Advantage of having smart meters

whatsthenews

Chino said:

The_Fat_Controller said:

You will have an In Home Display

Just don't lose or break it and hope it doesn't fail, because your energy supplier won't provide you with a replacement.

My elderly parents moved into a house ( bungalow)  with a smart meter and there was no in home display at the property. 

brewerdave

whatsthenews said:

Chino said:

The_Fat_Controller said:

You will have an In Home Display

Just don't lose or break it and hope it doesn't fail, because your energy supplier won't provide you with a replacement.

My elderly parents moved into a house ( bungalow)  with a smart meter and there was no in home display at the property. 

The general consensus (particularly in the "early" days) was that the IHD was a waste of space -many people scrapped them or shoved them in a cupboard. Also they don't seem to be supplied routinely in new build homes.

whatsthenews

brewerdave said:

whatsthenews said:

Chino said:

The_Fat_Controller said:

You will have an In Home Display

Just don't lose or break it and hope it doesn't fail, because your energy supplier won't provide you with a replacement.

My elderly parents moved into a house ( bungalow)  with a smart meter and there was no in home display at the property. 

The general consensus (particularly in the "early" days) was that the IHD was a waste of space -many people scrapped them or shoved them in a cupboard. Also they don't seem to be supplied routinely in new build homes.

Well I doubt the smart meter is that old as the young couple before did a full renovation, including a full rewire , as the lady before was in her 90s and the place was in a dreadful state. The smart meters are outside the house. I'm guessing that originally the meters would have been in the cupboard in the hall 

Pure planet have only ever taken smart readings at both our home and parents  for periods of 2 months earlier this year. April to June for parents and August to October for us. No suppliers ( over the approx 3 years we/ they have  been in the homes) have never used smart readings. 

Hadn't caused any issues for us, but parents final bill from.Purpla puts them £250 in debit because they've suddenly decided to "mix and match" customer readings and smart readings for electricity and there's a discrepancy in the numbers which up till now they've just  ignored.
 In the meter history section , between April and August  this year , there's missing smart/ customer  readings for electricity where there are smart/ customer  readings for gas .

In May, just after they did a smart reading,  they cancelled previous bills for electricity and rebilled for August 2020 to April '21 . 
 Our reading for March '21 was 8502. Their ( first ever) smart reading in April '21 was 7121. 
They (seemingly randomly) went back to a customer  reading from  Jul 2020 of 7002 and re calculated and billed for the  10 months based on the April '21  smart and that  customer reading. 
The only other smart readings that we can see  are June 13  7429 June 22 7489
From  April this year they've based bills on either actual  smart readIngs or estimated  from smart readings and ignored our actual reading .
So in July they billed using 7646 ( customer 9328)
August 7857 
Sep 8073 ( customer 9716)

Then for the final bill for October they've used their September  estimated 8073 and our customer reading of 1011. 

We've queried this and pointed out the discrepancy between customer read and smart readings  they say they can no longer do a smart reading. They've advised us to read the "guide on reading your smart meter" and Charlie says we have to use the key pad to pull up the R01 readings history and send photos.
I'm assuming that these R01 readings will be the readings we've been submitting  to them, so we aren't going to  be any further forward. Charlie clearly isn't " getting" the issue and thinks we're as much of a charlie as he/ she is. 

Nathan prior to this is suggesting weve been submitting  "Total " reading , not R01, and says it's common for smart meters to pick up a different reading to a customer read one 

wild666

wittynamegoeshere said:

I got a smart meter then caught covid shortly after.  It's all a conspiracy.

Note: The above is complete rubbish but no worse than some of the nonsense you'll find on the internet about them.  They're just a meter, no more and no less.  It won't transform your life in any way at all, either good or bad.

