Smart Meter Costs

[Deleted User]

NineDeuce wrote: »

If you ignore inflation and the fact that electricity meters are not designed to last 100 years and so would need a replacement anyway, then you might have something... but you dont unfortunately.

Er, the point is that they're spending about £1000 per household on meters that save £3 a year and get changed every few years when people switch supplier. A waste of money.

House_Martin

NineDeuce wrote: »

And without smart meters, sending out a person to read your meter every so often..... I forgot that this was done for free................

No it was nt , and never has been ! metering costs are absorbed throughout the industry exactly the same as normal meter exchanges, smart or dumb, have been for decades.
That includes millions of prepayment meters exchanged from credit meters that debtors have racked up precisely because their meters have nt been properly read every quarter.Thousands of extra employees needed in call centres with every supplier having to listen to disgruntled customers blaring down the phone line at them because they don t understand basic energy bills or the ability to get a simple meter reading in 4 times a year. All these costs are absorbed into the utility industry, along with the smart meter roll out.
Debts which may well never actually get repaid in many instances . The losses are passed on in the same way the cost of smart meter roll out is .Smart meters virtually eliminate the huge costs of meter tampering and energy theft throughout the UK
Most smart meters are installed at end of life of old credit meters so that cost would have been needed anyway to install a dumb meter. There are estimates of around 20% refusing smart meters so normal dumb meters are still being installed by the very same meter fitting teams..
Ever since the TV program was aired about the estimated smart meter roll out costs we have the usual suspects on here using these costs to jump on the anti smart bandwagon with the glee of a "remainer " listening to the BBC bias. Disgraceful opportunism !

System

Energy theft is something that we should all condone. However, reducing it is not seen as a major benefit of smart metering. The Government's own Cost/Benefit analysis states the following:

Quote: Following standard Government practice, we value theft reductions for domestic customers at the resource rather than the retail value of energy, resulting in benefits of £0.29 per meter per annum for electricity and £0.36 per meter per annum for gas.

This results in present value gross benefit of £219m. Unquote

Note that this figure is not the same as that quoted by suppliers given that the wholesale price of energy accounts for less than 40p in every £1 that they receive from consumers.

brianposter

House_Martin wrote: »

idiots blaring down the phone line at them because they don t understand basic energy bills

That is a bit unfair given that the energy industry is notable for sending out incomprehensible bills.

House_Martin

Hengus wrote: »

Energy theft is something that we should all condone. However, reducing it is not seen as a major benefit of smart metering. The Government's own Cost/Benefit analysis states the following:

Quote: Following standard Government practice, we value theft reductions for domestic customers at the resource rather than the retail value of energy, resulting in benefits of £0.29 per meter per annum for electricity and £0.36 per meter per annum for gas.

This results in present value gross benefit of £219m. Unquote

Note that this figure is not the same as that quoted by suppliers given that the wholesale price of energy accounts for less than 40p in every £1 that they receive from consumers.

Don`t believe those costs put out by the Government. They are hiding behind a set of figures which do not stack up to my experience of the amount of energy theft.
The only time when BG Revenue Protection have ever had the chance to take a sample of a known energy theft area is where they visited only 20 houses in Dundas Rd Sheffield after a gas explosion and entered these 20 random properties ( of different suppliers as well as BG, without a warrant but with the Police present ) and found 7 out of 20 stealing energy.5 electric and 2 gas meters were found to be bypassed/tampered.
I had a small hand in this by submitting previous examples of energy theft in this area to BG Revenue Protection the year before when I visited this very same street. I have visited this area quite often over the years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25718447
7 out of 20 properties stealing energy in just one small part of one terraced street in S. Yorks surprised even hard bitten BG Revenue Protection officers.That is energy theft at huge levels and its repeated all around the UK at even higher levels than that. Liverpool has always been the UK energy theft capital. I dread to think what the levels are there nowadays. Just massive IMO . A senior BG RPU officer agreed with me.
.None of these properties caught thieving were prosecuted. They were all prepayment meter users.
These sort of down market terraced areas are common in most towns and cities .My town of Doncaster has many streets which I consider to be much worse than Dundas Rd Tinsley Sheffield for energy theft. The Government figures are a smokescreen and are hiding the true cost.
You can dig out your government ridiculous guestimate theft quotes all you like, IMO they are utter baloney. Makes the privatised industry look good though.
Only BG have the moral high ground when it comes to trying to stop energy theft .At least they try, the others have virtually given up or have never started at all.

House_Martin

brianposter wrote: »

That is a bit unfair given that the energy industry is notable for sending out incomprehensible bills.

Maybe it is a bit unfair, so I ve edited out the word .. You should have seen how puzzling the old two tier system was before OFGEM brought in a simpler separate daily standing charge system in order to simplify billing lingo.
Tier one kwhs included the standing charges and the kwhs did nt drop to the cheap tier 2 rate until it reached the quarterly billing standing charge paid level.
Ann Robison on BBC watchdog actually had the Mastermind winner on her show trying to fathom out a gas and electric bill and he struggled to understand it
.Its still confusing to most I think even now in the simplified version.

NineDeuce

jack_pott wrote: »

Er, the point is that they're spending about £1000 per household on meters that save £3 a year and get changed every few years when people switch supplier. A waste of money.

Errr, you are ignoring the fact that meters need to be replaced at some point anyway... Or do meter replacements get installed by Santa Claus in his spare time?

And then you just decided to make up a false £1,000 figure to make your argument sound more credible.

The smart meters dont have to be replaced every time a supplier changes. You also plucked that 'fact' out of fairy land. Industry standard meters use the same technology, so meter exchanges are just optional.