Smart Meters

Becket

Do smart meters automatically allow for British Summer Time and Winter time?
At the moment with our conventional meter we get Economy 7 cheap rate electricity till 0700 in the winter but when we go to BST it is up till 0800 and a great saving.for us.
My supplier(EON) keeps trying to get me to have a meter but so far I have declined.
If the meters are on GMT it is OK but I suspect they change with the season but cannot find anything on line to confirm this.
Can anyone help please?

UnclaimedEnergy

smart meters take a reading every half hour. In a normal day there are therefore 48HH periods.

On the days when the clock changes it will go to either 46HH or 50HH for that period, which accounts for the clock going forward and back.

Normally the time changes are done by the HH periods, which would account for the clocks changing and would likely mean that off-peak would be consistent all year round.

Best to check with your supplier though.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Becket wrote: »

Do smart meters automatically allow for British Summer Time and Winter time?
At the moment with our conventional meter we get Economy 7 cheap rate electricity till 0700 in the winter but when we go to BST it is up till 0800 and a great saving.for us.
My supplier(EON) keeps trying to get me to have a meter but so far I have declined.
If the meters are on GMT it is OK but I suspect they change with the season but cannot find anything on line to confirm this.
Can anyone help please?

Hello Becket and I can confirm our Economy 7 smart meters are set to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) all year round.

Customers with Economy 7 smart meters would need to take this into consideration when setting timers during British Summer Time (BST).

Hope this explains Becket.

Malc

kagorsa

I live in a new Flat, There are 35 Flats, all with smart meters,I like lots of others here have had problems with my Gas meter not talking to my Electric meter, I have had an engineer here twice & both times he said, I was given the wrong job, he wouldn't even look at either meter, I won't replace your smart hub as it won't work he said, I pointed out that I had been contacted by British Gas support to find out what's been going on, I told him the woman said they last received reading from the gas meter in May, so I asked if it worked then why can't it work now? Some went wrong, Then he got rude & just repeated it won't work & we are coming back to take all 35 smart meters out.



I started investigating a while ago after my first contact with British Gas. I have found out that the manufacturers of the Trilliant seap-2001-v have diagrams showing an installation in a block of flats using signal boosters in the stairwells, they also say you can fit an external signal booster to the Hub.


I also found out that the meters talk to each other via Bluetooth but not a modern version which can travel up to 300ft no they use an old version which can only reach about 30ft & although it can travel through walls anything else in the way will interfere, including Wifi.


I noticed all the Energy Companies that install the smart meters say they are all working on new technology to help with smart meters, but if that's true why don't they use the longer-range Bluetooth that came out in 2016 which would fix a lot of smart meter problems, The only reason I can find is they were told by the Government they had to install them in as many homes as possible by a certain time, quantity over quality .


I am supposed to be getting another call from the woman in customer care today which I already know the outcome of, but i will make sure she knows how rude the engineer was, just because I like to know more than it won't work.

emily.rose

I'm currently on a pre-pay meter and trying to switch to credit. I've been told by my supplier that I can switch, but not until they're able to fit a smart meter, and they can't tell me when that will be. Does anyone know if I can push back on this? Or can you recommend a good supplier that will do the switch easily - will I have better luck with one of the big 6?

sathelp

I have a British Gas smart meter installed but now I have moved back from Eversmart to them, they say they can't use their own installed meter!
Has anyone else had this problem and how to get over it please? Any help appreciated.

brewerdave

And so the fiasco continues:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49680943


...and as far as I can find out - my current suppliers, Yorkshire Energy and Better Energy -aren't installing ANY smart meters!!

oliverbrown

brewerdave wrote: »

And so the fiasco continues:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49680943

Oh dear, looks like Smart Energy GB will have to spend a few million pounds more of our money on adverts to negate the bad publicity.

carl.waring

kagorsa wrote: »

I also found out that the meters talk to each other via Bluetooth but not a modern version which can travel up to 300ft no they use an old version which can only reach about 30ft & although it can travel through walls anything else in the way will interfere, including Wifi.

Just to confirm that you're talking about the IHDs? The meters themselves don't "talk to each other", only to the system that takes the meter readings and that's done via the mobile network.

I would think that, for most homes, a range of 30m between the meters and IHD would be more than adequate wouldn't it?

emily.rose wrote: »

I'm currently on a pre-pay meter and trying to switch to credit. I've been told by my supplier that I can switch, but not until they're able to fit a smart meter, and they can't tell me when that will be. Does anyone know if I can push back on this? Or can you recommend a good supplier that will do the switch easily - will I have better luck with one of the big 6?

I don't think there are any companies that can offer a PP SM at the moment.

brewerdave wrote: »

...and as far as I can find out - my current suppliers, Yorkshire Energy and Better Energy -aren't installing ANY smart meters!!

Another reason to stick with one of the 'big six'.

The main reason I popped in here is to comment that the article needs updating to reflect the fact that the SMETS1 meters were always capable of being upgraded to work with any supplier and this should be done sometime next year.

ETA: That said, I would have thought that most companies are only installing SMETS2 by now.

oliverbrown

carl.waring wrote: »

The main reason I popped in here is to comment that the article needs updating to reflect the fact that the SMETS1 meters were always capable of being upgraded to work with any supplier and this should be done sometime next year.

Good luck with that prediction.

"The plan forecasts that the DCC will start enrolling SMETS1 meters in late 2018."

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/671930/Smart_Meters_2017_update.pdf