Has anybody had one installed? Do you think you're making these savings?

[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]You have to be billed monthly. BG promise to discount a further £40 from the bill after 12 months if you sign up for duel fuel. Does this mean that anybody who has already signed up for dual fuel misses out on this £40 discount?
[/FONT]

Are you confusing this with the Smart Energy meters annnounced yesterday in the press. If not, I guess you're talking about Energy Smart which involves a free power meter. Yes, I have this meter and there's nothing to install. You just attach the wireless trasnmitter to a cable on your meter, and you can see the amount of power being used and can reduce it by switching off unecessary appliances. You then enter your meter reading online monthly and you only pay for what you use.

hansi

SailorSam wrote: »

Where i use to live, my next door neighbour drilled a hole in his electric meter and stuck a nail in to stop the wheel going around, that must be the sort of thing they do when you hear about these people who set up canabis farms and tap into the power supply illegally do. A monitored system would stop a lot of that going on.

You can't do that now, there's no wheel on the meter I have.