Smart Meters

victor2

Alnat1 said:

I made good use of those tariffs, battery filled, got a towel load washed and dried, washer on again for a 90C cleaning cycle and dishwasher on an intensive cycle (lower temps leaving a nasty niff recently) It's great modern appliances have timers.
...

Nice. Doesn't really matter if your battery system isn't 100% efficient if you're getting paid to top it up.

Miser1964

Rishi Sunak is urged to get tough on China by ripping out hundreds of thousands of smart meters | Daily Mail Online

250,000 meters supplied by Kaifa, controlled by a subsidiary of the state-owned China Electronics Corporation, were already in UK homes...and could be allegedly used to shut down UK power supplies.

Costing 30% less than the average market prices of a smart meter, the models manufactured by Kaifa Technology UK are being bought up by energy suppliers such as E-On and Octopus in vast quantities – and are destined for households up and down the UK.

Good luck, everyone

inspectorperez

Miser1964 said:

Rishi Sunak is urged to get tough on China by ripping out hundreds of thousands of smart meters | Daily Mail Online

250,000 meters supplied by Kaifa, controlled by a subsidiary of the state-owned China Electronics Corporation, were already in UK homes...and could be allegedly used to shut down UK power supplies.

Costing 30% less than the average market prices of a smart meter, the models manufactured by Kaifa Technology UK are being bought up by energy suppliers such as E-On and Octopus in vast quantities – and are destined for households up and down the UK.

Good luck, everyone

On the face of it this seems rather worrying.

I would love to see some responses from experts on this forum to explain if this is a real potential threat or is someone seeking to make political capital at China's expense.

I'm a smart meter sceptic myself, but have an open mind and value quality input from those who know what they are talking about.

Mister_G

Surely if smart meters all have GCHQ level security (as stated by several on this board) then this has already been accounted for?

Or perhaps not? 

thriftytracey

Come on ... its The Daily Mail - only good for the cat litter tray.  .  

EssexHebridean

Yes - as a general rule I’d always view anything in the Daily Fail as almost certainly being utter fearmongering nonsense until proved otherwise.  You only have e to look at how often their articles are quoted by conspiracy theorists to begin to get the measure of them! 

On a slightly different note, and unrelated to any specific comments on the thread - have any other regular posters here noticed that we do seem to have had a bit of an upsurge in the more vociferous of the anti smart meter brigade here over the past little while?

macman

Can I suggest another way to spread peak load in the UK? Why not put England and Wales onto BST all year round, but Scotland could still retain the BST/GMT seasonal shift in order to retain the earlier daylight in winter further north, which I think was the original intention when daylight saving was introduced in WW1?
If the peak load is normally 4pm to 7pm, that would spread it over 4 hours rather than 3. Marginal, but then it's marginal reductions that are needed to avoid rolling blackouts.

wild666

outlaw777 said:

Thanks all above, any one against smart meters?

One thing about only gas smart meters is that they need a smart electric meters to send the readings, or so I am lead to believe. If that is the case then you will need a smart electic meter as well.

knightstyle

Just to add my experience with a smart meter since moving 18 months ago to a house with one...
First the instructions to use ours were very confusing and all the readouts that scroll in the window when taking readings make little sense.  I now know the instructions were wrong and I have to press button 9 on the gas and 6 on the electric to get readings. plus trying to find out when day and night tariffs start/end is almost impossible.
Just to add the meter does not communicate with our supplier, I have to send in readings every month.

[Deleted User]

wild666 said:

outlaw777 said:

Thanks all above, any one against smart meters?

One thing about only gas smart meters is that they need a smart electric meters to send the readings, or so I am lead to believe. If that is the case then you will need a smart electic meter as well.

This is a common misbelief. The gas meter needs access to a communications hub. The communications hub is usually powered by the electricity meter. The communications hub contains a gas proxy meter which does the volume to kWh and cost calculations for display on the IHD.