UKH

I am getting hounded by Scottish Power to get smart meters installed (email, phone, letters). Do I have to? I am on direct debit and have hence never missed a payment, (in fact, because of that Scottish Power owes me about 920 pounds or so). I am quite happy with what we have just now. Any views?

No, you don’t have to get one.

The lying scum that supply me sent a letter claiming my dumb meter is old and therefore unsafe and offered me a chance to upgrade for free.

This is very clearly playing on people’s fears and it boils my piss to think of more vulnerable people fretting over a purportedly unsafe meter after getting such a letter.  It actually makes TV licensing look honest with their fake “court date” letters.

If they thought our meter was unsafe they’d be here with a warrant, pronto.

As it happens, they’d sent an engineer the week before to replace my broken dumb meter with another, slightly older dumb meter.  Getting that meter replaced was its own saga of incompetence.

The only apparent reason they send a human “meter reader” to us is for them to try and push it in the house in person.

Thanks, my thinking. They said exactly what you said and then said that they would install a smart gas meter as well while they are at it. It would only take 2 hours...hmm. 

1. No, you don't have to.

2. I'm not really sure why you would be opposed to one - ultimately it just means someone isn't sent out to read your meter, and you get billed properly. If anything it makes it more likely you wouldn't end up in a situation where you have £900 credit. 

3. I'm not sure how communicating with you is "nazi tactics". I doubt they'll be invading Poland to drag you into things. 

Genuine question to learn, not trying to stoke - why do you not want a smart meter installed?

My understanding was per point 2 so interested to see if there's something I've not thought of!

Well, they are pestering me almost daily with emails / phone calls and even on the door when I said I don't want it. They have always said that's fine on the calls and then next thing they are sending messages again or letters etc.

It's not communicating, it is pestering. At least I am able enough to deal with it, but imagine a 89 year old having to deal with things like that....

Well, I don't want any technology in my home that is monitoring us, it's a bit much like bit big brother watching you...

Well I'm opposed to them because I don't see the benefits. In fact anything "smart" usually adds in more scope for error.  We get billed properly because I send a meter reading in every month. I haven't seen a meter reader in years. What's the problem we are trying to fix here? 

Eventually, yes,  time sensitive charging will arrive and then we'll all have to have smart meters, but until then, no thanks.

I'm with EDF and get a burst of calls from them to get one every few months. they will call every day for a couple of weeks then give up for another few months. I blocked the number a couple of years but can still see the lists of when they have attempted to call.

A previous supplier (utility point) gave out my details to a third party installer a few years ago and I got an aggressive and unpleasant phone call from them. Decided I wasn't getting one for sure after that.

Do you have a phone? Or computer?

Hassling you seems wrong but the anti-smart meter narrative (generally, not you personally) is  a bit weird really.  That they don't work very well is perhaps a good reason not to have one.

Wish I could get a smart meter. My request for one to octopus got ignored.

I have actually got one fitted from the previous supplier but octopus can't connect to it.

If you don't want to be monitored that's a lot of stuff you should get rid of before thinking about smart meters.

Banks and phones being high on the list.

Can't see how monitors electric usage can be an issue unless you're growing weed in the attic.

It's certainly impressive to see a thread Godwinned before it has even started.

I’d hold off for now but if Scottish Power invade Poland, you’d better get with the program sharpish.

Mine works fine.  I don't have to submit readings and I always get accurate bills.  That's it.

Meters do need to be replaced periodically, that's standard.  They can be replaced with 'dumb meters' but I'm not sure there's any need for the tinfoil-hattery.

Surely these power companies with their obscene profits should be spending some on staff and recirculating some of that money in to the economy. Bills aren’t going to get any cheaper even if they went fully automated.

But that's what a meter is doing anyway surely?

We actually tried to have one fitted in our house and when the bloke came round he couldn't get a wifi signal in the cellar where the old meter is so we couldn't have one.

Smart meters work perfectly well. 
 

Still quite a long way from Nazism, probably just pushing at the borders of GDPR a little. Tell them to sod off or switch supplier. 

Depends what you mean.  They’re a legitimate target for distributed CNI attacks, there are serious red flags from the development program - with GCHQ stepping in mid-development to try and fix it.  But bodged on security is not the same as starting the design with the security platform and then adding required features.  There is plenty of news coverage over state actors invading western power grids.  It’s all there in the press, I’ve given up linking it and just let people think I’m a nutter.

