Smart Meter Pros & Cons?

[Deleted User]

gasmanmartin wrote: »

Yes i did and frankly i can't be bothered getting into an argument. You are a meter reader and i work in revenue protection for one of the big 6 - i know what goes on out there.
You keep talking about the people you catch. I keep talking about the people who don't get caught



Unlucky having to work a Saturday, i feel for you :beer:

Well if you dont work for British Gas you are doing a lousy job as you lot are rubbish, Npower, EDF, EON, ScotPower, Brit Gas find 80% of the total UK. Thats why they have been given a 5 year minimum inspection period. You need to work harder mate, Saturday is prime time for catching fiddlers, didnt you know that ?. They dont expect you knocking on a Saturday. I suppose being in RPU you do have a job to think about and smarts will be putting some of you out of work, just as they are putting meter readers out of a job. An Npower meter reader I met ( in Dundas Rd ) was refusing a smart meter just for that reason

GingerBob_3

sacsquacco wrote: »

Well if you dont work for British Gas you are doing a lousy job as you lot are rubbish, Npower, EDF, EON, ScotPower, Brit Gas find 80% of the total UK. Thats why they have been given a 5 year minimum inspection period. You need to work harder mate, Saturday is prime time for catching fiddlers, didnt you know that ?. They dont expect you knocking on a Saturday. I suppose being in RPU you do have a job to think about and smarts will be putting some of you out of work, just as they are putting meter readers out of a job. An Npower meter reader I met ( in Dundas Rd ) was refusing a smart meter just for that reason

Boring. Not relevant. This thread is about pros (none) and cons (many) of so-called smart meters - from the point of view of consumers, not suppliers. Nobody is interested in meter bypassing and Dundas Road.

Oh, and you seem brilliant at spotting these bypassers and other assorted fiddlers, so smart meters are no use anyway when we've got the likes of you around.

aleph_0

gasmanmartin wrote: »

It is that simple. Speeding is also highly dangerous and against the law but people still do it, and there's not always an evidence trail. You can swap a smart gas for a standard meter as its the same fitment - big deal that the energy company detects no usage, that does not automatically suggest fraud as everyones circumstances are different. I investigate these sorts of things every day so i know exactly how it works.

The main point i'm making is if someone is going to do it, they will. There is a way round both gas and electric smart meters and the new meters will have little impact in preventing fraud. These are still new so it will take time for folk to catch on. Yes the only reason suppliers thought these meters where a good idea is because you can shut them off remotely but unless there is an error or in very extreme circumstances, i doubt this will happen often.

The OP has nothing to fear from having them installed but i completely disagree with the total cost of the roll out which inevitably will be added to all our bills.

There's a difference between people having different circumstances and unusual pattens of usage. The simplest pattern is a sudden decrease in usage, which can be detected even on monthly reporting. This can be used to generate leads. Of course, there may be false positives, but they'll be better than random.

One could also cross-reference other publically available information and results of previous inspections to decrease the false positive rate. I'm sure other 'interesting' patterns could be detected if you give the dataset to someone good at data mining.

I'm really struggling to understand how you don't see this as a positive thing at all.

GingerBob wrote: »

Boring. Not relevant. This thread is about pros (none) and cons (many) of so-called smart meters - from the point of view of consumers, not suppliers. Nobody is interested in meter bypassing and Dundas Road.

Oh, and you seem brilliant at spotting these bypassers and other assorted fiddlers, so smart meters are no use anyway when we've got the likes of you around.

But it does matter to the consumer. Bad debt and theft costs do ultimately get passed on to consumers.

Whilst sacsquacco is probably brilliant and spotting bypassed meters, he does need to know where to go. Having data to motivate how frequently he inspects certain meters has to be a good thing.

You may argue that the saving isn't enough or worth it, of course. But you surely can't believe it doesn't exist at all?

GingerBob_3

aleph_0 wrote: »

But it does matter to the consumer. Bad debt and theft costs do ultimately get passed on to consumers.

But this is not what "smart" meters are about. They are being sold to us on all sorts of other so-called benefits. I've never yet heard a spokesman for the industry extolling their virtues from the point of view of revenue protection. So maybe they're lying to us; it's all a ruse to get these things installed. However, since they're not compulsory the bypassers and bad debtors won't have one installed anyway, so as revenue protectors their effect will be limited to say the least.

[Deleted User]

GingerBob wrote: »

Boring. Not relevant. This thread is about pros (none) and cons (many) of so-called smart meters - from the point of view of consumers, not suppliers. Nobody is interested in meter bypassing and Dundas Road.

Oh, and you seem brilliant at spotting these bypassers and other assorted fiddlers, so smart meters are no use anyway when we've got the likes of you around.

