Smart Meters

House_Martin

Hengus, theres still , I guess , 20 % of consumers not connected to the internet for a start.
BG s boss and Ovos boss are cleverer than you, or Zeupater or any other board contributor and they made their informed decision to beat the gun and install them because of all the positives. They don`t want an angry customer, they want a happy customer correctly billed, year in year out and that is what BG in the main have been doing for over a decade. They would have costed it out properly
They did nt need OFGEM to order the roll out, they love them !
Never been any cyber attacks in the world to my knowledge on smart meters and a few countries are well in front of us , like Italy and even Republic of Ireland and Portugal , where they are mandatory.
Anglo Russian relations are ok and are nothing more than an election ploy from Putin to boost his rigged election turn out on Sunday so he gets another 6 years to make himself the richest man in the world which he probably already is .
.

zeupater

House_Martin wrote: »

The overwhelming majority of occupants still do not enter online readings at all. Maybe on here with a large number of retired folk contributing to this board they have time and inclination to do it. Out in the real world they can t be ar**d and so end up in debt, with a prepay meter and a big grudge.

Hi

Whatever the percentage, the fact remains that there's a huge impact on the number of meter readings due to the requirement for an 8:1 reduction in meter reading site visits and consequential revisits/call centre traffic etc ...

So, what is the percentage of households operating on-line accounts ? ... according to the Ofgem retail Energy report for 2016 <link>, it was 40%, with smaller suppliers operating at around 53% and the 'big 6' averaging 36% ... if this is reflected in the number of meter readings required you can certainly see where efficiencies can be made & why smart-meters cannot deliver the anticipated savings ...

This is really what needs to be looked into within the project cost justification ... much of the 'manual reading' and 'customer liaison' savings that smart-meters could provide have already been taken ... then again, energy prices have not continued to rise at the anticipated rates, something that the project justification heavily relied on ... the article linked to previously suggests a claimed £4bn project cost benefit could well be -£4bn based on £8bn of cumulative errors, overruns & management issues, but I seriously doubt that this is the end of it if there was to be a full investigation into the project justification methodology.

HTH
Z

Nick_C

House_Martin wrote: »

British Gas were the first supplier to use domestic smart meters in the UK. ...

BG could see that they were both economic to use and enabled very accurate billing and an important side effect to BG was that they cut down on the large amount of meter tampering going off in certain areas.

They also could cut down on call centre staff and their quite large meter reading teams. They re just cost effective to use. They have enabled BG to save millions over the 12 years....

... as usual BG were one step ahead of the foreign competition who dragged their feet in the smart meter roll out.
Another smart business move by BG. Smart meters made economic sense to them to run their successful business more efficiently.

Hmm. And yet Centrica has lost 60% of its value over the last five years.

Following a profit of £1.6 billion in 2013, they have made an average loss of £200 million a year for the last four years..

And BG lost over 800,000 customers in the second half of last year.

Not a great example of a successful business in my view.

zeupater

Nick_C wrote: »

Hmm. And yet Centrica has lost 60% of its value over the last five years.

Following a profit of £1.6 billion in 2013, they have made an average loss of £200 million a year for the last four years..

And BG lost over 800,000 customers in the second half of last year.

Not a great example of a successful business in my view.

Hi

It's not only BG that's haemorrhaging customers, all (almost!) of the big 6 are suffering, much of which is due to their inability to keep their costs under control simply because they've never needed to! ....

Outside the 'big 6', Ofgem's "Electricity supply market shares by company: Domestic (GB)" analysis is always interesting ...

Until 2012, other suppliers held a market share of below 2%. Since then, their share has grown significantly. They reached a market share of 19% in Q3 2017, four percentage points up on Q3 2016.

... as the chart shows, there are suppliers that 'bought' market share before becoming complacent (eg BG & SSE) & others that completely failed to react (eg E.ON), the only one seemingly able to react quickly and maintain customer base being SP ... Interesting is the growth of 'Small Suppliers' (ie 'others') market share from a very low base over just 3 years .... add the 'non big 6' suppliers together and they're competing with BG for top spot ....

... The cosy relationship in the energy supply market looks to be experiencing severe competitive challenge (at last !) and the combination of complacency and an ingrained inability to react quickly is crippling margins ...

How quickly things change once momentum is achieved, let's just hope that they take note of customer demands before it's too late! ... £billions on smart-meters? ... what a waste of time & money when distributed & embedded generation has effectively broken the managed & centralised generation model that the smart-meter project justification is based on.

HTH
Z

System

Is our energy infrastructure under attack - of course it is and it has been for some time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/russia-cyberattacks.html

The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will.

United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/22/cyber-attack-on-uk-matter-of-when-not-if-says-security-chief-ciaran-martin

The head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has warned that a major cyber-attack on the UK is a matter of “when, not if”, raising the prospect of devastating disruption to British elections and critical infrastructure.

In remarks underlining newly released figures showing the number of cyber-attacks on the UK in the last 15 months, Ciaran Martin said the UK had been fortunate to avoid a so-called category one (C1) attack, broadly defined as an attack that might cripple infrastructure such as energy supplies and the financial services sector.

The US, France and other parts of Europe have already faced such attacks.

Quote The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Unquote Sun Tzu

House_Martin

Nick_C wrote: »

Hmm. And yet Centrica has lost 60% of its value over the last five years.

Following a profit of £1.6 billion in 2013, they have made an average loss of £200 million a year for the last four years..