I have no interest in contributing to a possible shitshow one day down the line.  Holding out is making ever less difference as more are fitted but in practical terms, the hassle of sacrificing a leisure or work day to clear the cupboard and worktop below it, facilitate access and tidy up afterwards isn’t worth it for me.

I’m more minded to resist because of the shocking tactics my supplier is using.  The moment dishonest marketing comes in to play my heckles go up, even if I understand it’s simply about their bottom line given their KPIs on rollout and consequences of those.

This may depend on which tariff you've chosen with them - some require a smart meter. I signed-up with British Gas on a smart meter-only deal and registered to have one fitted straight away. Three years later I've finally had an email saying they have some available...

Unless you're accessing this from the library or something, that ship has already sailed. All they can do is see your power use. Just without someone having to come and read a meter/you submitting online readings. 

So you submit a reading every month, but don't see the benefit to this being done automatically? Interesting. 

I might be in luck then

Which if you are, your electricity provider will find out from your meter reading anyway

But why resist? 

By giving the suppliers real time data they can more efficiently manage production and renewables.

This results in a not so tiny (I've read 3% somewhere, not sure if that was to date, or if fully rolled out) reduction in energy costs due to not over supplying and wasting energy and all the associated emissions that go with it.

All it does it add convenience and information for the resident and improves the infrastructure. making it more efficient. As renewables become a larger proportion of the network more information for the suppliers will only help.

Worth knowing that the suppliers have targets (75% by 2025).

Edit: Just seen your other response above. I still think it's worth having.

I don't see how they could know. The tell tell sign is a constant draw of juice 24/7. If your bill is just high it could be because you're using electric heaters, aircon, heating an outside paddling pool, anything really. A meter reading once a year doesn't tell you a whole lot.

Half of them went bust last year!

I believe a very small number of appliances can communicate with a smart meter to tell it more about them, e.g. "hi, I'm a fridge, so if there's a big risk of a frequency drop in the area I can be turned off electronically without great harm".

However that's true of hardly any appliances.

Your smart meter can't see your Web history, for example.  But your ISP (or if you have one, your VPN provider) can.

Wonder if you can get smart RCD breakers that can turn your non essential circuits off.

In the "Can the Government or others use energy smart appliances to control the supply of energy into my home?" part of the 2023 energy bill FAQ ( https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9865/ ), they do mention that smart meters can be used to switch off suppy remotely.  So there's the possibility of infrastructure attack Wintertree mentioned, or a _Brazil_-style records mix up, leading to a surprise loss of household power.  But that does seem a little niche.

(For transparency's sake: I have a smart meter and am quite happy with the risks.  My main issue these days is the wild over-estimation of my direct-debit amounts by the supplier, but that's them being typically grasping rather than anything to do with the tech)

There is no need to have one if you don't want one.

I've refused for years but finally decided to risk it. We have solar panels and are currently getting nothing for the not inconsiderable amount of power we're putting back into the grid - on a summer day we can easily put 32kwh back in and that's in the north of Scotland. The smart meter will let us get something (albeit not lots of money) back for the excess we're generating. I'm also thinking ahead, eventually we'll be forced to get an EV and without a smart meter it's impossible to access any of the cheaper overnight tariffs etc. 

I confess I'm really quite worried the install doesn't work or the new meters basically send nonsense readings back to the power company and I get crazy bills as a result. I currently pay for exactly what I use by submitting the readings myself. I don't and won't have a direct debit after an incident many years ago where scottish power read the neighbours meter in error for ours repeatedly then tried to up the DD to over 1K a month. That took months to sort 😞.

I'm also a little worried about the security side,  e.g. the ability of the power company or a hacker to disconnect me remotely or that time of day charging is implemented and I end up significantly worse off than with the dumb meters.  

Prior to getting them fitted I've taken nearly three years of monthly meter readings so I've a very good idea of what we currently use in terms of units of gas and electricity both with and without the solar panels installed.  

I'm keeping everything crossed our install goes OK and the new meters work and report sensible readings.  

Worth noting that they actually can be extremely beneficial, especially if you're not a heavy electricity user from 4pm-7pm.

