EON Smart IHD Battery Life

AndyCF

1. Yes and yes
2. I think you're probably 99% right with that
3. That's OK but everything seems to be going towards having a smart phone, something I've never been interested in. I do like 'tech' and am involved in it however I'm extremely happy with a basic phone/text mobile personally. If I want to research something I'll sit at my desk.

I do see what you're saying though. Although not me (yet!) the older generation are going to suffer with this no doubt, although those with possible sensible advice will keep away from a smart meter as long as possible if they use prepay, various reasons for this.

AndyCF

Note: I have no intention of doing this as previous as far as I'm aware its not 'my' property, mind you if I had to pay for a replacement that would potentially be a different kettle-of-fish (Thinking Sky charges here actually) anyway I found this elsewhere, where someone did take a look:

https://community.bulb.co.uk/discussion/9133/should-i-take-my-chameleon-ihd-apart

Although its a slightly different model (the colour one iirc in that case) the battery is 200mAH as suspected it would be a low capacity "keep alive between the sockets or short time outages" thing.

For what little it is worth the 'contents' are what I would of expected to see with the exception of the battery type, I was expecting a tagged N type cell or similar rather than a flat-pack, not that it actually matters anyway.

To quote another topic I found elsewhere too for the curious

The battery is so the IHD can be mobile, for short periods of time say when maybe checking electric appliance costs.
If in permanent use the IHD should be plugged in constantly, it cost 80p a year to run it if left in. Its just 3 Watts.

Talldave

Someone can't do maths. I'd say more like £3-4 per year?

AndyCF

Talldave wrote: »

Someone can't do maths. I'd say more like £3-4 per year?

I did not even consider how accurate it was or not given it was a low figure. At say even £5/month that's roughly 0.09p/weekly, I should not complain.

The IHD display being permanently set in my case to show pennies remaining, that's is its sole function really, aside from very occasionally viewing the "last 5" top-up history although I think you can get that from the meter itself (the "credit history" not the "use history") but I've not bothered trying.

The budget/target things I'm not interested in simply as if you 'need' to use an appliance you need to use it. I did with one previous Smart (credit meter) attempt to but it was a bit pointless I thought.

Actually that IHD display was almost identical to the "Chameleon" but it was colour, a shame the newer ones are not at least in my case its not. I can't remember which Smart meter type it was although it was an early one during the early rollout , it was keypad-less. I'd almost consider it a "beta testing" type of thing perhaps. Then I went to a legacy type token meter instead as it was slightly more convenient. Then a year or so later upgraded to the newer (lol) Smart meter...

Mind you if the Smart meter -permanently- displayed the 'credit remaining' all the time on its display (as the legacy one did by default) then I'd likely not of bothered with the IHD at all... IMO if said meter is in prepay mode it should do this, its a programming 'lack of consideration' imo.

Talldave

Poor specification, implemented perfectly by the meter supplier. Call me a cynic, but I doubt if any of the energy company's team responsible for the product specification were PAYG users and therefore have no relevant experience in what would make for a better user experience.

I've recently moved to a house with a museum piece dial electricity meter, so my lovely Geo Minim is gathering dust in a draw :-(.

AndyCF

Talldave wrote: »

Poor specification, implemented perfectly by the meter supplier. Call me a cynic, but I doubt if any of the energy company's team responsible for the product specification were PAYG users and therefore have no relevant experience in what would make for a better user experience.

I've seen this in other industries too, so its down to the designers and programmers or in some cases the system admin's not being aware of things that could be pre-set so its not always possible to initially apportion 'blame' for this. I could give an example I suppose but its a bit off topic. I may post it later.

Talldave wrote: »

I've recently moved to a house with a museum piece dial electricity meter, so my lovely Geo Minim is gathering dust in a draw :-(.

Hmm. Well depending on its last 'certification' or age is it not 10/20 years before it has to be replaced ? Given its description unless its a new 'but legacy style' unit it may well be near said date...

Bark01

Prepayment smart meters come with a PPMID rather than an a basic IHD.

It might be just semantics, but if you are judging what the prepayment experience would be like using a basic IHD than you may not have the full picture.

