Smart Meters - Electric

Fluffmeister1

I am being hounded to have a Smart Meter as my 4 digit digital display meter is not showing any reading.  Am I currently legally obliged to have one of these installed?  They have advised that the model which I have in now is no longer available.  Thanks

Mobtr

If your meter is faulty & needs exchanging then yes, a smart meter will be installed. Are you sure it’s the electric meter you’re taking about as they usually have 5 digits, imperial gas meters have 4 

Robin9

It's a meter - Smart, Pink or Blue  - it's there to measure your consumption.

[Deleted User]

Fluffmeister1 said:

I am being hounded to have a Smart Meter as my 4 digit digital display meter is not showing any reading.  Am I currently legally obliged to have one of these installed?  They have advised that the model which I have in now is no longer available.  Thanks

Your meter has clearly reached its end-of-life. In such circumstances the Government agreed in 2019 that suppliers can fit a smart meter without the householder’s permission as suppliers already have a legal right of entry into a property under The Gas and Electricity Acts. The other issue is that many suppliers no longer have access to analogue meters.

SAC2334

Sounds like your old meter has gone blank screen and you are now having estimated readings based on past consumption.
 The small white one made by Ampy is notorious for going blank. Its a very cheap meter to buy , less than £15 when I was on the job.
Despite what suppliers may claim that there are no more digital dumb meters around , they are readily available to buy if the supplier wants to but they now legally can install a smart meter.

Possibly they could install the meter in dumb mode so its then just a standard digital meter if for some reason you object to automated meter readings

According to the 1987 Electricity Act it is legal for a none domestic user to arrange to buy their own meter ( a new one is around £30 ) and install it themselves using a  qualified Electrician .Supplier can only stop this if they have "grounds for refusal ".
So far on this forum I ve never seen anyone do this .

Alnat1

What is your reason for not wanting a smart meter? It's better to have a working meter than the energy company wildly over-estimating your use and you having no way of proving you haven't used that much.

SAC2334

Alnat1 said:

What is your reason for not wanting a smart meter? It's better to have a working meter than the energy company wildly over-estimating your use and you having no way of proving you haven't used that much.

No its not better to have a working smart meter. Its better to have a blank screen dumb meter which cannot record consumption .You then have an " all you can eat "electric meter .

I had many long term customers who were very happy with their estimated direct debits . This meant they could use as much as they liked and one even confessed to me he was nt switching the gas central heating on but heating with electric ,a Big saving. Absolutely no complaints from any of them and it went on like this for years.

A forum member on here mentioned that the true  reading could be recovered from a blank screen meter . Whether this is true or not has not been established . I don t think the suppliers were too bothered or they would have made better efforts to replace the meters 

devarty

The same happened to my electric meter on 30th September just as I went to take a pre, price hike reading. So annoyed. We have been really careful and the estimates have been above the amounts we actually used. I couldn't get a Smart meter installation until December. Then I told them I had just been discharged from hospital and they brought this forward to mid November.
 I am worried because So Energy will base my usage on the next 3 months bills. These will be in the cold of winter. September and October were manageable without too much cooking and drying indoors. A customer service lady said they will be able to recover my usage from the box as it is the display that is broken. Others told me they just remove and scrap the old meter without looking. Any advice? My son has a So Smart meter and the readings are not making sense.

SAC2334

I don t think you would get  that much variation with Autumn and Winter kwh daily rates unless you are on Eco 7 .

I m using maybe 1 or 2 kwh s a day at the most more in Winter purely due to the shorter days although I am not using the tumble dryer much at all if I can help it .

In my view they scrap the meter without checking it  and I ve never heard of C.S. saying they can recover the readings. I ve heard them saying "you can use as much as you want until we replace the meter " often enough though .

The one I ve heard that DNO s complained about going blank is a very small white one mainly made by  Ampy but others like Siemens make the same type .

I d like to hear an electronics experts opinion on it if its possible to recover the true reading , after its gone blank .

EssexHebridean

SAC2334 said:

Alnat1 said:

What is your reason for not wanting a smart meter? It's better to have a working meter than the energy company wildly over-estimating your use and you having no way of proving you haven't used that much.

No its not better to have a working smart meter. Its better to have a blank screen dumb meter which cannot record consumption .You then have an " all you can eat "electric meter .

That only helps if someone can afford to pay the bill that they are going to be presented with from the supplier's estimated readings. We have another thread on the board already where the OP has made conscious efforts to reduce use - and indeed to use alternative methods of heating. Now their meter has gone dumb and they are worried that their bill-reduction techniques aren't going to be any help to them...