Smart Meters

Undervalued

I have been reading a few of these debates and I am firmly in the "wait a while" category.

Firstly it seems crazy that they are not (currently) compatible with other suppliers. I do wonder if the reason BG and others are promoting them so heavily is at least partly deliberate as a disincentive to switching?

I do have an electricity monitor on my desk, which BG supplied free a few years back. That gives me most of the information I would get from a smart meter although, once the novelty wore off, I actually look at it very little.

I submit my readings in once a month in response to an email. That takes a few moments but is actually very useful as it concentrates the mind to consider usage. If I had a SM I would save those few moments but not be prompted monthly to assess my usage.

I am concerned about the reports of lack of training of the installers. A few years ago BG moved my gas meter and caused several hundred pounds worth of damage to my property. Needless to say they tried to deny liability and eventually insisted on hiring a chartered surveyor to write a report. He took one look and said "of course it is their fault". I asked how much that professional opinion would cost them and he said £400! So, added to the repair bill and some compensation for inconvenience they were about a thousand pounds down!

I am old enough to remember the conversion from town to natural gas and the appallingly trained idiots that were sent out. Is this more of the same?

So, my reaction is to wait for a good while yet.

EachPenny

Undervalued wrote: »

I am old enough to remember the conversion from town to natural gas and the appallingly trained idiots that were sent out. Is this more of the same?

I think to be fair to the fitters - in relation to smart meters the highlighted phrase is more accurately applied to the people responsible for the idea/policy and those responsible for planning the implementation of it.

House_Martin

EachPenny wrote: »

Given that two of the greatest smart meter supporters on here appear to be meter readers it would seem unlikely this will happen. (Turkeys/Christmas etc...)

My guess is they will be redeployed doing other things like 'safety checks', replacing batteries, fixing non-working sims, replacing non-working meters (except BG ones) etc. All of these tasks will require a higher level of training and knowledge - therefore the redeployed meter readers will need to be paid more.

Which leads to the question... if all the meter readers are redeployed to fixing non-working smart meters and carrying out 'safety checks' (and possibly paid more for doing it) then how will smart meters save the energy companies money? Especially given the higher capital (leasing) costs of smart meters and the costs of running the central hub to collect and distribute the data.

Is it possible the idea that smart meters will reduce the cost of house visits is - like most of the other claims made about smart meters - a bit of a fib?

Hey, don t insult Meterman, hes a meter fitter,not a meter reader..Thats a step up on us lot ! he is most likely working for for BG.
.I m not rude , I m just hopeless at tech stuff, I ve no idea how to add a link and if you google British Gas smart meters the first or second heading will be BG s Smart meter website where they clearly state that "millionS of our customers are benefitting from our smart meters.", and they are, with much reduced problems and calls to call centres. BG can cut their staff because of smart meters AND they hugely cut energy theft.
Once BG smart meters are in and working ok we visit them every 5 years..Fit and forget meters.No visits needed.BG had permission from OFGEM to do 5 yearly visits..Mind you, thats what EDF and Scot Power do anyway mostly, without permission from OFGEM, and only do safety checks once a blue moon.
Its a pity this forum is tightly moderated , then I would be able to speak my mind without getting kicked off, especially about TV licence fiddlers, then I would be properly rude !

House_Martin

Undervalued wrote: »

I have been reading a few of these debates and I am firmly in the "wait a while" category.

Firstly it seems crazy that they are not (currently) compatible with other suppliers. I do wonder if the reason BG and others are promoting them so heavily is at least partly deliberate as a disincentive to switching?

I do have an electricity monitor on my desk, which BG supplied free a few years back. That gives me most of the information I would get from a smart meter although, once the novelty wore off, I actually look at it very little.

I submit my readings in once a month in response to an email. That takes a few moments but is actually very useful as it concentrates the mind to consider usage. If I had a SM I would save those few moments but not be prompted monthly to assess my usage.

I am concerned about the reports of lack of training of the installers. A few years ago BG moved my gas meter and caused several hundred pounds worth of damage to my property. Needless to say they tried to deny liability and eventually insisted on hiring a chartered surveyor to write a report. He took one look and said "of course it is their fault". I asked how much that professional opinion would cost them and he said £400! So, added to the repair bill and some compensation for inconvenience they were about a thousand pounds down!

I am old enough to remember the conversion from town to natural gas and the appallingly trained idiots that were sent out. Is this more of the same?

So, my reaction is to wait for a good while yet.

Look, there have been over two million smart meters installed at least.We hear of a very few problems by a few meter fitters NOT really tightening up the meter tails to the bottom of the meters, as if their life depended on it, and hence a few have overheated and caused a very few electrical fires out of the million at least which have been installed in the last decade.Get it into perspective before making wild comments about "idiots " who appear to be installing meters.
I personally have seen hundreds of electric meters which have overheated and caused fires, and 99 % of them are caused by meter fiddlers bypassing the meters .
At least smart electric meters will alert the supplier when this is happening..Possibly one of the reasons the hatred of these meters is so popular in such websites as Stopsmartmeters.org uk..

Carrot007

EachPenny wrote: »

and in some cases appear to be deliberately misleading consumers into having obsolete technology installed in their homes.

Pretty much all technology in the home is obsolete in some way.

It takes to long to get there and this country screws itself up by having early adoption.

Ruined Tech

Digital TV. In too early the SD standard is very bandwidth wasteful. We could switch all channels to the HD standard, either brodcast in standard def in the new codec or downscale HD if available (to remove a redundant duplicate channel). But there are so many recievers out now they can;t switch for ages.

Digital radio. Again in too early. There are newer and better codecs around but the stupid installed recievers wont do them. Radio stations are sold on bandwidth because it is precious because of the silly old standard. So most channels are sub fm quality and mono because they don't want to pay double.

