'Smart meters will save consumers just £11 a year' - MSE News 23 July 2018 at 12:02PM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Energy 47 replies 5K views

MSE_Megan_F

Customers who have smart meters installed will save just £11 a year on their energy bills, according to a new report

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''Smart meters will save consumers just £11 a year''

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gsmlnx

Already being discussed at https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5871044

keithtmoir

ts all hype I got one fitted because we have all paid for it to be done anyway and my gas meter is in a hard to read place. For the first few weeks watching the usage is a novelty but didn't reduce my usage at all as I am pretty efficient. I have now removed the display from view and am carrying on as I was

Smurfy84

Just £11 works out to many millions a year in savings over the entire country, When an energy supplier put their prices up by an average of £30 a year you don't use the word just, you use words like hike. There is just no pleasing some....

Paul_DNAP

Smurfy84 wrote: »

Just £11 works out to many millions a year in savings over the entire country, When an energy supplier put their prices up by an average of £30 a year you don't use the word just, you use words like hike. There is just no pleasing some....

Yes, but given that these things are being pushed out there as a way to save energy, be greener and save money then it is quite the joke that they won't even claw back half of the last price "hike", and that is far from the promised revolution in your home energy finances.


Oh, and the monetary savings won't even cover the half day's holiday I'd have to take to let them install it. And the energy savings won't cover the carbon footprint of the manufacture and installation of the devices.

thorganby

Smurfy84 wrote: »

Just £11 works out to many millions a year in savings over the entire country, When an energy supplier put their prices up by an average of £30 a year you don't use the word just, you use words like hike. There is just no pleasing some....

They won't save customers anything!

We are all paying for this pathetic roll out program organised by idiots and they will most likely still be fitting the obsolete first generation SMETS1 meters next year, when the cut off date is extended yet again.

Eventually when time of use tariffs are implemented, we will all have to pay more for our energy at peak times, which will more than wipe out any projected saving figures being quoted now!

vacheron

I'm a technology embracing Electronics Engineer with no issue with potential future time tariff pricing, but despite this smart-meters have still been a total waste of money in my experience.

Joined British Gas a couple of years ago as they had a really good tariff. (Via the MSE Cheaper Energy Club).

They installed brand new Gas and Electricity Smartmeters and the plug in wireless display at doubtless a considerable cost in both materials and labor.

It was an interesting facility to have, however I can't say it saved us much at all as what do you do if you have exceeded your daily target but still have a family meal to cook? Eat cold beans out of a can?

So, 15 months later and the British Gas fixed deal expires and their standard tarrif would have been £80 per MONTH more expensive so I was forced to change suppliers (to Avro energy).

Avro have been great but don't support smart-meters, so all this 15 month old "smart" technology is sitting there being used as a normal meter I have to read manually (I am happy to read them myself 4 times per year rather than pay BG £960 per year more for the convenience!.

Now I am coming to renew again, there are good tarrifs with smartmeter companies, but apparently the British Gas meters are not compatible, so they will be ripped out at less than 3 years old and will go to landfill so that new meters can replace them. Who will eventually pay for all these 2 and 3 year old meters in skips across the land? The customers!

By contrast I installed a Hive system and have seen my energy costs fall by 30%.

Overall a stupidly naive policy implemented poorly and all too hastily.

misterbarlow

vacheron wrote:

Now I am coming to renew again, there are good tarrifs with smartmeter companies, but apparently the British Gas meters are not compatible, so they will be ripped out at less than 3 years old and will go to landfill so that new meters can replace them. Who will eventually pay for all these 2 and 3 year old meters in skips across the land? The customers!

They wont be going to landfill, old style dumb meters are only about £10-20 each and they have historically always been re-used for the last 40yrs.
All meters have a certification life span (normally now around 20yrs), any meter with more than 5yrs of that remaining is re-used..

Smart meters cost around £80-100 each so there is no way any company will be just scrapping removed ones, 2-3 weeks after removal they will have been checked over, cleaned up, and be working away in someone else's home!!!

badmemory

Wow a whole £11 a year! Does anyone actually believe this carp. I wouldn't even switch suppliers for that little as it really isn't worth the aggro. Reduce my DD by a whole 90p/month - rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Not that that is ever going to happen because the standing charge to pay for this fiasco has gone up way way more than that.

frugalmacdugal

Hi,


smart meters don't save you money, you pay for what you use.


The idea is that the monitor lets you see what you are using at a particular time, and prompt you to switch off any appliance wasting energy, that's how you save money.

Ande1975

Ok, so to quell a few myths. Smets 2 meters have been available since April 2018. They have Booster thus avoiding any connection issues. All of the BIG 6 can download software to each others meters due to regulations imposed by Offgem. the issue comes when you change to a smaller provider, who a: Due to loopholes has no regulation from Offgem, b: also means you dont have the backing of the Ombudsman service. So in other words, what might appear cheaper, may well turn out to be a financial nightmare. The new Smart meters are smaller than current meters. Benefits are available to all people, for elderly people it means they don't have to stress about trying to read the meter which may be difficult for them, also useful for people who work full time as saves hassle. For younger people, or people on a budget it allows them to budget.. Win, Win, You aren't putting meter readers out of business, they are technicians, reading meters is a secondary job which an energy company is only required by law to read your meter once every 2 years. Hence, if you don't provide readings and your supplier has estimated bills and massively underestimated for that period then you may end up with a multi thousand pound bill when an actual reading is obtained. The meters only record readings every 30 mins to update in home display, energy companies only pull readings once per month and the information stored on meters is only energy info and is encrypted. Doesn't matter if a customer has a standard credit or Smart meter, an energy company can obtain a court order and enter your property with a locksmith regardless of whether you are in attendance or not to install a different meter, customers do not own the meters, the energy company does ( This is currently only enforced with non payment of bills and installation of prepayment meters). Finally, Martin Lewis provides amazing advice, i used to work for Sky, when Mr Lewis advised everyone to leave Sky as they were seriously overpriced, he stated... "there isn't anything you can't get with another provider", lots of people left, April brought a new season of Game of Thrones and lots of complaints because they couldn't get Sky Atlantic with their new provider. He may know what he's talking about with credit cards, but tbh he knows about as much as you or I regarding other things and is just another person expressing his opinion which people blindly follow.