📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

Compulsory Smart Meters.

Options
1568101115

Comments

  • Cardew
    Cardew Posts: 29,060 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Rampant Recycler
    teddysmum wrote: »
    Possible situation :


    Vulnerable person (old,sick, disabled) living with no near neighbours.


    Someone in an office accidentally switches off the electricity.


    Person has no light, cooking, heat and cannot phone to report, as they have a cordless phone, which needs power and can't find the mobile (if they have one) because it's dark.


    Not very likely, but possible and could end in tragedy.

    I owned a condo in Florida that had smart metering from new. Several like myself were 'absentee owners'.

    There was no such thing as a Direct Debit, you get a detailed monthly bill, which you pay by a given date or you are cut off. No electricity in Florida means no air-conditioning, that means severe mold(mould in UK speak) and very quickly the place becomes uninhabitable and a danger to health. The electricity company's response? - your problem!

    As an aside I sent a US$ check(cheque) for $500 with a note saying I wanted to be in credit to have future bills deducted from that credit - that was too difficult.
  • facade wrote: »
    Apparently, the cost of these smart-meters is going to be met by the consumers.

    I bet that took some investigative reporting. :rotfl

    :)

    Yep!

    That really came as a surprise! :rotfl:
    I started out with nothing and I still have most of it left!

  • System
    System Posts: 178,349 Community Admin
    10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    Cardew wrote: »
    I owned a condo in Florida that had smart metering from new. Several like myself were 'absentee owners'.

    There was no such thing as a Direct Debit, you get a detailed monthly bill, which you pay by a given date or you are cut off. No electricity in Florida means no air-conditioning, that means severe mold(mould in UK speak) and very quickly the place becomes uninhabitable and a danger to health. The electricity company's response? - your problem!

    As an aside I sent a US$ check(cheque) for $500 with a note saying I wanted to be in credit to have future bills deducted from that credit - that was too difficult.
    Am I correct in saying Cardew that anyone refusing a smart meter in Florida faces a one off payment and an annual cost ? No messing around in the USA it seems ,and stealing energy is dealt with stricter than it is here
    This is a system account and does not represent a real person. To contact the Forum Team email forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com
  • brianposter
    brianposter Posts: 1,527 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    One thing that "they" have certainly missed is that smart meters give rise to far more complex problems and may well require more and cleverer people in call centres.

    Take my own problem where the smart meter appears to give two different readings for the same consumption. After two months investigation and hours of discussion there is still no sign of a clear explanation for the problem.
  • System
    System Posts: 178,349 Community Admin
    10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    One thing that "they" have certainly missed is that smart meters give rise to far more complex problems and may well require more and cleverer people in call centres.

    Take my own problem where the smart meter appears to give two different readings for the same consumption. After two months investigation and hours of discussion there is still no sign of a clear explanation for the problem.
    one other thing is very certain, they will need much fewer people in call centres to deal with the myriad of complaints of dumb meters.Yet another huge cost saving for the suppliers. Its all good for the suppliers. your complaint is a rare one..
    I look at very complex business meters sometimes and they give many different readings for the same consumption, not just kwh s but also in KVah , KVarh,KVA and Max Demand.I notice some of the new domestic meters fitted by Ovo (Secure Liberty ) also show other readings . also not just KWH. They are stupidly complex for domestic meters
    This is a system account and does not represent a real person. To contact the Forum Team email forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com
  • Cardew
    Cardew Posts: 29,060 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Rampant Recycler
    Am I correct in saying Cardew that anyone refusing a smart meter in Florida faces a one off payment and an annual cost ? No messing around in the USA it seems ,and stealing energy is dealt with stricter than it is here

    No idea HM, the smart metering was installed during building.

    A couple of good points were that I got a discount for allowing the electricity company to remotely switch off heavy consumption items, (Aircon, water heater, dryer) for no more than 15 minutes at a time.(load sharing) I am not aware if this ever happened.