And BG lost over 800,000 customers in the second half of last year.

Not a great example of a successful business in my view.

We are discussing British Gas here not Centrica !.Get it right please
https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2017/02/23/british-gas-operating-profits-rise-by-2-to-a-906m/
Big profits for BG last year of £906 million 2016 to 2017, that is up from a profit of £891 million 2015 to 2016 well up on the previous years averages of £584 million.
BG have never made an operating loss, but don`t let that get in the way of you implying that they have.
BG are easily the largest profit makers of all suppliers in the UK and so they should be, they are the best run even if they are the only supplier to run a proper Revenue Protection Unit which costs millions to operate.I was told by the Northern head of BG RPU years ago that they have a budget of £40 million a year
The foreigners, Eon, EDF and Scot Power and the little guys do not have to spend millions on RPU .They just allow their dodgy customers to nick it wholesale and pass on the losses for the rest of us to absorb. Well done BG for standing up to the UK s energy thieves.
All stolen electricity is nt passed onto the supplier to absorb, it is taken up by the local DNO and passed on in higher wholesale electric prices. This is why suppliers do not do much to stop the theft. Its expensive to run a RPU so why waste money on it when all the micro suppliers in particular do not lose a penny.
SSE, another British outfit also run a fairly effective RPU.
A senior BG RPU man once joked with me by saying " anyone stealing gas and electricity the last supplier they should use is BG "
All of the big 6 are losing to the here today gone tomorrow cheapjacks " in equal measures.
Looking on Uswitch just now it looks like BG will quickly regain the 800,000 customers loss.
Their "All Online March 2019 " takes them to quite near to the top of the list taking into account of the £30 cashbacks.
Who would customers with sense choose ?, Outfox the Market, Tonik, Breeze , etc , or good old reliable BG. Tariff tarts and skinflints are ruled by their wallets not their heads.
Hope you got your money back from GB Energy Hengus when they went bust ?.
Constantly chasing the rock bottom cheapest has its risks.

pineapple

House_Martin wrote: »

BG are easily the largest profit makers of all suppliers in the UK and so they should be, they are the best run

I thought BG regularly came near the bottom in customer satisfaction surveys? When I ran a sheltered housing scheme there were so many problems with tenants on BG that I vowed never to use it.

zeupater

House_Martin wrote: »

We are discussing British Gas here not Centrica !.Get it right please
https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2017/02/23/british-gas-operating-profits-rise-by-2-to-a-906m/
Big profits for BG last year of £906 million 2017, that is up from a profit of £891 million 2016 well up on the previous years averages of £584 million.
BG have never made an operating loss, but don`t let that get in the way of you implying that they have.
BG are easily the largest profit makers of all suppliers in the UK and so they should be, they are the best run even if they are the only supplier to run a proper Revenue Protection Unit which costs millions to operate.I was told by the Northern head of BG RPU years ago that they have a budget of £40 million a year
The foreigners, Eon, EDF and Scot Power and the little guys do not have to spend millions on RPU .They just allow their dodgy customers to nick it wholesale and pass on the losses for the rest of us to absorb. Well done BG for standing up to the UK s energy thieves.
SSE, another British outfit also run a fairly effective RPU.
A senior BG RPU man once joked with me by saying " anyone stealing gas and electricity the last supplier they should use is BG "
All of the big 6 are losing to the here today gone tomorrow cheapjacks " in equal measures.
Looking on Uswitch just now it looks like BG will quickly regain the 800,000 customers loss.
Their "All Online March 2019 " takes them to quite near to the top of the list taking into account of the £30 cashbacks.
Who would customers with sense choose ?, Outfox the Market, Tonik, Breeze , etc , or good old reliable BG. Tariff tarts and skinflints are ruled by their wallets not their heads.
Hope you got your money back from GB Energy Hengus when they went bust.
Constantly chasing the rock bottom cheapest has its risks.

Hi

Odd really ... you're effectively claiming that 2016 was last year - those are the results for 2016, not the 2017 ones published 22/02/2018 .... https://www.centrica.com/news/2017-preliminary-results-announcement

Anyway, that's not really the point, BG have lost 14% of customer accounts on Standard variable tariff (SVT), 8% on Prepayment tariffs & 1% on Fixed term offerings ... that is a huge loss of business ... the annual net effect on gross revenue for energy supply is -8%, yet energy supply profit increased by 3% .... obviously the average 12.5% increase in September had a short term effect of bolstering the figures in the accounts, but at what cost to the long term ?

I find it interesting that the fixed term account churn is so low, the question now is whether this is a result of tariff strategy or simply a group of 'locked in' custom which is awaiting contracts to expire ...

Regarding smaller suppliers, you seem to be at odds with Ofgem & HM Government ... unlike the 'big 6' attempting to stem competition at every possible turn, they seem to believe in the consumer getting good deals .... after-all, the same electricity & gas is metered & consumed whoever the customer chooses as a supplier ....

HTH
Z

badmemory

I do wonder how many people having a smart meter fitted & then realising that they are virtually impossible to read themselves will land up feeling stuck with that original supplier. Or indeed is that the aim of the supplier when fitting a very difficult to read meter.

sevenhills

badmemory wrote: »

I do wonder how many people having a smart meter fitted & then realising that they are virtually impossible to read themselves will land up feeling stuck with that original supplier. Or indeed is that the aim of the supplier when fitting a very difficult to read meter.

I dont have a problem with reading my meters, I had a smart meter fitted a year ago.