I'm on an Octopus Agile tariff and have a usage pattern which has never involved using much electricity at peak times. I've recently bought a battery which means I only really use electricity to fill the batter overnight - the net result of this is that my average electricity unit rate is 10-12p/kwh - compared to what most of the country is paying ~28p/kwh.

As an aside you can ask for the £920 back and under Ofgem rules your supplier has to repay you "promptly", unless they have "reasonable grounds" not to.

Do you have to? - no

Are they hounding you? - This is in the eye of the beholder but it is clear they are annoying you. Just phone them up and tell them to stop. If you want to get punchy about it tell them to "stop processing your data".

Is this "nazi tactics"? - get real.

Unless you'd benefit from one (ie some fancy tariff stuff or you really want to know how much power a kettle needs) then it's not really in your interest, you might benefit from the nagging of the energy meter being visible, you might benefit from the remote data collection but then you might not.

They are heavily incentivised to reach a target of smart installations and, arguably, this will benefit wider society but then again it's a lot of faff, it's not proven and the supply companies have not exactly covered themselves in glory in their behaviour towards vulnerable customers and smart meters.

In a previous life I had some involvement with a provider of smart meter infrastructure. It's a bit more involved than 'bodged on security' There is quite a lot on threat models for electricity grids, if one were to search. Its also tested to a reasonable level.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/check-penetration-testing

Turning off a house/street/town would be fun. Turning them on and off in quick succession, would cause an unbalanced load on the grid. The generating facilities would disconnect, before they are damaged by the fluctuating load.

OP: The companies are spamming you, as they have government set targets to meet. I believe, many of them have not met the targets by a wide margin.

Progress rolling out smart meters is too slow and the Department has not done enough to ensure consumers are convinced of their benefits. The Government’s original target was to effectively complete the rollout by 2019. However, it has adjusted its deadlines three times and reduced its target installation levels for smart meters from “all homes and small businesses” in 2019, to its current target of 74.5% of homes and nearly 69% of small businesses to have smart meters by the end of 2025 ...

These show energy reductions of 3.3% to 3.6% for electricity and 2.9% to 3.1% for gas.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmpubacc/1332/report....

The idea of flexible tariffs might entice me to get one. But not from EDF, who are spamming me. They have resorted to using WhatsApp. I've only got 2 contact FFS. A work related group and a group chat for dads, where we organise pub trips. And now I have EDF.

Hi Fiona, 

Hope everything goes well!! My parents and bro have solar panels  and it all seems to work very smoothly. Just check your meter...

They are a provider of a service to to. So they have a legitimate interest in contacting you. You cant just GDPR, their ass!

I had to hound Octopus to put one in! To be fair it was during lockdown. When the guy eventually turned up he said there wasn't enough space to fit it and he was going to leave, took a bit of persuading to get him to continue. I'm saving something like £60 a month with it.

Now EDF want to smart my gas meter. They keep nagging me about it, but when I try to book an appointment there are never any available. This won't save me any money though, so don't really care.

Yes, they promised they will give the money back, so they are deducting 19 pounds from our bill every month. Really? That leaves them with the rest of the money for many month to invest. I am sure we are not the only ones. An interesting way to invest...

If you don't want one, can I have yours? Been waiting over a year now.

Don't worry, multiple photos of the old meters will be taken before the install just in case. 

The solar works great. We've both been really pleased with it and surprised at how much we get in the north. 

You can ask for it all back in one go, and they have to give it to you (unless they have "reasonable grounds") - suggest you contact them again and mention Ofgem rules. My supplier tried similar and immediately capitulated when I mentioned Ofgem. Good luck!

not our experience at all

even the switch was disastrous - we suddenly went from having over £300 credit to being advised we needed to take urgent action to reduce our £900 debt.  Overnight!  The fitters, who messed up the installation and did not check whether the house was suitable for weak wifi comms, submitted a reading agreed by me and someone transposed two high order digits putting us into hundred of pounds of debt

Thank you for your complacent comments anyway

That's pretty good going, you will be square with them in 4 years. My advice is don't pay them by direct debit, they don't like it but you can give them a meter reading and just pay for what you use. Takes some pushing though because they like to set a DD at a level where you are paying for more than you use, A because they are in debt to you rather than the other way round, B because they can invest the surpless £900 from x million customers, C and the one that makes me laugh the best "it's better for you sir because we balance your bills over the whole year so your not getting stung with higher bills in winter" 

Yup, that's exactly what they said and that is us 920 quid in credit after the winter. In summer there is barely any usage anyways....