    The other point was that my all-electric(2,500sq ft) condo got an 'allowance' of 1,000kWh a month at a cheaper rate, any consumption over 1,000kWh was about 20% more expensive. A good incentive to save.
  • facade
    facade Posts: 7,612 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    The thing with smart meters is, it really is the simplest thing in the world. All smart meters can communicate with a single central hub via the mains wire, each property has a unique ID, so you supplier can simply request the data from your meter from the hub.

    Except you just know that this will cost squillions in software development and jobs for the boys, and will never ever work properly.......
    I want to go back to The Olden Days, when every single thing that I can think of was better.....

    (except air quality and Medical Science ;))
  • KGriff
    KGriff Posts: 185 Forumite
    House Martin,

    The issues around SMETS is (I believe) that if you change provider, there is a possibility the smart meter equipment may not work with the new provider, but those issues are resolved with SMETS2... and in any case, who wants to keep taking a day or half a day off work to have these upgrades, even if it may take the engineer less than half an hour to alter things from SMETS to SMETS2?

    It seems wise to wait for the newer SMETS2 meters I think

    SMETS2 are supposedly available from 2018 onwards from the information I have read online, so it seems sensible to wait till then and find an energy company that has engaged a supplier to fit them.

    I also understand that the hand-held display devices in the home vary considerably too and I have seen those described as being 'a waste of time/ugly and difficult to read' through to 'very informative/easy to read' and that surely must be part of the consideration when having a smart meter fitted.

    Even if I am misinformed here, it still shows there is not enough information about the smart meters being conveyed to the customer beforehand and I can therefore understand why many are delaying having these items installed in their homes.


    My wife and I hope to be one of the last households on the installation list. I already have low energy bulbs and appliances fitted and we keep our energy usage to a bare, but comfortable, minimum. We often switch suppliers and try to keep our costs down, so I can't see there really being any 'significant' benefit from having one of these new meters in our home.
  • System
    System Posts: 178,349 Community Admin
    10,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    edited 3 February 2017 at 8:54AM
    Get ready for a long long wait, and I mean many many years, up to 10 years. BG have been installing smarts, the SMET1 flavour for almost 10 years now and I spend most of my days reading the old imperial and metric dumb meters for BG. .Anyone who thinks that delaying until someone decides to knock on their doors in 2017/18 has been reading the absolute guff given out on here by self appointed rank amateur smart meter "experts " who spend too long on the internet retired to grass. Expect a SMET2 to be installed sometime in the 2020s...meantime for all those long intervening years simply have the SMETS1 installed which will just need a "hub " change (10 minute job ) to update to SMETS2
    The INH monitors are a doddle to read. Mine spent a few weeks plugged in and is now in the garage where it will stay. Smart meters are here for the benefit of the suppliers to enable correct billing 100% of the time and at the same time lowering all their costs trying to sort out a lazy UKs publics attitude to billing.Many could nt give a monkeys about readings, they never even look at the meters year in year out and just accept a nice low direct debit which suits them then are on here 3 years later complaining of the treatment of their supplier wanting to fit a prepayment meter because they owe £3k...a very common scenario with the idle ignorant UK public I m afraid. Cynical old meter readers view after nearly 20 years experience !
    This is a system account and does not represent a real person. To contact the Forum Team email forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com
  • molerat
    molerat Posts: 34,615 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Your personal insults do not help your case.

    I am not against smart meters, I embrace technology but I am not an early adopter of new shiny goods for the sake of it, for anything I would rather wait until the mk2 that actually works comes out. This applies to smart meters, one would be of minimal benefit to me so why bother.

    If they would solve so many problems then why are these problem customers not being targeted, using court enforcement if necessary ?

    As for updating to SMETS2 standard, you seem to know more than the meter industry who have stated that although many later models should be updatable many will need to be replaced.
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 351.1K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.2K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 453.6K Spending & Discounts
  • 244.1K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 599.1K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 177K Life & Family
  • 257.5K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.