Access to meters/supply post smart meter installation

System

House_Martin wrote: »

Its a lot more difficult to fiddle smart meters than dumb meters, because "they have built in sensors to stop bypassing both on electric and gas meters "..fact ! and when they do attempt it, it is known that the meter is bypassed.
What do YOU know about the difficulty of fiddling any meters, smart or dumb ? British Gas have fitted over two million smart meters and virtually every meter they fit now is a smart meter.The rest of the "foreign suppliers " have just woken up to OFGEMS order to get a move on and get them fitted, and most meters they are installing now are smart meters. There are the usual bunch of oddballs and weird beards who live in a paranoid world who are against anything new and they will be refusing one at the moment until it hits them in the pocket when they get billed extra for their refusals.
I am knocking on doors all day nowadays to inspect smart meters which have been fitted for years. The overwhelming amount of these meters are working flawlessly and they have much less "issues " than cheap rubbish credit meters which cost a fiver each which fail constantly ..
They are the best thing since sliced bread because they will transform the prepayment meter market and lower their tariffs to the best one year fixes eventually, as it should be because they are paying their money upfront in advance .Northern Ireland is showing this to be possible. Takeaway the huge theft of energy from dumb prepays,and their constant need to be repaired and managed and the price of prepayment energy can only go down when suppliers have the confidence in the new cheap to run meters with no middle man taking a cut.

You really do have a strange outlook on life: I hope that 2017 makes you more tolerant of foreign owners, and humankind in general. Happy New Year.

Rubidium

Hengus wrote: »

You really do have a strange outlook on life: I hope that 2017 makes you more tolerant of foreign owners, and humankind in general. Happy New Year.

He certainly does and with such a large chip on his shoulder, he is unable to separate the ridiculous fantasy that he continually preaches from fact.

His repetitive frustrated rants are putting off the more knowledgeable MSEer's, who actually understand the technical real world situation of the very costly, pathetic roll-out.of smart meters, that he refuses to accept that we are all paying for!

His rant above does not warrant a reply but he is free to keep posting his rubbish at every opportunity and I'm sure that he will continue to do so this year, like he has in previous years ad nauseam.

System

You two have become allies with a silly fight against new technology which is unwarranted.Maybe as retirees you have nothing better to do than give people stupid advice on here constantly about a better meter which is badly needed by everyone especially the poorer stuck on prepayment meters. The success of smart prepayment will guarantee their sky high prices will drop but first the government have to stop giving the public a choice in refusing a smart meter.. In a way you two in your ridiculous advice are helping the energy thieves by publicising the ability to refuse a smart meter. Another huge money sucker in dumb credit meters are the legions of debtors who have ended up owing large amounts and end up getting a force fitted prepay meter which leaves them paying out the most for their energy. The best you two can do is constant advice about SMETs one and two.
The rest of Europe have nt been as stupid as the UK, Germany and Sweden and they fitted them without having to beg the occupiers permission. Italy have just about completed a 100% rollout as has Irish Republic .
As for the "foreign " suppliers..who s the top two for messing it up ..The Germans and the Spanish ! in Npower and Scot Power..what a pair. I m sorry but I cannot tolerate those two. I work for Scot Power as welll and you want to see all the rubbish addresses they give me to read meters.Half the time they can t get the address correct or the type of meter, they re that hopeless ! They cannot even run their own businesses and they re over here messing up our bills all the time. Thank god the UK finally got sensible and voted Brexit

System

House Martin - you clearly know more about smart meters than any of the experts that gave evidence to the HoC's Select Committee late last year.

Quote: By 2020, we will probably need to start to think about replacing meters with something else. Connectivity is a difficult question at the moment, because the technology has not really kept up. Technology has been going down the road of, “What do you need for smartphones?” not, “What do you need for smart meters?” 2G is at the end of its life. What is coming next from the cellular networks is called narrowband IoT. It will probably not be deployed until well into 2022 or 2023 and is as yet untried. We have some interim technologies called low-power wireless area networks. One of those technologies is being used by Arqiva in the north of the country. It is an awkward time, because we are rolling stuff out with a technology that is going obsolete but before the point where it is very obvious what the next one is. There is a real chance that we will have a very large number of stranded assets. Unquote

In coming to an opinion, I prefer to listen to the views of experts who have considerable experience of developing the UK's smart meter network. ( this is why they are regarded as expert witnesses). Time and time again, it has been said that our proposed smart meter network is too complex; too risky; too expensive and far too late.

You are of course entitled to hold an alternative view. I am retired but I like to think that I embrace technology more than most.

System

Are these the same "experts " who advised everyone about voting to come out of the EU and how the UK would collapse, the same "experts who got the Donald Trump victory completely wrong.You need to stop listening to "experts " They re all always getting it completely wrong.My view on smart meters is that they will make energy cheaper for the hard up people stuck on top price prepayment meters, they will stop ( ok virtually ) stop the legions of thieves stealing energy at will, and they will stop the head in the sand busy people wjho never read a meter from one year to the next and end up 2/3k in debt...I don t need another "expert " in Government making another hash of it like they constantly do.

Rubidium

House_Martin wrote: »

You two have become allies with a silly fight against new technology which is unwarranted.Maybe as retirees you have nothing better to do than give people stupid advice on here constantly about a better meter which is badly needed by everyone especially the poorer stuck on prepayment meters..................................

Another couple of inaccurate rants from our resident smart meter evangelist, posted since I left the office yesterday.

You just can't stop yourself making silly assumptions and then using them as fact can you e.g. you have assumed that I am retired. I am not but as you have assumed that I am, then it must be true and you post yet more incorrect information on the forum.

I would have thought that you would have noticed that I rarely post outside of office hours but using simple logic is certainly not one of your strengths. You know absolutely nothing about how I make a living, my age, qualifications, knowledge or experience and my employment status is totally irrelevant to any rational forum discussion.

You simply cannot accept that anyone else could possibly know more about the subject than you do and therefore it is not possible for you to discuss matters sensibly without resorting to posting incorrect, uncorroborated, fictional information and personal insults. You really need to leave fantasies to the film makers and stick to posting accurate, factual and unbiased information if you expect to have any credibility on here.

You have assumed that I am a refuser and don't want a smart meter, wrong again I simply will not be conned into accepting a 'not fit for purpose, first generation, supplier specific meter', so that the energy companies can achieve their agreed installation quotas. A phase one smart meter offers absolutely no advantage to me and cannot possibly save me any money as they inform you if you are gullible enough to believe the hype.

Maybe in a couple of years when the DCC and supplier interoperability is fully functional yes but certainly not before. The smart meters currently being installed and will continue to be installed for at least another year, are far from smart and only a fool would agree to accepting them now!

I am certainly not averse to new technology as you have stated but it has to be new technology worth having. It does not matter how many times you post your opinions about smart meters on here, they are simply your own biased uninformed opinions that are not based on real world fact,

Keep on meter reading and posting your rants because you are only making more readers aware that the current generation smart meters are simply not worth having, especially for savvy money savers who switch suppliers regularly!

DaveHunter

Wow that escalated quickly. Thanks for the advice/opinions though

DaveHunter

ic wrote: »

It'll cost, but could you not get them relocated, rather than build a kitchen around their existing location?

I may well do that, the previous owners put the kitchen in and built around them. The main supply/meters are smack bang in the middle of a row of kitchen units. Quotes from the utilities companies looks like costing about £1500 to move both to the other side of the wall (outside)