Smart Meters

Pincher

Deleted_User wrote: »

I first got my smart meter specifically because of the meters' locations it means you need to be approaching an Olympic standard athlete to read them.

Let us say my meter was on top of Ben Nevis, the first thing that comes out of the engineer's mouth is I'm not going up there.

For BT lines, Virgin Media cable TV lines, I have had so many refusals to run the cable my way, that I end up asking them to provide the cable, so I crawl through the tight spaces and run the cables myself.

I have also had British Gas engineers refusing to touch zone valves because they are in tight spaces under the kitchen counter.

They will cite health and safety, and refuse to do the work, if access is difficult, so how on earth did you manage to get the engineer to go near the old meter?

System

Rubidium wrote: »

Getting mine in a couple of years, I can and will wait and I urge other sensible MSE'ers to do the same.

The time scale will more likely be nearer 10 years before you get approached .Like I have said, BG started bunging them in about 10 years ago or more and they have nt got 50% done as of yet.The speed the suppliers get them installed is extremely slow. Suppliers are not organised like the DNO s are at meter installation. They could ve swept down the street in one go exchanging all suppliers They have done it before with gas/electric /token meters .Now , due to a government who have had stupid advice, they entrusted the job to each supplier because they believed they could "talk us in to accepting them better" and most likely quadrupling the cost of installation. My mate works for Eon meter fitting and can have many days where he installs one or two a day..

EachPenny

House_Martin wrote: »

...Suppliers are not organised like the DNO s are at meter installation. They could ve swept down the street in one go exchanging all suppliers They have done it before with gas/electric /token meters .Now , due to a government who have had stupid advice, they entrusted the job to each supplier because they believed they could "talk us in to accepting them better" and most likely quadrupling the cost of installation.

But hasn't this happened because pretty much each supplier has opted for a different smart meter make, type and configuration? A DNO could only sweep down the street if they were installing exactly the same kind of meter and configuration in each house, otherwise each installer will have to be trained to install and configure every type of meter for every supplier. Not very efficient and prone to errors being made.

The only way the DNO 'sweep' would work would be if the Government had decided on a single specification of smart meter, configured in a standard way, communicating with a standardised common communications network. This would have been a much better approach, subject to there being some element of competition in the manufacture and supply of the meters.

The thing is, the work to date has been disorganised, using incompatible technologies, and multiple communications networks, some of which are rapidly nearing shut-down. This is Smets1.

Smets2 will hopefully be the rationalised, organised, interoperable, transferable and secure system which would facilitate mass roll-out.

You can see why people are saying wait for Smets2, don't rush to join the omnishambles.

chris-j

This is not an "offer" from your energy supplier - fact is we have all been paying through our bills for these for years now and will continue to do so. The estimated costs are between £11 and £20 billion to install in the UKs 33 million homes therefore costing between £300 and £600 per home - complete rip off.
These meters are not Smart - They might save you having to read the meter, but I would struggle to find many who would be willing to pay £300-£600 to save them reading a meter once a quarter to avoid estimated bills.
The meters give real time usage - again if you are really interested read your meter more frequently and calculate your bill base don your tariff.

I would completely avoid these until they actually provide something useful - the government should immediately scrap the rollout of these and spend the money on something useful.

As example a smart thermometer like Hive, Nest or Lyric can genuinely provide some intelligence around your heating and could be installed in every home. This would be far better use of the money - add in replacing halogen bulbs with LEDs, replacing transformers with LED compatible ones.
Economies of scale would allow this to be done for around £300 per house, the lower end of the Smart Meter install estimates and would genuinely save energy and save people money.

McKneff

The worst thing about getting my meters fitted is that the man asked to go to the toilet, i have no problem with that, but did have a problem with him leaving the seat down and widdling on
it.....

System

EachPenny wrote: »

But hasn't this happened because pretty much each supplier has opted for a different smart meter make, type and configuration? A DNO could only sweep down the street if they were installing exactly the same kind of meter and configuration in each house, otherwise each installer will have to be trained to install and configure every type of meter for every supplier. Not very efficient and prone to errors being made.

The only way the DNO 'sweep' would work would be if the Government had decided on a single specification of smart meter, configured in a standard way, communicating with a standardised common communications network. This would have been a much better approach, subject to there being some element of competition in the manufacture and supply of the meters.

The thing is, the work to date has been disorganised, using incompatible technologies, and multiple communications networks, some of which are rapidly nearing shut-down. This is Smets1.

Smets2 will hopefully be the rationalised, organised, interoperable, transferable and secure system which would facilitate mass roll-out.

You can see why people are saying wait for Smets2, don't rush to join the omnishambles.