“Nazi tactics” Grow up!

smart meters are an important tool in optimising use of renewables on the grid, combating climate change and reducing import of fossil fuels from despotic regimes. However I appreciate that your fear of a goverment mandarin finding out what time you brew up may trump all of that.

I'm planning on doing something similar when I move. Provided variable rates are here to stay it seems like a no brainer 

What a thread title. 

Electric savings make sense. You use it or loose it.

But what's the reason behind savings gas on a smart meter. I would assume you use it or they store it.

That's my reason, the mobile signal here is marginal and a smart meter in our consumer unit won't be talking to anybody. IIRC many smart meters are still using 2G, which the mobile companies are keen to switch off (like they did with 3G). 

The energy price cap is lower for paying by DD than just "paying what you use" so they can charge a slightly higher rate for the "default" variable tariff if you don't pay by DD. Can't remember what the difference is but it can be found on t'web.

I keep getting hassled to get a smart meter, but when I go online to book getting one there are never any slots available.

If they have a use I think it is to challenge you to encourage you to use less electricity rather than be warm. A bit like once you have average mpg displayed in a car the challenge becomes to use less fuel rather than to get there fast.

Why is it complacent.  Worked perfectly well for me and for others posting on here. 
 

Also wanted water metre fitted. Our house is old and they could not do it , but they still put as on the lower tariff for metred water . Nice. 

Ok, that makes sense. I just wish they stop hounding me. Mobile phone, home phone, online... They never pick on Brian, just me as I am the account holder. I will just try to ignore them.

Every self respecting grower would bypass the meter as a first step anyway. Problem gone.

There are myriad well- reported problems with them. If yours works, great, but dismissing concerns from others is a bit,  well,.dismissive.

I had a visit once to get one installed and they decided it couldn't go there due to the space available and then heard nothing further.  Now they have started asking again despite nothing changing.  Would you like me to let them come around again to waste a bit of their time to give me the same answer again?  It would be British Gas rather than Scottish Power, but it is still "them" and a victory for the little guy.

And that's a good reason not to get one...

Yup. "Nazi tactics" is definitely a bit hyperbole, but Im not getting one till the teething problems - including difficulty swapping  - have been dealt with and got rid. Just keep saying "no" though, should be all it takes

probably very true. UK electricity from an underlying economic view used to be balanced and priced in half hourly chunks because electricity can't effectively be stored, generation has to equal consumption at all times otherwise something gives. From a practical view it is balanced in real time otherwise the voltage drops or increases, or the frequency does, both of which cause undesirable effects.

Gas at the UK national level is daily balanced, there is so much flex in the system (the pipeline is so physically big compared to the demand) that small differences in supply and demand don't even register as a pressure drop and there is no economic incentive to use less gas at say 6 PM and use more at 8 PM - the system simply doesn't care.

It really only cares at a macro scale where if all the demand is in the south and all of the supply is coming into Scotland then that needs changing - the detail of how much is used in any half hour or hour really isn't relevant, the price is the same as gas is pumped into the system at a semi-consistent rate and used at whatever rate is needed. As long as the system pressure remains within limits, no-one much cares.

Pete Meads of this parish can tell you all about shovelling gas around the country.

Pressure isn't the only thing that needs to stay within limits, need to keep an eye on gas "quality" (CV) as well. And of course you don't want to get the gas too hot or too cold and there are other lesser constraints that I can't remember. But generally you're right, compared to electricity, gas supply is a damped system with considerable flex available.

Perhaps worth reading the latest NAO press release on the rollout

https://www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/update-on-the-rollout-of-smart-meters

The NAO analysis is pretty good. The net result is those who are not switching over are costing the rest of us money……

I don't want to freak you out but we even have a smart water meter. Had a smart electric meter since we moved in 4 years ago (it was already there). No problems and the electric had just worked. No letting weird people into the house at odd times, no looking in cramped places for meter readings. 

