Smart meter and energy monitor

freeman3030

Hi, we bought a new home a couple of months ago and are in the process of doing it up. The electricity supplier is EDF and there's an EDF smart meter installed and a plug in energy monitor. Currently were on a quarterly cash/cheque plan as I wanted to wait until we move in before starting a monthly direct debit. I'm not the biggest fan of the plug in energy monitor as it doesn't look very nice. Can you buy different plug in energy monitors or do you have to use the one that's supplied? I quite like the look of the British Gas energy monitor, but would I have to have a British Gas smart meter installed?
Currently British Gas supplied out Gas, how do you go about getting a smart Gas meter?
If anyone can shed any light it would be much appreciated.

Robin9

freeman3030 wrote: »

Hi, we bought a new home a couple of months ago and are in the process of doing it up. The electricity supplier is EDF and there's an EDF smart meter installed and a plug in energy monitor. Currently were on a quarterly cash/cheque plan as I wanted to wait until we move in before starting a monthly direct debit. I'm not the biggest fan of the plug in energy monitor as it doesn't look very nice. Can you buy different plug in energy monitors or do you have to use the one that's supplied? I quite like the look of the British Gas energy monitor, but would I have to have a British Gas smart meter installed?
Currently British Gas supplied out Gas, how do you go about getting a smart Gas meter?
If anyone can shed any light it would be much appreciated.

Do you actually derive any benefit from the monitor? Has it made you change your lifestyle, made you change your appliances ? The answer I expect is NO, - ditch the monitor

reeac

Conventional wisdom is that consumers will become aware of their consumption and switch off unnecessary items. I'm sure that our display supplied free of charge by nPower had no effect on our consumption as we're pretty economy minded anyway. When it stopped working recently I dumped it. It was a free standing display, not connected to our Smart meter ...and don't get me started on that topic.

[Deleted User]

Amazing how the anti smart meter brigade latch onto a chance for a smart meter negative. No one ever complained about the much inferior energy monitor even after the suppliers dished them out for free.
Smart energy monitor is far superior to the guess work of those gimmicks enabling anyone to find out what each appliance or each room lighting set up actually costs in hard cash to run. I hope the smart meter critics carry on grumbling when they start (rightfully ) getting billed £60 a year for their unjustified refusal to accept a better meter.
OP, good question, and I have no idea if say, an EDF/Npower monitor will work instead of my BG smart monitor. Maybe no ones actually tried it. BG use a Landys and Gyr smart meter the same as EDF/ EON so its a good chance of accepting any smart monitor plugged into any socket. A meter fitter would be able to tell you if its "paired " to its individual meter. The rubbish energy monitors are paired to a sensor.

tdw197

The IHD (display) and meter are paired and can only be changed with input from the data collector (EDF in this case).

EDF do now offer a new IHD, might be worth giving them a call and see what you can get?

EDF are not using L+G anymore, but all the meters should be SMETS1, so the IHDs are interoperable.

System

sacsquacco wrote: »

Amazing how the anti smart meter brigade latch onto a chance for a smart meter negative. No one ever complained about the much inferior energy monitor even after the suppliers dished them out for free.
Smart energy monitor is far superior to the guess work of those gimmicks enabling anyone to find out what each appliance or each room lighting set up actually costs in hard cash to run. I hope the smart meter critics carry on grumbling when they start (rightfully ) getting billed £60 a year for their unjustified refusal to accept a better meter.
OP, good question, and I have no idea if say, an EDF/Npower monitor will work instead of my BG smart monitor. Maybe no ones actually tried it. BG use a Landys and Gyr smart meter the same as EDF/ EON so its a good chance of accepting any smart monitor plugged into any socket. A meter fitter would be able to tell you if its "paired " to its individual meter. The rubbish energy monitors are paired to a sensor.

I bristle a bit when I read comments such as the above. I am not against smart meters per se but I am against the Govt-driven commercial roll-out of smart meters based on questionable savings. We are nowhere near getting an industry-wide system and, if Utility Week is to believed, the meter standard will have to be changed again to permit wholesale energy purchasing reconciliations across Europe.

The Govt has also yet to address the potential damage to the National Grid if smart meters are subjected to an unbalancing cyber attack.