The DNO s swept down every street in the UK installing different makes /models of metric gas meters throughout the UK and also dozens of different makes of analogue/ digital electric meter..A meter is a meter, same training needed for all smarts as there are for dumb with a few extra details for smarts, like matching the IHD to the meter. My smarts took no more than 45 mins to fit even tho the fitter was amusing me with his many fiddled meter stories he d come across which slowed him down somewhat. So far I see 3 makes of smart meters installed in my my area. Landys Gyrs are the most popular, and the most user freindly but it seems the unbelievably complex Secure Liberty meters are gaining popularity. Eon started by fitting Landys then switched to Secure ..Maybe they get the meters cheaper but the customers will suffer because they can t understand them..But why would a German supplier be interested in looking after their customers in the UK ?
Smart meters are extremely popular in Europe and in every case they have been installed by the DNOs or their equivalent name and they would have done it much more economically than sad old UK and their stupid politicians sticking their noses in..The UK is the only country to saddle all the suppliers with this extra job which they are plainly no bloody good at..Our politicians are not interested in economics because they re not interested in who pays the final cost for their decisions.
Why are they still installing hugely expensive wind turbines even now..We have our quota of these awful ugly money suckers. They cost more than nuclear power to run and they have all been erected by 100% foreign labour and are 100% foreign owned.. UK politicians at it again making stupid decisions..We have to live with the sight of the things now for no really good reasons

Chino

House_Martin wrote: »

Suppliers are not organised like the DNO s are at meter installation.

If you say so, but what is a "DNO"?

System

chris-j wrote: »

This is not an "offer" from your energy supplier - fact is we have all been paying through our bills for these for years now and will continue to do so. The estimated costs are between £11 and £20 billion to install in the UKs 33 million homes therefore costing between £300 and £600 per home - complete rip off.
These meters are not Smart - They might save you having to read the meter, but I would struggle to find many who would be willing to pay £300-£600 to save them reading a meter once a quarter to avoid estimated bills.
The meters give real time usage - again if you are really interested read your meter more frequently and calculate your bill base don your tariff.

I would completely avoid these until they actually provide something useful - the government should immediately scrap the rollout of these and spend the money on something useful.

As example a smart thermometer like Hive, Nest or Lyric can genuinely provide some intelligence around your heating and could be installed in every home. This would be far better use of the money - add in replacing halogen bulbs with LEDs, replacing transformers with LED compatible ones.
Economies of scale would allow this to be done for around £300 per house, the lower end of the Smart Meter install estimates and would genuinely save energy and save people money.

The trouble is Chris is that people who diligently read their meters and submit them are in the minority. We are lucky to get a reading every two years from many.The call centres are full of employees costing billions also trying to sort out the complex billing faults all caused by faulty or no meter readings for years.. Most of the prepayment meters installed I would wager have been force fitted because of debts escalating on direct debits set far too low with virtually no readings taken for years.
When I started meter reading in the last century BG and the YEB (yorkshire electric board ) we would come round every 13 weeks on the dot..Now for many of the foreigners who have stormed in, like EDF, brought in their own rules of much fewer readings to keep down the costs and increase the mess ups. Smarts are badly needed for this reason. A monthly automated reading is plenty enough and Npower do actually offer that from their smart meters

Raxiel

Chino wrote: »

If you say so, but what is a "DNO"?

Distribution Network Operator.

The company that operates the grid in your region.

[Deleted User]

gsmlnx wrote: »

@picks
Gas has to be measured in cubic meters as the kW value depends on the calorific value of the actual gas in your region and is variable. This calorific value is only known daily in arrears.

Really? That's interesting because I spoke to someone in the billing department of my supplier (E.ON) a couple of months back. She said I should simply convert my in-house display reading from the kWh displayed into cubic meters using a formula she had. Like you, I questioned this saying "surely it depends on caloric value of the gas which varies?". She said no, not so. She had been working for E.ON for 26 years and the conversion formula between cubic meters and kWh had never changed in all the years she had worked for the company.

So you are contradicting what billing staff at E.ON have told me.

gsmlnx wrote: »

The IHD (In House Display) value of gas used in KWh is only an approximation. Just look at the mess that Iresa is in due to using the wrong calorific value for gas in their bills.

If that's the case, why don't they do the obvious thing, use some common sense, and let the IHD for gas display the cubic meters exactly matching the meter reading needed by my supplier? What's the point of manufacturing an in-house display which shows meter readings in units which cannot be used for supplying consumer readings and (according to you) are "only an approximation"? They might just as well display the gas reading in Transylvanian Greckles for all the use the displayed figure is.