Smart Energy In House Monitor - no support

Astria

brewerdave said:

[Deleted User] said:

brewerdave said:

[Deleted User] said:

FreeBear said:

SBEE400 said: I just wanted to make others aware that, as and when your In House Monitor fails, if your with British Gas you will become blind to your live energy usage.

Not just BG - I would imagine all the suppliers will decline to support the IHD after 12 months. Fortunately, it is now possible to get replacements (for example, Glow) and get them "paired" with your meter.

For electricity, there are a number of cheaper solutions - A whole house monitor (e.g. Owl) will give you instantaneous indication of a high consumption device being turned on. With careful selection and the right choice of software, you can even log the data and build up an accurate picture of your usage.

It was never Ofgem’s intention that consumers should get free IHDs for life. 

And isn't about time that the "Einstein" adverts based around the IHDs should be removed from TV adverts ? TOTALLY misleading - a Commercial organisation would have their hands chopped off by ASA !!

Smart metering messaging has always been misleading. A meter is a meter!  That said, the IHD will come into its own as more suppliers roll out time-of-use tariffs. Unfortunately, the Press is already presaging doom and disaster with suggestions that suppliers will just amend 30 minute pricing at will. 

But the whole point of this thread is that the suppliers don't want IHDs ! Won't replace or even adequately support the ones currently in existence , that, I expect, aren't anywhere near sophisticated enuf to support time of use tariffs anyway.
As to pricing - as a cynic of the highest order , I'm sure that the big 5 (or 4 or 7 or whatever) are eagerly looking forward to evermore complicated charging regimes which nobody will be able to understand or ,more importantly, be able to challenge !!

Ahhh, you mean proper load dependent tariffs (the price depends on the load on the network at the time) ? So they could have for example, 6pm on Sunday could be 50p/kWh, but the same on the Monday could be £1/kWh due to less wind/solar so not as much spare capacity.

Gerry1

brewerdave said:

Dolor said:

brewerdave said:

Dolor said:

FreeBear said:

SBEE400 said: I just wanted to make others aware that, as and when your In House Monitor fails, if your with British Gas you will become blind to your live energy usage.

Not just BG - I would imagine all the suppliers will decline to support the IHD after 12 months. Fortunately, it is now possible to get replacements (for example, Glow) and get them "paired" with your meter.

For electricity, there are a number of cheaper solutions - A whole house monitor (e.g. Owl) will give you instantaneous indication of a high consumption device being turned on. With careful selection and the right choice of software, you can even log the data and build up an accurate picture of your usage.

It was never Ofgem’s intention that consumers should get free IHDs for life. 

And isn't about time that the "Einstein" adverts based around the IHDs should be removed from TV adverts ? TOTALLY misleading - a Commercial organisation would have their hands chopped off by ASA !!

Smart metering messaging has always been misleading. A meter is a meter!  That said, the IHD will come into its own as more suppliers roll out time-of-use tariffs. Unfortunately, the Press is already presaging doom and disaster with suggestions that suppliers will just amend 30 minute pricing at will. 

As to pricing - as a cynic of the highest order , I'm sure that the big 5 (or 4 or 7 or whatever) are eagerly looking forward to evermore complicated charging regimes which nobody will be able to understand or ,more importantly, be able to challenge !!

Don't worry, Surge Pricing will mean that your electricity will only be cripplingly expensive at the times when you want to use it... 

FreeBear

Astria said: Just be aware that other alternatives exist. For example products such as https://geotogether.com/product/minim/ cost around £40, are self installed (no pairing required) and as such you can usually find them second hand for less and move them between properties easily.

A lot of these "whole house" energy monitors won't provide a true reading in KW. Being battery operated, they only monitor the current so can only do a simple conversion to KW based on an assumed mains voltage. Whilst the instantaneous error will be small, it will add up over time if you are wanting a KWh reading.

I have a couple of these - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32862049796.html - If you are tech savvy and not afraid of setting up a bit of software, well worth the (low) cost.