Smart Meters

matelodave

In the end it is what it is and no amount of whinging or handwringing is going to improve the situation. It was a poorly thought out scheme, badly executed and with too much political interference so TBH it was doomed to failure from the very beginning

MWT

Agreed, sadly this whole mess never met the standard to be a 'plan' in the first place, it has been a 'hope' from the start.

Talldave

Failure in terms of missed deadlines and two goes at getting a meter network running, yes. But long term the rollout will complete, I believe in the 2030, 2035, 2040 timescale. 

What's sad is that at that point what we will have primarily achieved is just getting rid of meter readers. I find the lack of exciting product offerings that smart metering enables quite depressing.  Surely Octopus can't be the only supplier thinking 21st century style and attempting to innovate??

MWT

Talldave said:

Surely Octopus can't be the only supplier thinking 21st century style and attempting to innovate??

Not the only one, but certainly way out in front with the whole package of investment in renewable generation and being genuinely green rather than relying on 'green-washing'.

Bulb and EDF deserve an honourable mention for their 1st generation smart tariffs, but yes, nobody else has anything close to the Octopus Agile tariff, or even their 1st generation Tracker tariff.

I do suspect that a lot of the hesitation to follow them is simply down to scale or history, so many of the current crop of energy companies are either too small and operating on tiny margins to attract customers and can't handle the risk profile, or are larger and older, but faced with the inherent profitability of existing customer bases that don't switch, don't review tariffs and just sit there on default variable tariffs year to year and so have little incentive to shake things up with innovative new tariffs.

We probably still need more demand for innovation before we'll see more of it out there. Still a lot of complacency on the customer side and a lack of desire to actually get more involved in managing energy consumption.

carl.waring

brewerdave said:

carl.waring said:

And of course you've never had to change any of your (rather smaller-scale than this!) plans at all, right? 🙄

I think that the point that the other cynical contributors are making ,is that SMETS1 meters should never have been rolled out in the first place. A fundamental part of the smart meter philosophy SHOULD have been interoperability from day 1, NOT a possible addon years down the road. It is my belief that the majority of SMETS1 meters will end up being scrapped and replaced at huge further cost by SMETS X ,as this "over the air " upgrade will be a VERY SLOW train coming (or not) !!

Not being an expert on them, or why they did it that way, I cannot realistically comment. (Though it looks like that hasn't stopped anyone else from doing so 

matelodave

How come organisations like the National Lottery can set up a whole network of machines and infra-structure, what about cash machine in banks, of even card machines in all manner of places all over the world - they seem to have managed it, the same with the mobile phone network
What is really so different or difficult about a smart gas or leccy meter and the network to communicate and collect and collate the info from them.

Ah, I know, the Banks and National Lottery has a willingness to sort it all out and co-operate towards a common goal without government interference whereas the energy companies, government and others didn't and, as I can see still, don't unless they are dragged or forced into doing it. It's probably become significantly more complex than it ever needed to be because too many people had a say in what they thought was needed or wanted and TBH the requirements should be pretty simple. 

Collect consumption info and send it back, either to a central hub or to the supplier who produces a bill and send it out to you - whats so hard in that. My mobile phone manages it every time I make a phone call and that can still do it wherever I am, almost anywhere in the world - a smart meter is usually pretty static as it's screwed to a wall in your house so it should be a lot easier.

Talldave

To be fair, none of those examples require one element of the system to operate on a battery for 10+ years.

But the HAN network isn't fit for purpose and why do we have two different WAN technologies in different parts of the country? It's bonkers. Who's responsible?  Does anybody know?  It's been a case of the blind leading the partially sighted all along.

oldandwizend

Smart meter - no thank you.as until they offer substantially lower tariffs for  having them (very unlikely as utility companies want to maximise profit) then i can see no real advantage. Firstly too many horror stories about unsafe installations and secondly object to being told that they could save me money! Unless they offer a reduced tariff then they do not save me money! A smart meter does not suddenly make my 3kwh kettle only use 2.9kwh!!!

In this modern digital world it pays to stay away from any gizmo that includes the word smart.

SMART = Smart Marketing And Reporting Tool

MWT

oldandwizend said:

Smart meter - no thank you.as until they offer substantially lower tariffs for  having them (very unlikely as utility companies want to maximise profit) then i can see no real advantage.

I couldn't access the Octopus Agile tariff that I am on without one and yes, that tariff is delivering considerable cost savings to me, so I am a happy smart meter user.

carl.waring

oldandwizend said:

Smart meter - no thank you.as until they offer substantially lower tariffs for  having them (very unlikely as utility companies want to maximise profit) then i can see no real advantage. Firstly too many horror stories about unsafe installations and secondly object to being told that they could save me money! Unless they offer a reduced tariff then they do not save me money! A smart meter does not suddenly make my 3kwh kettle only use 2.9kwh!!!

In this modern digital world it pays to stay away from any gizmo that includes the word smart.

SMART = Smart Marketing And Reporting Tool

1. Why should you have a lower-priced tariff just because you have a smart meter? They do exactly the same job as a standard (ie not-smart) meter so there really isn't any incentive for energy companies to do so. (Unlike, say, a discount for paying by DD that reduces the cost of admin on the account.)
2. Of course you're going to hear of the relatively few incidents involving any new technology. You don't hear about all the success though. For the same reason you only hear about the number of death from COVID-19 and never the number who have revovered.
3. No of course it doesn't; and no-one has ever said otherwise. However, the savings come from elsewhere and not just from you, the customer saving money because you can now see exactly how much you're using and try to use less. For example, energy companies will now never need to send someone to your home to read your meter themselves. Yes, only a small cost (fuel, vehicle, manpower, etc.) for one customer, but multiply that by millions of them?!!