Smart TV's. Stupid idea. All become unusable in about a year due to changing standards. But it helps them sell tvs. A standardised slot for a smart unit add on would have been best and you could keep your TV longer. Ahh well at least we can keep the TV and have external options but lots of people want integrated.

I could go on but I won't. Just saying obselete tech is everywhere!

Undervalued

Carrot007 wrote: »

Smart TV's. Stupid idea. All become unusable in about a year due to changing standards. But it helps them sell tvs. A standardised slot for a smart unit add on would have been best and you could keep your TV longer. Ahh well at least we can keep the TV and have external options but lots of people want integrated.

I could go on but I won't. Just saying obselete tech is everywhere!

Quite and it can be very annoying!

My first attempt at Smart TV was bad experience. I bought a Sony "Smart" Blu Ray Player, partly to play disks (which it does fine) but mainly as a means of getting iPlayer etc. The box promised that ITV Hub and All4 would be "coming soon". That never happened and worse, if a fairly short space of time iPlayer, Netflix etc etc were no longer compatible with the device. So now it is just a "dumb" BluRay player and I had to buy an alternative means of getting the other services on my TV.

So a bit like getting say a BG Smart Meter then changing to nPower!

EachPenny

House_Martin wrote: »

...At least smart electric meters will alert the supplier when this is happening..Hence the hatred of these meters in such websites as Stopsmartmeters.org uk..who appeared to be sponsored by the "home cannabis growers association " who rely on free electricity to reap a hell of a good living with virtually zero risk of prison sentences nowadays .

However many times you say it, it won't become true. Smart meters may be able to detect certain types of fraud and report back to base, but 'smart' meter fiddlers will know what techniques will result in detection and simply use alternative means of abstraction which no domestic meter on earth would be able to detect.

Claiming organisations are linked with illegal activity is a risky thing to do unless you have proof... do you have any proof of a connection between Stopsmartmeters.org uk and any organisation liked with illegal activities? If not, may I politely suggest you stop making unsupported claims.

House_Martin

EachPenny wrote: »

However many times you say it, it won't become true. Smart meters may be able to detect certain types of fraud and report back to base, but 'smart' meter fiddlers will know what techniques will result in detection and simply use alternative means of abstraction which no domestic meter on earth would be able to detect.

Claiming organisations are linked with illegal activity is a risky thing to do unless you have proof... do you have any proof of a connection between Stopsmartmeters.org uk and any organisation liked with illegal activities? If not, may I politely suggest you stop making unsupported claims.

They will know that zero use at the property "is claimed "..with the use of smart meters in the property and error codes will be sent back to the suppliers. If they were dumb meters supplier would not know what the usage actually is especially when meter readers are refused access.Property could be vacant as well but visits from either meter readers or RPU would have the upper hand to quickly stop energy theft.
Do you realise that meter bypassing can go on for many years and never be stopped because the supplier does not get access to view the meters and has to accept what the occupier says he or she is using at face value.They would need to spend around £300 in warrant and locksmiths fees to view the meters with the occupiers constantly refusing access.Scottish Power for instance will not do this very often.They do not take out warrants of access to view a meter, I was told by one of their RPU workers that only around 12 a year warrants are taken out in the UK .Its cheaper for them just to allow the occupier to carry on thieving for decades.
Also the supplier could be owed a certain amount on credit meters, say £500/£600 and decide to pull the plug and cut their losses and put the meter in prepay mode..
I have seen a prepay meter, in Central Goole with £9000 debt on the meter ! and £2k and £3k debts are very common..These tremendous losses cannot be sustained by suppliers because they have to make that loss back to the National Grid..That was an Npower meter by the way.
You missed a tremendous LIVE race by Mo Farrah in the 10,000 mtrs EachPenny seeing as you do not possess a TV licence .Thanks for the silly stopsmartmeter.org dig !

EachPenny

House_Martin wrote: »

They will know that zero use at the property "is claimed "..with the use of smart meters in the property.

So how stupid would an energy thief be if they managed to have zero consumption knowing that their energy use was being monitored frequently throughout the day with the data potentially being fed through computers set up to spot the tiniest deviation from the norm?

Some people are stupid, some are greedy, but the 'professional' thieves will quickly work out what they need to do to avoid detection... it isn't difficult to figure out, but for obvious reasons I'm not going to say it on here!

As you and I have previously discussed, if the energy companies start knocking on doors of households where the energy use has suddenly fallen to zero (or near zero) they are likely to find a lot of empty homes, people on extended holidays, in hospital, or in long-term care.

If the energy companies use smart meters to adopt the kind of tactics you suggest then the elderly, vulnerable and sick will become the most frequently disturbed consumers... not really a fair or an appropriate use of technology.

House_Martin

Energy thieves are stupid and in the main they are not pros with all the right expensive equipment like cannabis farmers use. Their " equipment " is a length of cable about 8 inches long , for the electric meter, or a substitute gas meter bought on ebay for £30, or they simply take it off and reverse it.. Hundreds of thousands of gas meters have been sold on Ebay in the last 15 years for the sole purpose of substituting their own gas meters.
Ebay operate like a anything go`s so long as it makes us money auction site , to allow, or fail to filter out, the sale of used gas meters.They even allow , or fail to filter out, sale of fake UK gas meter government seals .Its unbelievable that someone can sell an old gas meter on Ebay., and get away with it and have a gas meter posted to their address all ready to slot in place of their own meter, be it a prepay or credit meter.
At least now the suppliers can fight back and know instantly when a smart gas meter has been unscrewed and substituted or taken off and reversed.
Recently I found two reversed gas meters in a middle class street in central Doncaster..PM me for photos if you do not believe me. The scale of this sort of theft will be enormous in the UK.