Do I HAVE to have a smart meter?

[Deleted User]

Scot_39 said:

BrainDrained said:

Please don't try to persuade me otherwise, I DO NOT want a smart meter.

My energy supplier has been sending me regular emails telling me to book an appointment, which I ignore.

Now they are telling me my electricity meter has reached the end of its life and needs to be replaced.  It was replaced in Jan 2015.  I do not know the type but it has a digital display, not a dial like the old one.  (And my gas meter is still the original one, dating from 1971).  There is no suspicion that it's not working correctly, though my energy usage has fluctuated quite a lot over the last 12 months for various reasons (which might look suspicious if their computer analyses customers' energy bills very carefully!).

I thought these meters were supposed to last at least 10 years.

Are they telling me it HAS to be replaced NOW so they can force a smart meter on me?  Any way I can insist on not having a smart meter?

The official advice to energy suppliers is that they are now allowed to offer Smart as the only option at end of life.

It is not a question of ‘offering’. In 2019, BEIS agreed to a supplier request that they be allowed to fit a smart meter in meter end-of-life situations WITHOUT the consumer’s approval. This was a pragmatic request based on the fact that many of the smaller suppliers had delayed their smart meter rollout until SMETS2 had arrived, and because these suppliers did not have access to analogue meters. BEIS agreed to the request,

BEIS also agreed that it situations where a supplier still had access to analogue meters these could be fitted AND a charge to the consumer could be raised for doing so.

I should add at the same meeting suppliers also requested that BEIS make smart meters mandatory. It would seem that BEIS declined the request as the smart meter consumer take up at the time was assessed to be good.

wild666

BrainDrained said:

Please don't try to persuade me otherwise, I DO NOT want a smart meter.

My energy supplier has been sending me regular emails telling me to book an appointment, which I ignore.

Now they are telling me my electricity meter has reached the end of its life and needs to be replaced.  It was replaced in Jan 2015.  I do not know the type but it has a digital display, not a dial like the old one.  (And my gas meter is still the original one, dating from 1971).  There is no suspicion that it's not working correctly, though my energy usage has fluctuated quite a lot over the last 12 months for various reasons (which might look suspicious if their computer analyses customers' energy bills very carefully!).

I thought these meters were supposed to last at least 10 years.

Are they telling me it HAS to be replaced NOW so they can force a smart meter on me?  Any way I can insist on not having a smart meter?

A friend has an old meter that was installed in 1982 and he had letters, emails and texts asking him to book a smart meter installation, a few of the notifications said that his meter was at its end of life, all he asked was for them to prove it and asked how long the meters were certified for and they told him that they were certified until around the end of 2027. They stopped the requests as soon as he had notification that they were certified until late 2027. 

I have smart meters, I got them to get free electric from BG in 2015 until March 2018 but I don't know how long the smart meters are certified for it might be 10 years or it might be 30 years.

macman

matt_drummer said:

macman said:

Solution: have a smart meter installed, wrap it in tinfoil (double layer for a belt and braces approach), then carry on giving manual readings as before.
I really don't get the 'hassle of it may not work properly' argument. If so, you have a dumb meter, just like the old one before it.

Some people do not want smart meters and the OP does not want persuading.

There have been so many topics like this in the past.

In my opinion, it is best to give people who are adamant that they do not want smart meters all the help possible to avoid having them.

That is what they want and why they have come here, to find out how to avoid having smart meters for as long as possible.

We all know that if they stop sending readings that you just have meters just as you did before and that not having smart meters will prevent you from enjoying many of the cheapest tariffs available.

But these facts are not enough to convince some consumers that smart meters are a good idea, they think otherwise.

I'm not persuading the OP to do anything. I'm simply encouraging them to face the reality that, sooner or later, the current ancient meter will need replacing, and that, when it does, they won't be able to insist on another  dumb meter, because they won't exist. 
The OP has not even explained why they don't want a smart meter, and nor do they have to, so it would be difficult to persuade them to change their view when we don't know the premise on which it's based.

matt_drummer

macman said:

matt_drummer said:

macman said:

Solution: have a smart meter installed, wrap it in tinfoil (double layer for a belt and braces approach), then carry on giving manual readings as before.
I really don't get the 'hassle of it may not work properly' argument. If so, you have a dumb meter, just like the old one before it.

Some people do not want smart meters and the OP does not want persuading.

There have been so many topics like this in the past.

In my opinion, it is best to give people who are adamant that they do not want smart meters all the help possible to avoid having them.

That is what they want and why they have come here, to find out how to avoid having smart meters for as long as possible.

We all know that if they stop sending readings that you just have meters just as you did before and that not having smart meters will prevent you from enjoying many of the cheapest tariffs available.

But these facts are not enough to convince some consumers that smart meters are a good idea, they think otherwise.

I'm not persuading the OP to do anything. I'm simply encouraging them to face the reality that, sooner or later, the current ancient meter will need replacing, and that, when it does, they won't be able to insist on another  dumb meter, because they won't exist. 
The OP has not even explained why they don't want a smart meter, and nor do they have to, so it would be difficult to persuade them to change their view when we don't know the premise on which it's based.

