Smart Meters - Interference?

googler

Our local electricity supplier mail-shotted us, and is trying to get us to agree to have a smart meter installed.

From online research, there seem to be significant concerns about the transmitters used in these meters, and possibilities for interference in the rest of the household.

Concerns - the transmitter to relay readings back to the supplier is a souped-up mobile phone, basically, some say up to 10 times as powerful.

The transmitter to communicate with a remote panel and 'other devices' in the home is essentially a secondary WiFi transmitter.

In our case, both the landline and CH boiler (which also uses WiFi to connect to a remote panel) are adjacent to the meter. There's also other WiFi devices in the room immediately above.

I don't like the sound of it for our installation, but -

Anyone had one installed? Any problems?

Dan-Dan

I cant offer any advice Googler but thanks for sharing, just another reason i will resist any sort of smart meter for as long as possible

Furts

The Government is behind the push for Smart meters, but they are also a long term money making scheme for the electric suppliers. So I put this down to effective influence from industry "advisers" to the Government.

There is not a need for them and even after the deadline for installation there will be the right to refuse one. Hence there is a mechanism for avoiding a "Big Brother Is Watching You" scenario.

I had a BG model installed in a house three years ago. The "Smart" desk top comprised three glowing lights - one meant no power was being used, the other came on if there was a minimal draw of power, and the third came on if 2kW was being drawn. Utterly pointless and an insult to the intelligence and common sense of the over whelming majority of the population!

Back to OP - if you do not want one, or have doubts about the technology, simply ignore the flyer. Hopefully most people will ignore it as well.

Grenage

We didn't experience any problems when we had smart meters installed. Wireless devices consisted of a wireless thermostat on the same wall as the meter, two wireless doorbells, a cordless telephone, and wifi to the phones and laptops.

As to whether you should bother having them installed, only you can answer that one. I stopped needing to submit meter readings, and that was enough for me.

Nilrem

The meter won't be "up to 10x" as powerful, it'll be on IIRC one of the standard mobile phone frequencies, using a standard mobile phone chipset.
However like all mobile phones it would be able to vary it's power output to get a reliable signal, but unlike normal mobiles it's very unlikely to be doing so every few minutes (you're probably far more exposed to the transmissions from your mobile which will be much closer to you, and constantly trying checking the signal strength on your morning drive/walk to work).

IIRC in the UK the smart meters use a variant of the old 2g technology as it's cheap (billions of the chipsets made), it's reliable, and it's got far better resiliency than 3/4g (3 and 4 g will drop back to 2g if they have signal problems).
It also only needs to work for fractions of a second at a time, which is worth remembering, compared to say a mobile phone which you'll hold up to your head for minutes at a time whilst it's sending vastly more data.

It's also worth noting that there are loads of different frequencies in use for wireless, and for many of them you can have multiple devices sharing the same "space" without issues (at least since the advent of digital).
For example most wireless doorbells use the same frequency ranges, which used to cause issues back in the analogue days (when you might have had a couple of dip switches to select the channel they used), now you can have dozens on the same frequency as they use digitally encoded signals and they don't interfere.
Same with most wireless thermostats etc, they use similar frequencies to doorbells, but don't have an issue as they're paired.

Basically most of the stories about how bad smart meters are, and the dangers of their wireless etc can be filed under rubbish.

Le_Kirk

I have been paid twice by my utility company because they twice failed to keep an appointment to fit smart meters. I have since told them not to bother me again - if they can't even organise a fitting date and stick to it, what hope that the meters would work properly!

A near neighbour had a smart meter fitted (he only has electricity) but the installers had to remove it as, in their words, "they couldn't get a signal." Now I would have thought the first thing you do BEFORE you fit the meter is to make sure you can get a signal to transmit the meter readings back to the supplier. This area is notorious for lack of mobile phone signal! My neighbour also received a payment. No wonder it's costing so much to roll out the Smart Meter programme if households are receiving payments for failures.

thescouselander

Our BG smart meter interferes with our sons baby monitor. Not a big deal as we simply switched the baby monitor to a different channel.

EssexExile

We've had smart meters for years with no problems.

phil24_7

I wont go smart until there is a recognised national standard. At the moment, I believe Smart meters turn into dumb meters when you change suppliers!

pickledonionspaceraider

we have them for gas and electric - no problems at all. I prefer that I don't keep getting hassled for meter readings so am happy enough

Freddie43

Sorry a bit late on this thread.

My brother in law told me yesterday that his smart meter interferes with his car electrics. When he parks near the meter he cant start the engine!

Also his display gets turned off over Xmas and Easter