Here in France there was quite a vocal opposition to Linky (the name of the smart meters) but a lot of it was based on concern about the RF connection used (a woman down our street claimed she was electro sensitive and was full tin foil hat on it - but also a range of other stuff). 

Possibly. As above, I have nothing against them in principle but when we have from you report

"although around 9% of smart meters – around 3 million – were not working as intended "

I think it's reasonable that people are cautious.

This is a totally valid point and some do value it.  If you use something like Monzo to work out what you have left to spend each month it does work better than a variable amount.

What I don't like is that there isn't the option with most suppliers to use the smart meter to pay monthly actuals if that is preferred.

It' hardly a massive inconvenience having a smart meter based on older tech that effectively makes it a dumb meter.

Assuming a retrofit (vs new build), it’s a day of lost leisure or work time to clear out a cupboard, facilitate access and tidy up etc, as well as disruption to domestic power.

For nothing except an increased cost to the service provider which is picked up by the bill payers.

Having a rollout with a 10% failure rate (in terms of delivering the features driving the roll out) isn’t a good look.

Can you copy/paste the relevant part of the report to justify this?  Skim reading the summary I didn’t see any such support.  

Comparing the roll out cost and the claimed savings, seems like it’s a decade to get a return on the costs.  It’s just they’re buried from the consume’s view.

With claimed savings for those on smart meters, those holdouts unable to access smart tariffs and so on are paying more and so are saving the rest of you money?

I was surprised that the rollout started in 2011.  It’s old technology these days.  

I'm with Scottish Power, they were driving me crazy too so I blocked all their calls and messages.

Smart meters have been the norm for industrial and commercial customers for decades and have enabled big cost savings for customers able to shift loads to when there is less demand on the grid and power stations. This is becoming ever more important to make more use of night time wind power instead of daytime gas power when the underlying demand is higher. Domestic customers have massive scope to benefit from this, for example simply by setting washing machines and dish washers to work at night. However there does need to be a critical mass of domestic smart users for the electricity retailers to set up back to back contacts with the wind generators. As always it is the very small minority of smart meter users experiencing problems who make the most noise, the vast majority of us are fine.

The anti smart metering faction is yet another example of UKC NIMBYism. Sure we all want to combat climate change, after all as climbers we are more aware than most of its impact. However have a smart meter installed? Visual (not environmental) impact of pylons or turbines? Cut back on climbing holiday flight? Hell no!

I disagree.

I had a couple of years of use out of it.

I would have had longer if the energy company I was with hadn't have gone bust.

During this period I worked out where by big loads were and helped us change a few habits. Possibly worn off by now, but not a waste.

Your background and career in this area is as ever useful!

Never needed a smart meter to identify the big loads.  A socket power meter and the flashy light on the dumb meter covered that a decade ago.

I think your problem is having a shit energy supplier - change it!

My smart meter is great - I can find out what i use hourly/daily etc using an app. It's a little box 10cm by 8cm that sits on my windowsill - hardly an inconvenience. I have far better things to worry about than some bollocks/non-existent security risk.

I can set my own direct debits (within limits), I can claim back credit (if available) whenever I want. The smart meter means I can take part in saver sessions which help the supplier balance load and avoid bringing on-line higher carbon generation at peak time, and I get credit if I save - I can only do this with a smart meter.

Take off yer tinfoil hat, get a decent supplier and get with the program!

I think this comes down one persons waste of time is another persons hobby.

Not sure I could capture everything using your device measuring thing. If your fridge was faulty for example and drawing a lot more power than it should I wouldn't know unless I pulled my fridge out to put a device on the socket, a device at my costs. I guess I could do that, but it would take so much effort to work my way around absolutely everything. 

With a smart meter, you can immediately know if you have a parasitic loss or not with no effort and no cost to me.

The smart meter in a way is less refined however, as you can only limit the parasitic load to a particular circuit, but that was enough to hone in on the flipping fish tank. After finding the circuit with the draw, you just turn everything off until you figure out what it is. Takes a couple of minutes. And it was no cost to us, and almost no effort.

Using your method you could put a lot of effort into checking every socket and device, only to find there's no loss in the first place or even worse, there is a loss but not by anything that uses a socket and it's doing somehting it shouldn't and you can't check it anyway costing you money and potentially creating a fire risk.