Switching to smart prepay from traditional prepay removes all the costs and tariff restrictions imposed by the third party companies who operate the paypoint infrastructure. Its a win win, more tariffs to choose from and much cheaper prices. the prices should be more or less in line with DD prices.

AndyCF

Bark01 wrote: »

Prepayment smart meters come with a PPMID rather than an a basic IHD.

Its identical to the credit meter. It even says 'credit' when its powered up for about 30 seconds until its initialised and had a response from the meter.

Neighbour using same supplier but in credit mode, pays via DD. Same IHD If it is different it looks identical. The power up display on mine where all segments are lit initially (and you can see them if you hold it in the right light too) more or less confirms.

Bark01 wrote: »

It might be just semantics, but if you are judging what the prepayment experience would be like using a basic IHD than you may not have the full picture.

I had one of the very early (before the real rollout) Smart meters, in Credit Mode (before there was an option for pre-pay Smart) so early in fact I was able to get it changed to a legacy meter , the display was about identical on this one except it was partly coloured, same layout.

Bark01 wrote: »

Switching to smart prepay from traditional prepay removes all the costs and tariff restrictions imposed by the third party companies who operate the paypoint infrastructure. Its a win win, more tariffs to choose from and much cheaper prices. the prices should be more or less in line with DD prices.

Kind of but the only real risks I've noted with it:
1. If you get a voucher and lose it you've had it, and lost the money
2. You can't get a voucher from anywhere other than a Post Office, no one else has the infrastructure setup (yet) , I've tried five outlets
3. Very difficult to do but if you run the EC to the end and expire it and then are not able to get to a P.O before they close (assuming you have cash 'in hand' but not in the bank) then there's no way to top it up unlike a legacy token meter where you can go anywhere more or less.

Bark01

AndyCF wrote: »

Kind of but the only real risks I've noted with it:
1. If you get a voucher and lose it you've had it, and lost the money
2. You can't get a voucher from anywhere other than a Post Office, no one else has the infrastructure setup (yet) , I've tried five outlets
3. Very difficult to do but if you run the EC to the end and expire it and then are not able to get to a P.O before they close (assuming you have cash 'in hand' but not in the bank) then there's no way to top it up unlike a legacy token meter where you can go anywhere more or less.

1) not 100% sure but is that any different than it is now? If you loose your key you loose the money

2-3)
Obviously depends on who your with and the stage of their prepay development, but using vouchers and inputting the codes directly into meters is the worst case scenario for customers and energy suppliers. There are only a few thousand Smart PrePay customers at the moment, but this will increase rapidly over the next 6 months so things will change rapidly.

These are the main options:
The main push is for self serve top up via a phone app or your suppliers website. (obviously not everyone has the knowledge to do this)

Next step is swipe cards that you can top up at the post office or paypoint and tap against your PPMID when you get home.

And finally you can just ring up and pay over the phone and the credit will be sent to your meter (I imagine this will be mostly automated via an IVR, so you won't have to wait in a queue to speak to a person, unless you want to)

AndyCF

Thanks.

I was told about key loss (you could be right) as long as I still had the paper receipt with the details on and the money had not been credited to the meter then it was possible to get it back, although I think it would go as 'extra credit' onto the next topup when I got a new key, if that makes sense ? As in you'd not 'instantly' get it back. I think this varies from supplier to supplier actually. Ultimately there's the transaction record I suppose , just might take a bit of time unless you made noises on the phone about it.

Oh I was not being difficult/negative with my reply above, sorry if it read like that was just trying to answer as honestly as I could. < extra smilies to indicate 'friendly' nature of replies in general.

I actually raised feedback about manual entry, as the code on the voucher you cannot use on the meter! Yes really! Its not long enough for one thing, for chars short. You can ring up and have it 'exchanged' for a vend code (for manual entry) or use the voucher online to topup or there's a free automated 24/7 number for it as well. But yes its not ideal, if there's a piece of paper being carried back/forth it might as well be a key/token. If you lose the paper you've had it though despite my best efforts on this its gone.

If it means anything I do vary how I topup, I sometimes use the phone system to pay via card (debit card so just 'take from my current account please'), sometimes I do it online and sometimes I get a voucher, it tends to vary. Vouchers are for when there's money 'in hand' but not readily available in the bank etc etc.