As others more knowledgeable about these matters than me have said, this project has the potential to out do the worst of the worst of the recent failed Govt-driven IT projects by quite a few £Bns

To get back on topic, the Govt is also pushing suppliers to stop offering IHDs in favour of smart apps and web access. Why - because roll-out costs keep rising year on year. There is no such thing as a free smart meter or IHD. Indeed, if an IHD fails after 12 months, the replacement cost will fall to the householder.

Of note in September, the Govt slipped the roll-out programme from 2015 - 2020 to 2016 - 2020!!

http://energyandcarbon.com/uk-smart-meter-programme-way-off-track/

Sterlingtimes

Hengus wrote: »

To get back on topic, the Govt is also pushing suppliers to stop offering IHDs in favour of smart apps and web access. Why - because roll-out costs keep rising year on year. There is no such thing as a free smart meter or IHD. Indeed, if an IHD fails after 12 months, the replacement cost will fall to the householder.

I am the first to support smart metering and smart grids to improved energy supply and demand. I support the Government's approach in this regard.

The in-home monitoring on the other hand is dreadful. Ovo provided my Smart Gateway on 15 June 2015. After many exchanges of email Ovo has not been able to provide a fully working solution. I do have some benefit in that I can see an accurate portrayal of electric and gas usage over four days. The history function, however, remains broken. Ovo did give me an IHD that is primitive compared with the Smart Gateway and is of limited use.

Ultimately, I would move to a supplier who could provide a workable solution for web access.

Ovo appears to have lost interest now in providing web access and Smart Gateway since the service is not offered to new users.

[Deleted User]

Really Hengus, do you actually think that smart meter rolled out is "based " on providing users with questionable savings. The suppliers want them mainly for accurate billing. All of us regulars on here would nt have much to advise people on with a full smart meter set up.We get it every week without fail when someone comes on saying they owe £2k when their DD is £35 a month. The suppliers would actually magically know what people are using for a change. Most of Europe seem to be getting through it all with a mandatory roll out and installation by the DNO s.
Personally I think it should be mandatory here where it would stop the thieving toerags helping themselves to 2k a year of free energy at will and laughing at the hopeless suppliers who don t want to stop them ( BG excepted )
Yes the government have mucked it up once again making the likes of suppliers, Npower/spark /FU etc organise the roll out instead of the DNOs. Its costing an absolute fortune. My mate who once read meters for EON is now installing smarts for EON and having a real easy week , driving big mileages fitting a couple a day and doing very little real work. There is no efficiency, its very random where hes working as most of his day is listening to the car radio.
Now Hengus you ve got me worrying in the new year about some sort of cyber attack on my smart meters, presumably by a foreign power intent on turning the UK into Syria. Mind you if Mr Putin had gone that far to disable domestic electricity then what comes next would nt matter in the long run as I m toast anyway.Its the usual smart meter guff.Instead of seeing the negative of a possible "cyber attack " , look to the positive and see that the suppliers can just remotely pull the plug on mr/mrs airhead at say, £400 owing and who won t pay for their energy.

reeac

I used to have no strong feelings about Smart Meters and agreed to Ovo's request to fit one to our property. They did so and then immediately discovered that it couldn't work as we had no mobile phone signal. ...you might have thought that they'd check first and I, being agnostic re. Smart Meters, didn't know that they depended on the mobile phone network. They promised a boosting antenna in April and it had yet to appear so I read the meter and send Ovo the readings but Ovo will only act on readings taken within a couple of days of their monthly billing date. Data on the my Ovo website is ludicrously wrong and I regard the whole situation as a silly mix of half-baked hi tech. and incompetent administration. I built up a cash balance with them of over 3 months payments and it took a long time to get them to reduce these payments. When they did suggest a new figure I thought it too low but decided to go along with it as it's almost impossible to communicate sensibly with them. Oh. for the chance to set a sensible monthly payment and to settle up annually rather than this micromanaged day by day scrutiny. We don 't have such problems with the water suppliers.

Lady321986

Simple answer is the IHD IN Home Display is paired with elec meter and communication hub either built in the meter or external and these at this moment in time are connected to the supplier who installed them, meaning it's their asset.

You could ask your current supplier for an updated version (some SMeters installed in earlier trials will need to be exchanged again by 2012). If they agree to update your IHD just remember an engineer will exchange the full set eg meter and IHD or just the IHD depending on meter model.

If you want a BG IHD with gas' then you'll need to be duel fuel only both gas and electricity . Basic reason why is gas is connected to elec communication hub and then the IHD and supplier.

Hope you find a solution that fits you.