And then, you may after checking what you can determine it's all ok, but then what, do you check again every month to make sure nothing has changed? The more I think about it the more a smart meter just make sense. I'm going to pester Octopus energy again.

I am confused.

Your smart meter doesn’t tell you which appliances are drawing how much power.  It tells you how much power is being used, just like the flashy red light on a dumb meter.  

To identify appliance power you’ll have to turn them on/off and watch the meter output.  Smart or dumb it’s the same process.

You get much more certainty sticking a power meter on individual appliances than trying to figure it out by turning stuff on and off and watching the meter (dumb or smart).

The only benefit I see to a smart meter in this process is being able to carry a remote display with you, but before smart meters I had a portable remote from an Arduino reading the flashing LED…

The same thing - the power usage…

But - unsurprisingly - we don’t have any defective devices consuming a lot of power, and the big uses of power are exactly what someone would think if they did a 5 minute walk around… 

Can you prove that statement?  I’m all ears.

It might be perceived as very low probability but that’s not the same thing.

There‘s barely a week goes by without another report on foreign nations attacking CNI through digital weaknesses.  Today’s latest - https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/critical-us-water-systems-face-dis...

The second threat was publicly revealed last month by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Officials said that a hacking group backed by the Chinese government and tracked under the name Volt Typhoon was maintaining a foothold inside the networks of multiple critical infrastructure organizations, including those in communications, energy, transportation, and water and wastewater sectors.  

Enemy intrusion in to CNI isn’t tin foil hattery, it’s reality.  Smart meters themselves aren’t CNI but if their centralised control node is compromised they can collapse CNI.

No I can't being a mere consumer. I'll take it on trust and file it in the list of things to not care about. I'll sleep easy I think.

On whose trust?  This is what the experts say:

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/the-smart-security-behind-the-gb-smart-...

Of course, no system is completely secure, and nothing is invulnerable. However, we’re confident that the Smart Metering System strikes the best balance between security and business needs, whilst meeting broader policy and national security objectives.

Their is no justification for you claim of a “non-existent security risk, the most relevant agency in government directly contradict you. 

Great!  Please just don’t misrepresent the presence of risk as non-existent or that some have concerns - amidst widespread intrusion of stave baked hackers in to CNI - as tin foil hatery.  

Maybe if the supply companies hadn't breached legal responsibilities so blatantly and in such numbers we would have had a more widespread take-up.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/smart-meter-cut-off-prepayment-meter-switch-by-st... 

I have no idea how to read the flashing red light. Or how accurate I can determine the rate. 

I can probably determine if I am using no energy, a bit, or a lot. I'm not sure how to use that to draw any useful conclusions.

I would, for example want to get by baseline usage to 50W for example. Not easy trying to count how many flashes in 10 seconds, or whatever the best method is.

I would just like a number.

Tried googling what the interval is, but not found anything yet.

Not really. If I unplug y TV, I might see the bassline usage go down by a watt or two. I now know what the TV uses and can check if I'm happy. 

I'm not going to be able to tell with any accuracy by counting flashes.

If you went to the effort of converting the flashing reading to give an output then you must value the info and continence a smart meter gives you.

It says right next to it.  On the meter.

Earlier you said "Using your method you could put a lot of effort into checking every socket and device, only to find there's no loss in the first place or even worse," and now you're going round unplugging circuits.

If you're looking for a large parasitic load, the flashing light and breaker-by-breaker  is perfectly adequate.   If you're looking for small loads, you have to go round turning things on and off at the device level - as you now agree - and there a socket based power meter is more immediate and trustworthy than the total draw at the meter.  I don't see how a smart meter helps in either scenario.

Yes, but I knocked the equivalent up with bits from my electronics draw in ten minutes, and didn't have to take time off work to have someone muck about in my kitchen.  Clamp based meters have long been available cheaply for people who don't want to DIY it.  Selling it as a benefit of smart meters rather overlooks the range of tools that have long been available for people who are interested in improving their energy usage.

It’s irrelevant to most people, as they are not going to measure it that way. They just want the suppliers to have different tariffs for low use periods like at night. In turn the suppliers need a critical mass of customers on smart meters to be able to do this. Let’s keep it simple. 

A lot of the marketing was originally about how they’d help you control your power usage by measuring it.

