UKH

Is this possible/legal after eg a green conversion grant?

No, not through and kind of official channel. Maybe you can find a slightly dodgy sparky with a stash of old meters. You would also then need to explain it to your supplier and DNO. Not sure why you'd want to either. 

You can't be remotely changed to prepayment arrangements with a "standard" meter - they would have to change the meter - that might be a reason for wanting to change back - but as you say, ain't going to happen.

I thought they just changed you onto a smart meter by force these days if they wanted to put you on prepay.. it’s been in the news because they’re so brutal about it.

Because the Chinese government can’t back door your dumb meter and millions others like it and thrash disconnect / reconnect them all in unison crashing the power grid.

Probability of that happen for…

• Dumb meters: 0%
• Smart meters: > 0%

They'll just attack higher up the chain. Or turn off their power stations...

Wrap the meter in tin foil?

I don't believe you're obliged to give them access but many wouldn't know that.

Even if it was possible to request a standard meter where would your energy supplier source the meter from?

Your supplier owns the meter and they're not going to fit a second hand unit for you. New standard units aren't being made any more.

It's also in their interest to have as much usage data as possible. But this doesn't.ean it's against your interests to have a smart meter.

One container ship in the channel unleashes 2,000 explosive UAVs against our totally unprotected HV/MV transformer sites.

But a good attack is a diverse attack.  The more vectors the better.  

My dumb meter broke last year.  I got it replaced.  The chap who came to replace it had 30 old dumb meters in the back of his van that he’d removed in the past week when fitting smart meters.  He fit one of the old ones in place of my broken one and that was that.

Mine did. I have the full paper trail to prove it. 

Edit: legally they are not obliged to replace a smart meter with a second hand dumb meter (*) but they will replace broken dumb meter with a used dumb meter.

(*) if a tenant upgraded to a smart meter I think the landlord can have a downgrade when the tenant leaves but I haven’t checked the legal basis for this in a decade.

The scandal in question is that the courts were complicit in this, rubber-stamping 'legalised' forced entry to install prepay meters.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/13/energy-suppliers-in-uk-ban...

By that logic you may as well return to living in the woods in a tent, as China touches pretty much every aspect of our lives in one way or another, whether that's smartphones, industrial kit, or grid scale power control electronics.

I'm not arguing that the UK smart meter rollout was done particularly well, but there are so many digital or physical attack vectors in any heavily developed country that could cause chaos that stressing about smart meters seems irrelevant. 

I do agree that the forced change of tariff should never have been within the specification for SMETS in the first place. 

I'd suggest tin foil liner for the tent.

And a tin foil cover for his hat.

It was my answer to the question you posed.  It’s a valid answer.  I don’t mind if my smart light bulbs are hacked. I do mind if my power meter is.

Smart meters could theoretically be compromised and used in an attack far more potent than smartphones etc.  I note I wasn’t talking about kit from China but kit that could be compromised by a nation like China.

Do you suggest a foil liner for the bods at GCHQ who came in late in the day out of serious concern over the design of the system?  

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-5403473/amp/Experts-say-G...

I'm sure I recall you saying on here you have solar panels and an EV.

You're losing out on a lot of potential money saving by charging at night, selling during sunny late afternoons when the buy rate is higher on flexi tariffs. I understood you need a smart meter to take advantage of these benefits.

I'm really surprised they would do that. I figured calibration alone would prevent this from being an option, but maybe they have a way of calibrating on site. Hopefully they did this.

More fundamentally, they don't work very well. Ours randomly takes readings and doesn't for a period.