Smart Meters - A Bad Deal for Customers

Legacy_user

MSErs interested in following the Smart Meter debate might be interested in this blog:

http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2015/11/dan-lewis-smart-meters-are-a-bad-deal-for-consumers.html

The most telling paragraphs are as follows:

Consumers are funding the programme through their bills. Unfortunately, the benefits for them – put at £5.7 billion in energy savings – are lower than the costs. Moreover, these energy savings are based on assumptions that we can now see are questionable or just flat wrong.

Take energy prices. In September 2013, DECC forecasted a mid-range oil price of $112.7 in 2015. The real figure now is lower than $50. The department’s forecast for 2020 is $119, when all crude future prices for that year are below $60. On natural gas prices too, DECC were well out. The 2015 forecast was for an average of 69.7p per therm, but so far we are looking at well below 50p. To be fair, no one is that good at forecasting oil and gas prices. But these significantly lower prices matter, because with cheaper energy prices, the economic benefits of saving energy and switching consumers from smart meters are much lower.

The case for consumers further degrades when you realise, as the Auditor General in the State of Victoria in Australia recently did, that there is no mechanism in place to transfer the benefits accrued to the suppliers back to the consumers. How many British bill payers would choose to spend £11 billion to get back £5.7 billion in energy savings?

As the article has been posted on The ConservativeHome website it will be interesting to see if anybody in Govt takes note.

Cardew

At the risk of diverting the topic, it will be interesting to see if the SNP take note of those new oil price figures in their calculations.

[Deleted User]

I agree that suppliers and the DNO s should be bearing the brunt of whatever the extra costs are in installing a smart meter grid. My smart meters don t appear to have cost me a penny.My standing charges are the same and there is no extra s I ve noticed on my bill. Consumers will eventually benefit with a much better and more efficient energy supply.Prepayment customers at the moment are paying through the nose , stuck on standard tariffs. Over in Northern Ireland smart prepayment meters are taking over and the prices are now dropping because of the much more efficient and reliable meters. This energy forum would virtually disappear when all the complaints and problems we read about on hear are due to old fashioned meters from the last century

lstar337

Hengus wrote: »

How many British bill payers would choose to spend £11 billion to get back £5.7 billion in energy savings?

*I would, if it meant the lights staying on.

*Ignoring the debate about smart meters, we are at the point where we have so little spare capacity that we have no choice but to reduce consumption. So a choice between using less energy and having no energy at all, I'll choose using less.

lstar337

We are always going to pay for it no matter what. Directly or indirectly, it's all our money.

System

[QUOTE=sacsquacco;69589071_Consumers_will_eventually_benefit_with_a_much_better_and_more_efficient_energy_supply.[/QUOTE]

Sorry to sound like a pedant but exactly how is energy delivered through a smart meter 'much better' and 'more efficient'? Smart metering offers the opportunity for tiered daily tariffs but what goes through the smart meter is no different to what is provided today. Energy customers will only pay less if they use less.

Wolf3

Energy customers will only pay less if they use less.

This, I feel, is exactly what smart meters are designed to do, they don't make the energy supply any more efficient than currently. You just get a display panel which has a red light telling consumers their using too much energy.

sheffield_lad

Wolf3 wrote: »

This, I feel, is exactly what smart meters are designed to do, they don't make the energy supply any more efficient than currently. You just get a display panel which has a red light telling consumers their using too much energy.

Often this is what consumers need, a bit of education on what is costing them money.

One of the biggest benefits I can see is when folk move into a new property as this will show them exactly how much they are using going forward.