People should be interested in smarts, the house in Dundas Rd blew up, and took half the adjoining properties with it. These bypassers are endangering not just themselves, but their families and neighbours. Its a serious flaw how lax the deregulated suppliers are. They dont employ anywhere near enough RPU people , even British Gas are very overstretched. They have recently taken on RPU work on behalf of Scottish Power ( gas only ) although I believe they are now employing more staff. You are correct Gingerbob, the MPs have really messed up. All the fiddlers will automatically refuse one. Hopefully the other half, the landlords renting out properties wont be refusing them, and at least cut out the millions lost to the intentional bad debtors
I had a chat with an EON meter reader last week who had been 5 years in the job. I asked him how many bypassed meters he had found in that time.. the answer .. 1.!...that shows you how much the German company EON think about health and safety of British homes burning down or blowing up..They dont train their reps properly or at all. I found 2 in an hour in my local town centre on Saturday

Paypeanuts

joncombe wrote: »

I think once Smart metres are widespread we will see peak and off peak charging being forced on us (yes I know you can, in many cases choose Economy 7 now, but the point is, it's a choice).

I also suspect new legislation will come in forcing all new appliances to be "Smart Appliances", like we saw incandescent bulbs become illegal in the EU. As I understand it, these will allow the electricity supplier to send a signal to your appliances to turn off at periods of high demand. So it will give the supplier some control over your usage.

I think most of the positives are for the suppliers, rather than consumers.

Exactly so. Your appliances will be turned off remotely when they need to reduce the load on the system. It's a form of peak management and really benefits nobody except the supplying companies. Yet we have to pay for it!

Norman_Castle

If energy companies are so keen on installing smart meters which apparently will pay for themselves with the reduction of bad debt and energy theft, why are consumers having to pay for their installation?.

Norman_Castle

People should be interested in smarts, the house in Dundas Rd blew up, and took half the adjoining properties with it. These bypassers are endangering not just themselves, but their families and neighbours.

Has it been confirmed this was caused by bypassing the meter?.

aleph_0

GingerBob wrote: »

But this is not what "smart" meters are about. They are being sold to us on all sorts of other so-called benefits. I've never yet heard a spokesman for the industry extolling their virtues from the point of view of revenue protection. So maybe they're lying to us; it's all a ruse to get these things installed. However, since they're not compulsory the bypassers and bad debtors won't have one installed anyway, so as revenue protectors their effect will be limited to say the least.

As a voluntary sign-up scheme, the material at the moment is going to mainly focus on personal benefit, of course. Which is more accurate bills for the consumer, automatically submitted meter readings, less risk of individual accidentally building up debt.

The consumer focus website puts not having to compensate for other's bad debt as one of the reasons.

If there are people refusing because they can bypass, I expect we'll find energy companies doing more frequent, targeted checks on those with old meters.

Paypeanuts wrote: »

Exactly so. Your appliances will be turned off remotely when they need to reduce the load on the system. It's a form of peak management and really benefits nobody except the supplying companies. Yet we have to pay for it!

Well, that's currently voluntary. But, of course we benefit. The energy market isn't perfect, and you can argue profits are too high for the risks, but it does have some competition. At the moment, your electricity company is paying for expensive electricity at peak load, and cheap energy at other times, and hedging all this risk, to give you one fixed price.

If the market changes so that the peak load can be managed, that should decrease the cost of energy, which should be passed on to you. The idea of a consumer having appliances, such as a fridge, which can be asked not to use power at certain times, with no real disadvantage to the consumer, seems a good one. As does the potential for tariffs which reward consumers for pushing load into the off-peak.

GingerBob_3

aleph_0 wrote: »

If the market changes so that the peak load can be managed, that should decrease the cost of energy, which should be passed on to you. The idea of a consumer having appliances, such as a fridge, which can be asked not to use power at certain times, with no real disadvantage to the consumer, seems a good one. As does the potential for tariffs which reward consumers for pushing load into the off-peak.

Complicated! And in any case fridges need power all the time.

My company is a massive user of electricity and has differential rates throughout the day. It needs an energy manager and an accountant to sort it all out. This idea is just not on for your average domestic consumer. I aleady have it, in fact. Night rate and day rate, and the amount of stuff I can put on during the night is pretty limited - tumble dryer and that's about it. Even these two basic rates, together with all the other guff you get from the supplier, makes my bill difficult to deal with. Can you imagine the problems if differential rates are applied across the board to everyone. As for switching off applicances remotely, we're a VERY long way from that. Switching off the supply remotely is another thing:

Would you trust NPower to get it right all the time and not wrongly disconnect someone?