The hidden costs of a 'free' smart meter

jon81uk

ProDave said:

I keep asking "what is the benefit to ME to have a smart meter?"

I have not found one, so concluded the "benefit" is to someone else.  I won't be having one until compulsory.

You don’t need to read the meter. The energy company don’t need to send someone round to read the meter. Those are the main benefits. 

But it also means the company can offer more dynamic pricing, giving cheaper prices at certain times of the day as they can take more regular readings. 

brewerdave

sevenhills said:

ProDave said:

I keep asking "what is the benefit to ME to have a smart meter?"

I have not found one, so concluded the "benefit" is to someone else.  I won't be having one until compulsory.

Most peoples energy meters are in awkward places. As I get older I am glad that I have a display unit on my kitchen inside windowsill.

Until the IHD toy packs up or loses connection - when you will have to read your own meters OR trust the Utility Cos. 

Gerry1

Tokmon said:

Gerry1 said:

Since that article was written, the cost of the smart meter fiasco has risen from £11 billion to £13 billion, so the £420 cost per household has risen to £496.  All for an alleged benefit officially estimated at just £11 per household per year.

It's the economics of the madhouse ! 

This is where people are misunderstanding because the benefit of smart meters is not for the customers it's for the energy companies so they can make sure everyone get an accurate bill without them having to rely on people to give readings.
But the big benefit of the rollout is that once we have a smart national grid and they know exactly where energy is required and how much they can generate it far more efficiently. This means there will be far less overgeneration based on assumed demand and save a lot of resources overall. 

The 'accurate bill' stuff is a complete red herring: any over or under recording will be corrected at the next meter reading as has always been the case, and such a modest benefit can't possibly justify splurging almost £500 per household.  A smart grid means a grid that is built on the cheap, i.e. under-dimensioned and lacking resilience.  There won't be sufficient spare capacity to cope with unexpected breakdowns, a mega-cold winter or whatever.

Instead of having a correctly dimensioned resilient network that always meets the demand, as we always have had, when the going gets tough the smart grid works by rationing the demand, domestic Demand Side Response as the jargon goes.  Time of Use tariffs will make it too expensive to use electricity when it suits you, you'll have to use it when it suits the grid.  If you don't comply, then load limiting or load shedding is there as the longstop.

The smart meter rollout has been thoroughly dishonest in promoting the trivia about not having to read the meter without mentioning the real reason behind it (and of course, it still won't prevent the wails about 'Fixed' DDs suddenly being increased).

Perhaps we're all so penny-pinching that we really do want to have to adapt our lifestyles to suit a wonky network run on a shoestring, but government and industry should have been honest and transparent about this rather than imposing it by stealth and hoping that people didn't notice until it was too late.

Chino

Tokmon said:

But the big benefit of the rollout is that once we have a smart national grid and they know exactly where energy is required and how much they can generate it far more efficiently.

Smart meters don't and can't help with that at all. A meter, smart or otherwise, can't inform a supplier what energy is required, only what energy is being consumed. Whether the energy being consumed by an area is increasing or decreasing will already be known to the supplier.

Tokmon

Gerry1 said:

Tokmon said:

Gerry1 said:

Since that article was written, the cost of the smart meter fiasco has risen from £11 billion to £13 billion, so the £420 cost per household has risen to £496.  All for an alleged benefit officially estimated at just £11 per household per year.

It's the economics of the madhouse ! 

This is where people are misunderstanding because the benefit of smart meters is not for the customers it's for the energy companies so they can make sure everyone get an accurate bill without them having to rely on people to give readings.
But the big benefit of the rollout is that once we have a smart national grid and they know exactly where energy is required and how much they can generate it far more efficiently. This means there will be far less overgeneration based on assumed demand and save a lot of resources overall. 

The 'accurate bill' stuff is a complete red herring: any over or under recording will be corrected at the next meter reading as has always been the case, and such a modest benefit can't possibly justify splurging almost £500 per household.  A smart grid means a grid that is built on the cheap, i.e. under-dimensioned and lacking resilience.  There won't be sufficient spare capacity to cope with unexpected breakdowns, a mega-cold winter or whatever.

Instead of having a correctly dimensioned resilient network that always meets the demand, as we always have had, when the going gets tough the smart grid works by rationing the demand, domestic Demand Side Response as the jargon goes.  Time of Use tariffs will make it too expensive to use electricity when it suits you, you'll have to use it when it suits the grid.  If you don't comply, then load limiting or load shedding is there as the longstop.

The smart meter rollout has been thoroughly dishonest in promoting the trivia about not having to read the meter without mentioning the real reason behind it (and of course, it still won't prevent the wails about 'Fixed' DDs suddenly being increased).

Perhaps we're all so penny-pinching that we really do want to have to adapt our lifestyles to suit a wonky network run on a shoestring, but government and industry should have been honest and transparent about this rather than imposing it by stealth and hoping that people didn't notice until it was too late.

