Standing charges, broken smart meters and more – Energy Secretary responds to Martin Lewis

BarelySentientAI

BlueNomad said:

So Energy installed a Smart Meter in our house in September 2023 and it still doesn't work. They've been unable to commission it due to 'signal issues' despite 4 attempts and we can't use it as a traditional meter as we're Economy 7 - according to the engineer you can only get 1 reading off the main unit of the smart meter. He says we need to go back to the old-style meter but So Energy won't supply them anymore. So Energy have no solutions but we can't switch because another supplier won't touch us without a functioning meter. We're in total limbo but also trying to sell our house at the same time! I've tried the ombudsman but they don't have teeth. Can anybody help?

Do you know what type of meter it is?  Many of them can show the other readings.

bob2302

BlueNomad said:

 and we can't use it as a traditional meter as we're Economy 7 - according to the engineer you can only get 1 reading off the main unit of the smart meter. 

I don't know for sure, but it sounds unlikeIy. I don't think these people get much training.

TheElectricCow

BlueNomad said:

we can't use it as a traditional meter as we're Economy 7 - according to the engineer you can only get 1 reading off the main unit of the smart meter. He says we need to go back to the old-style meter but So Energy won't supply them anymore.

Sounds like you need them to send a new engineer rather than an old meter. 

All smart meters should be perfectly capable of supporting Economy 7, although with no signal it would be up to the engineer to set this up correctly on site as the supplier would be unable to remotely reconfigure the meter.

slackgarry

Still waiting since October 2023 when we changed to Smart Meters, Hasn't worked from Day one and BG say its policy not to fix unless there is a gas leak. Talking about the actual meters in the outside meter cupboard. Not the In House display.

BobT36

90% meters working, but how many actually get tested, or conveniently "lost" when sent for testing? Considering @MeteredOut's thread..

BarelySentientAI

BobT36 said:

90% meters working, but how many actually get tested, or conveniently "lost" when sent for testing? Considering @MeteredOut's thread..

Given that the 10% "not working" either includes meters that are still accurate just not sending readings to (one of) the supplier or the IHD, or actually refers to IHDs (given the "12 month warranty" comment), I'm not sure your question is actually relevant to that statistic.

Last results I saw were for 2300 meter tests across about a decade - 75 were either fast or slow, and it doesn't record which way they were wrong.  About the same number that were discovered to have evidence of illegal tampering.

wrf12345

It is important that the cost of the faulty meters and the installation of replacements is paid for by the meter suppliers and not the customers with increased bills, if the contracts don't allow for this then whoever came up with the contracts needs to pay.

MattMattMattUK

wrf12345 said:

It is important that the cost of the faulty meters and the installation of replacements is paid for by the meter suppliers and not the customers with increased bills, if the contracts don't allow for this then whoever came up with the contracts needs to pay.

The meter supply is regulated, Ofgem specify that the meters can only be approved models from approved manufacturers. The approved models and manufacturers are set by the government, with oversight on the resilience of the software to network attack by GCHQ. As the government is us, that means taxpayers paying, which is roughly equivalent to bill payers (although not entirely as so few people are net contributors). 

One of the major issues is not actually the failure rate, but the way the data is reported and presented, it is still unclear if the 10% of smart meters "not working" is IHD related, although some anecdotal information published indicates that 10% not working does include meters which are correctly working, but without an IHD, others are meters installed in locations where they presently cannot work correctly (geographical locations where signal strength is an issue, communal properties with meters in the basement etc.) and the meters still work as meters, they are just unable to communicate. These were all issues that were known and expected, so "not working" is somewhat unfair as an evaluation and technological fixes for these are in the pipeline (although some parts are in a very long pipeline).

MeteredOut

BobT36 said:

90% meters working, but how many actually get tested, or conveniently "lost" when sent for testing? Considering @MeteredOut's thread..

My gas meter that was incrementing even whilst disconnected from the mains gas was not a smart meter.

EssexHebridean

MeteredOut said:

BobT36 said:

90% meters working, but how many actually get tested, or conveniently "lost" when sent for testing? Considering @MeteredOut's thread..

My gas meter that was incrementing even whilst disconnected from the mains gas was not a smart meter.

It would suit many folks arguments so much better if it had been though! 😆