Can smart meter be fitted without my permission and when not present at the property?

lohr500

I'm afraid I have lost the will to live following this particular post. I appears to have drifted well off topic!!

All I will say is thank god we have a smart electric meter. Without it, we wouldn't be able to access our current tariff which fits our lifestyle perfectly and would be paying a lot more for our electricity.

[Deleted User]

So with Tracker there isn't necessarily an inherent need to have a smart meter, like there is with Agile, it was a business decision on Octopus' part, but they're obviously wanting to bill based on accurate usage rather than readings and that's fair enough

I suspect it has more to do with meeting their smart meter rollout target. Like most suppliers, they fell short last year.

MultiFuelBurner

I have largely given up trying to convince people to have smart meters.

Even got a neighbour who is into their technology and they still won't get one.

They are paying over 30p kWh whilst we are paying 18p kWh. 

Sometimes it's just not worth the effort.

cannugec5

And here is me. I definitely want a smart meter. In fact we have a smart meter. But we have no communication hub as,at installation in the spring it wouldn’t work. None in the village did. 

Now we have a neighbour with a working Smart meter installed last month. I got back in touch with Octopus to see if they’d try to get mine working.. but they didn’t reply. On the app it just tells me they have no current plans to install any in my area

I like technology, apps, spreadsheets and numbers. But I’m stuck with climbing a ladder once a month to read my meter. 

[Deleted User]

cannugec5 said:

And here is me. I definitely want a smart meter. In fact we have a smart meter. But we have no communication hub as,at installation in the spring it wouldn’t work. None in the village did. 

Now we have a neighbour with a working Smart meter installed last month. I got back in touch with Octopus to see if they’d try to get mine working.. but they didn’t reply. On the app it just tells me they have no current plans to install any in my area

I like technology, apps, spreadsheets and numbers. But I’m stuck with climbing a ladder once a month to read my meter. 

Where are you located? Different geographical regions use different communications technology.

deano2099

Gerry1 said:

@mmmmikey I'd be very surprised.  It seems that gas smart meters go to landfill as soon as the battery runs out, hardly very green.  Some forumites have also reported some cases of low batteries causing phantom overcharging in only five years or so.  In contrast, my trusty mechanical meter is well into its fourth decade, can be read accurately by moonlight and OFF always means OFF.

Oh, and don't forget all the costs of having to replace all the comms hubs when 2G/3G conks out in just a few years' time.

All of which is entirely offset by the cost savings of not having to employ literal people to drive around the entire country and read every single meter themselves.

cannugec5

[Deleted User] said:

cannugec5 said:

And here is me. I definitely want a smart meter. In fact we have a smart meter. But we have no communication hub as,at installation in the spring it wouldn’t work. None in the village did. 

Now we have a neighbour with a working Smart meter installed last month. I got back in touch with Octopus to see if they’d try to get mine working.. but they didn’t reply. On the app it just tells me they have no current plans to install any in my area

I like technology, apps, spreadsheets and numbers. But I’m stuck with climbing a ladder once a month to read my meter. 

Where are you located? Different geographical regions use different communications technology.

I’m in the West of Scotland. 

deano2099

mmmmikey said:

And in the meantime I'm saving money.

Probably won't last, it's just the introductory offer.  Or it'll become a fake offer similar to the notorious 'Regular price £20, Loyalty Card price £2' scam that 'Which?' have recently flagged up.

mmmmikey said:

What's not to like?

That in the depths of winter when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing you'll be surge priced, load limited or load shed - but I won't !

Why on earth would you assume you won't be surge-priced because you don't have a smart meter?

You're right about the supermarket loyalty card thing. And if you want you can go "and I object to it so I'm not getting a loyalty card". But you're paying more than me at Tesco.

I see this time and again in these arguments. It's this weird cognitive dissonance that on one hand says:
1) The energy companies are evil and are going to rip us off with controlling and expensive time of us tarrifs but then says,
2) But they'll leave me alone because I won't have a smart meter.

They'll just say "surge pricing 6pm-8pm". "If you don't have a smart meter, we will apply surge pricing to X% of your usage based on the number of surge periods."

Gerry1

deano2099 said:

Gerry1 said:

@mmmmikey I'd be very surprised.  It seems that gas smart meters go to landfill as soon as the battery runs out, hardly very green.  Some forumites have also reported some cases of low batteries causing phantom overcharging in only five years or so.  In contrast, my trusty mechanical meter is well into its fourth decade, can be read accurately by moonlight and OFF always means OFF.

Oh, and don't forget all the costs of having to replace all the comms hubs when 2G/3G conks out in just a few years' time.

All of which is entirely offset by the cost savings of not having to employ literal people to drive around the entire country and read every single meter themselves.

I very much doubt that.  Meter readers only visit once in a blue moon anyway, so the savings would be small.  If nobody ever visited to check meters there would be vast increases in the numbers of meters being illegally by-passed, sometimes resulting in fires or people being killed in gas explosions.

[Deleted User]

cannugec5 said:

[Deleted User] said:

cannugec5 said:

And here is me. I definitely want a smart meter. In fact we have a smart meter. But we have no communication hub as,at installation in the spring it wouldn’t work. None in the village did. 

Now we have a neighbour with a working Smart meter installed last month. I got back in touch with Octopus to see if they’d try to get mine working.. but they didn’t reply. On the app it just tells me they have no current plans to install any in my area

I like technology, apps, spreadsheets and numbers. But I’m stuck with climbing a ladder once a month to read my meter. 

Where are you located? Different geographical regions use different communications technology.

I’m in the West of Scotland. 

In your region, the DCC uses Arqiva as its communications network provider. Arqiva uses long-range UHF radio to establish the network. UHF radio transmissions can be blocked by hills etc. It is worth looking at your local planning site to see if Arqiva has an ongoing application for a UHF relay mast in your area. Sadly, a number of these planning applications have been challenged by NIMBYs.