Just look at the number of threads on here from people who have had "massive surprise bills" due to them not supplying readings for a while and not paying enough as a direct debit each month. Once smart meters are up and running properly with good systems behind them then nobody should ever have a surprise bill and will only pay what they need each month without building up a large excess or debt. 
Just think the majority of billing systems are automated so the fact that energy needs manual readings shows how outdated the systems are. You may not agree it's worth the cost but it's up to the energy companies to decide because they own the meters. You wouldn't go to a fuel station for example and tell them they shouldn't have spent the money to upgrade their pumps to pay at pump and developed an app to pay because it's a business decision and not for consumers to decide what equipment and systems they implement. 

Also read my comments below on how smart meters will help the national grid balancing.

Chino said:

Tokmon said:

But the big benefit of the rollout is that once we have a smart national grid and they know exactly where energy is required and how much they can generate it far more efficiently.

Smart meters don't and can't help with that at all. A meter, smart or otherwise, can't inform a supplier what energy is required, only what energy is being consumed. Whether the energy being consumed by an area is increasing or decreasing will already be known to the supplier.

Have a read up on how the national grid is balanced and how high level the data they currently use is and you will see how useful more data is to them.

Smart meters will allow them to have much more detailed lower level data on the usage and exactly where the demand is and build a database up over time. This will then let them better forecast future energy usage and also better plan future infrastructure improvements. Currently they can have cases where they have to issue emergency instructions for some generating stations to shut down to stop the overproduction of energy which results in them having to pay compensation which is a waste of money. Also they do often overproduce and underproduce energy which is seen as fluctuations in the network frequency so the more data they have the more they can balance this to reduce waste.


Most people seem to think of smart meters and think "how can they benefit me?" and then decide they are a waste of time and money but they don't look at the bigger picture.

PennyForThem_2

And look at the number of SM1 & 2 which arenot automatically read.

Gerry1

Tokmon said:

You wouldn't go to a fuel station for example and tell them they shouldn't have spent the money to upgrade their pumps to pay at pump and developed an app to pay because it's a business decision and not for consumers to decide what equipment and systems they implement.

I wouldn't need to: I'd simply vote with my fuel tank.  I certainly wouldn't patronise a petrol company if all its customers had had to pay almost £500 for pay at the pump, even if they still paid in the kiosk.

But that's not a choice that domestic energy customers have, we're all having to pay for smart meters whether we want them or not, and even the much repeated promises that smart meters wouldn't be compulsory are rapidly crumbling.

Tokmon

Gerry1 said:

Tokmon said:

You wouldn't go to a fuel station for example and tell them they shouldn't have spent the money to upgrade their pumps to pay at pump and developed an app to pay because it's a business decision and not for consumers to decide what equipment and systems they implement.

I wouldn't need to: I'd simply vote with my fuel tank.  I certainly wouldn't patronise a petrol company if all its customers had had to pay almost £500 for pay at the pump, even if they still paid in the kiosk.

But that's not a choice that domestic energy customers have, we're all having to pay for smart meters whether we want them or not, and even the much repeated promises that smart meters wouldn't be compulsory are rapidly crumbling.

Well almost all fuel stations offer some kind of pay at pump these days or an app which has obviously cost them money to implement and unless you always go to an independent fuel station then you have likely paid a proportion of this cost when refueling you car even if you always pay in the kiosk. 

Again that's the biggest problem is that they decided to give consumers a choice and started a big campaign about this when there was no need. When people had old dial meters and they started installing digital ones people weren't given a choice so why have they decided to give a choice now when the main benefit is to the national grid and the energy companies and not the customers. 
Whenever you buy anything from any company you have to pay for things you don't want (overheads or services you don't use) so this is nothing new or unusual. 
Also it won't cost £500 for every customer that's just an inflated worst case scenario cost for the news outlets to put up shocking headlines and most energy companies will get it much cheaper so they can keep their prices competitive. 

Gerry1

Tokmon said:
Also it won't cost £500 for every customer that's just an inflated worst case scenario cost for the news outlets to put up shocking headlines and most energy companies will get it much cheaper so they can keep their prices competitive.

So what figure do you get when you divide £13 billion by 27.8 million?

Tokmon

Gerry1 said:

Tokmon said:
Also it won't cost £500 for every customer that's just an inflated worst case scenario cost for the news outlets to put up shocking headlines and most energy companies will get it much cheaper so they can keep their prices competitive.

So what figure do you get when you divide £13 billion by 27.8 million?

So it's £13 Billion minus the cost of all the meter changes they would have had to do anyway and this can be offset proportionally by the cost of meters part way through their life that won't need to be changed for a longer period of time. We can also minus the savings made by reduced meter readings by companies and then also take away the cost of reduced admin work of people questioning their bills or bills being wrong or "unexpected" bills and then eventually the savings from having a better balanced national grid. 

Yes the smart meter rollout hasn't been managed well at all and there has been a lot of money wasted but that doesn't mean they never should have done it. They should have just managed it better and gave out better information on why they are doing it because this thread and many others on here shows how many people don't understand what the benefits of them are to energy companies and the national grid.