I agree completely.

macman

EssexHebridean said:

For clarity - we have seen many MANY threads on the board over the years with problems with analogue meters. We see less now - perhaps unsurprisingly - because there are less analogue meters out there as a good number have been changed...for Smart ones... 

Excellent point. And, most of the 'faults' reported on smart meters are not due to inaccurate readings-they're due to communication issues with the IHD or DCC from the comms hub. The actual 'metering bit' works perfectly well, and I'm sure much more accurately than a 40 or 50 year old electro-mechanical meter.
The worst that can happen is that you are back to a dumb meter again until the issue is resolved.

BrainDrained

Spoonie_Turtle said:

I'd be willing to bet the OP's is on there just not in a format they've recognised yet - e.g. ours is Landis+Gyr but our particular model showed up with 'Ampy/L+G' as the manufacturer (and it took me several goes to find ours anyway as I was looking for Z45M15 as the model number instead of the actual, 5235A).  I'm sure legally all electric meter models still in use have to be on there.

Thanks for that. I had another look just using the model number and it does seem to be Ampy/L+G, same as yours.  And these have a 20 year certification.  So I have some ammunition now to put it off for a while. 

MultiFuelBurner

[Deleted User] said:

macman said:

Gerry1 said:

macman said:

matt_drummer said:

macman said:

Solution: have a smart meter installed, wrap it in tinfoil (double layer for a belt and braces approach), then carry on giving manual readings as before.
I really don't get the 'hassle of it may not work properly' argument. If so, you have a dumb meter, just like the old one before it.

Is that legal?

Maybe that would be considered to be meter tampering?

Perfectly legal. You are not physically tampering with the meter, you are simply shielding it from communicating with the DCC.
You could build an entire Faraday cage around the meter box (or around your home, as some people have apparently done), and it would still be your right to do so.

You'll probably find it breaks the Ts&Cs to which you have signed up.

You may well also find that the SM still communicates: put a mobile phone in the microwave (switched off !) and it'll probably still ring.

Which specific terms require me to maintain the mobile data link? 
I hasten to add that I'm not in any way recommending this method, nor have I tested it for technical efficiency. It just might make smart meter phobics feel more comfortable about meter changes though..

My bedroom is closer to my neighbour’s meter box than my own. Should I carryout a midnight raid and cover his comms hub in tinfoil? 

Smart meter comms hubs are not in constant transmission mode. They do not send the supplier data every 30 minutes as most people mistakenly believe. They act a bit like a mobile phone waiting for a call once per day from the supplier to ‘pull’ the previous day’s data.

I find in odd that people are quite happy to sit in a home full of wifi to express their concerns about smart meters on social media, but they are worried about an occasional burst of smart meter data.

How does that equate then with apps such as loop when I check the app in the morning it has midnight til 5am and when I check in the afternoon it has populated 5am til Midday or later.

The pull does not appear to be once a day.

[Deleted User]

MultiFuelBurner said:

[Deleted User] said:

macman said:

Gerry1 said:

macman said:

matt_drummer said:

macman said:

Solution: have a smart meter installed, wrap it in tinfoil (double layer for a belt and braces approach), then carry on giving manual readings as before.
I really don't get the 'hassle of it may not work properly' argument. If so, you have a dumb meter, just like the old one before it.

Is that legal?

Maybe that would be considered to be meter tampering?

Perfectly legal. You are not physically tampering with the meter, you are simply shielding it from communicating with the DCC.
You could build an entire Faraday cage around the meter box (or around your home, as some people have apparently done), and it would still be your right to do so.

You'll probably find it breaks the Ts&Cs to which you have signed up.

You may well also find that the SM still communicates: put a mobile phone in the microwave (switched off !) and it'll probably still ring.

Which specific terms require me to maintain the mobile data link? 
I hasten to add that I'm not in any way recommending this method, nor have I tested it for technical efficiency. It just might make smart meter phobics feel more comfortable about meter changes though..

My bedroom is closer to my neighbour’s meter box than my own. Should I carryout a midnight raid and cover his comms hub in tinfoil? 

Smart meter comms hubs are not in constant transmission mode. They do not send the supplier data every 30 minutes as most people mistakenly believe. They act a bit like a mobile phone waiting for a call once per day from the supplier to ‘pull’ the previous day’s data.

I find in odd that people are quite happy to sit in a home full of wifi to express their concerns about smart meters on social media, but they are worried about an occasional burst of smart meter data.

How does that equate then with apps such as loop when I check the app in the morning it has midnight til 5am and when I check in the afternoon it has populated 5am til Midday or later.

The pull does not appear to be once a day.

When I open Bright there is data from the previous day up until about 2am. If I open the App later in the day it initiates a manual data refresh to pull data - not always successfully in my experience. For those who spend £70 on a Hildebrand IHD, I believe that there is a system poll once every 10 seconds. 

Octopus, via its third-party Adapter service, initiates a data pull from each of my meters once per day. Sometimes this pull returns no data or corrupt data so Octopus has to initiate a manual pull to try and retrieve the missing data.

The point that I was making is that communications hubs are not in constant communication with suppliers. They have to be called and told to respond. The call might be a request for daily data or a request for 30 minute voltage data; gas battery remaining life ……