Totally agree, the only way to decrease the usage of electric or gas is by turning the appliances off at the socket or decreasing the temperature on the thermostat. No appliance uses what it claims in the standby mode.
If everyone turned off everything in standby mode at the socket then they might be amazed at how much less electric they used over a set period of time, the more appliances turned off at the socket the more electric will be saved. In the case of gas it won't be such a great saving, maybe £40 per year, depending on how low you turn the thermostat down. Personally my temperature is set to 19 degrees and if I'm not using an appliance it's off at the socket, that's where the most electric is saved, personally I save around £170 per year turning everything off at the socket and that means the little red mark on the switch isn't showing as that means the plug is drawing power, although miniscule it's still power. There is only three appliances I have switched on 24/7 and they are the fridge, freezer and router. 

lohr500

wild666 said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

I got a smart meter then caught covid shortly after.  It's all a conspiracy.

Note: The above is complete rubbish but no worse than some of the nonsense you'll find on the internet about them.  They're just a meter, no more and no less.  It won't transform your life in any way at all, either good or bad.

Totally agree, the only way to decrease the usage of electric or gas is by turning the appliances off at the socket or decreasing the temperature on the thermostat. No appliance uses what it claims in the standby mode.
If everyone turned off everything in standby mode at the socket then they might be amazed at how much less electric they used over a set period of time, the more appliances turned off at the socket the more electric will be saved. In the case of gas it won't be such a great saving, maybe £40 per year, depending on how low you turn the thermostat down. Personally my temperature is set to 19 degrees and if I'm not using an appliance it's off at the socket, that's where the most electric is saved, personally I save around £170 per year turning everything off at the socket and that means the little red mark on the switch isn't showing as that means the plug is drawing power, although miniscule it's still power. There is only three appliances I have switched on 24/7 and they are the fridge, freezer and router. 

£170 a year sounds like a very big saving just by switching everything off that would normally be on standby. That's close to £0.50 per day. Say £0.20 per kw/h means 2.5kW of electricity per day or 100 watts per hour consumed on standby appliances if my maths is correct. I need to look at our standby device consumption if that's the case.

QrizB

lohr500 said:

£170 a year sounds like a very big saving just by switching everything off that would normally be on standby. That's close to £0.50 per day. Say £0.20 per kw/h means 2.5kW of electricity per day or 100 watts per hour consumed on standby appliances if my maths is correct. I need to look at our standby device consumption if that's the case.

Wild666 is a special case (at least among those of us who have commented); they have a big but older TV that used several tens of watts in standby.

My night-time phantom load is 80-110 watts even without going to the extremes of switching everything off bar the fridge & freezer.

kimp22

Well Scottish Power are coming tomorrow after to do the meters hopefully. Got a phone call asking about covid and that said it should take about 90 minutes to do. Someone said they might need to get to the boiler after is this true. I have £3.00 left on electricity meter now then emergency credit if needed till they have been.
Just checked gas and that's on £83 hoping they can transfer it back on soon.
Spoke to my dad today who said his electricity has doubled recently and he Had solar panels put up about five years and said its wasn't worth it. But apparently they where missold the solar panels and recently got £5000 back from the company who installed them.
Thanks 

Kim

QrizB

kimp22 said:

Well Scottish Power are coming tomorrow after to do the meters hopefully. Got a phone call asking about covid and that said it should take about 90 minutes to do. Someone said they might need to get to the boiler after is this true.

Yes, the engineer will turn the boiler is off when they change the gas meter and will want to make sure it starts up Ok afterwards.

Spoke to my dad today who said his electricity has doubled recently and he Had solar panels put up about five years and said its wasn't worth it. But apparently they where missold the solar panels and recently got £5000 back from the company who installed them.

Five years ago? He should be on a Feed-In Tariff (FIT) which will help them pay for themselves eventually. But getting another £5k back sounds a good result!

kimp22

Don't think he really deals with the bills. I know his partner got a loan out originally for the solar panels. But she's complaining about the he bill has doubled might not help with her working from home now.
Lucky they are only coming after two tomorrow gives me time to get everything moved to get to the boiler.

Thanks 
Kim

QrizB

Yes, a few people had loans mis-sold. The interest was high enough that the panels would never pay back. Glad to know it got sorted out.

And I hope everything goes smoothly with the smart meters tomorrow. Do be sure to read them yourself (ideally, take a dated photo eg. with your phone) before the installer turns up; one or two people had problems with the closing readings on the old meters not being properly reported to their energy cos.