This was the purported early benefit of smart meters, not smart pricing (economy 7 having been a thing, remember.)

There was a lot of skepticism that people would use smart meters to improve their total usage, but I’m making the point they were never necessary to do that in response to someone claiming smart meters enable it.  I’m not suggesting everyone go out and obsess over power usage because it’s not going to happen.

The ability of providers to remotely disconnect entirely or remotely force you on to significantly more expensive pre-payment tariff puts me off. Plus time out of my day to arrange installation. I dont see any obvious benefits. But they haven't bothered me yet

Economy 7 is rather inflexible and doesn't take account of loads at night being much bigger as time goes on due to the charging of cars.

Also I believe the "teleswitches" no longer work due to the transmission kit being turned off, or won't soon?  Which means smart meters are or will become the only way to have Economy 7.

Edit: Still there until June 2025, after that the only option for having Economy 7 will be a smart meter.

I have a simple method for ensuring I do not waste electricity in my home - I TURN THINGS OFF.

Why anyone needs a (so-called) "smart meter" to identify waste is completely beyond me.

Main purpose of a smart meter is to allow real time readings to be sent to base, the little gadget (which I put in the drawer very quickly) is incidental and can be done without one (by putting inductive clamps on the meter tails).

The discontinuance of teleswitches has been put off by a year or more every year for the past 5 years or so. Given that there were about a million teleswitches in use about six months ago, and that they were being replaced by smart meters at a rate of about ten thousand a month, I have every confidence that the May 2025 deadline will be extended! Ofgem are so annoyed by the slow progress being made by suppliers that they snapped and wrote a (not very) strongly worded letter:

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/open-letter-smart-meter-installations...

Because it gives you more information. You can look at historical logs, and see what your baseload is. If this suddenly rises you can think about what device you've recently started using. You would need some pretty decent records from your flashy light timing thing to replicate this.

You can also look for patterns throughout the day to determine any unexpected high loads.

Some items can't be measured as already mentioned, or require a lot of effort to pull them out.

Or, even worse, they turn on and off so you rely on a waiting game to know if it's an issue or not. Or maybe their high power usage only happens under certain circumstances.

Logs really help on these items.

I guess you could get your Arduino to write to an SD card, but I've already got loads of projects that I don't get round to starting, I don't need another.

My washing machine would keep me awake...

This.

Can't believe how many lucky gits who can get a smart meter and solve all their problems with meter readings and inaccurate bills while also future-proofing their house for any solar/battery installations at a later date. For Free! Come online to complain about it.

Aside from wanting to be able to scam the electricity supply company, I've yet to hear a single reason why you wouldn't want to take advantage of a smart meter if you have the opportunity.

Spare a thought for all the people who can't get a working smart meter and can't reap the benefits.

Hope you don't have a mobile phone. Or a smart TV. Or a computer or laptop or tablet. Or any bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, store cards or loyalty cards. Or a car built less than about 20 years ago. Or spend any time at all walking along a normal 21st century city street. Or got your name on an electoral role anywhere.

You are being watched/listened to/tracked and potentially recorded all day every day by multiple devices. This isn't the 1980s and assuming you are even tangentially like an average person, if you really want to avoid this possibility, it will require a _massive_ change in your lifestyle.

I humbly suggest that a smart meter, which merely records the time of day you are using electricity, should be very low down the priority list of technology you need to rid yourself of/avoid.

I thought I should also comment further on this:

Firstly it's the state's responsibility to set sensible regulation and economic incentives/ disincentives and more importantly negotiate internationally to respond to climate change. Our current government have a dire record on this (something that is way more important than collectivity in individual action). Blaming individuals for regulatory failure is never a great look.

Yet I'd ask you: do smart meters really lead to as much C02 reduction as often claimed (compared to actual practical home changes that clearly do, like improving home insulation, a shift of home heating from gas boilers, lowering the thermostat a bit...., etc)?  It seems to me having a small amount of wasted electricity use just generates heat, which on a thermostat controlled house (for most of the year) just replaces energy use in heating systems (where still a majority are gas boiler based).

I'm aware  of articles like this but they seem to forget other contributing impacts (like a cost of living crisis forcing people to use less energy, that would have happened irrespective of having a Smart meter)

https://www.smart-energy.com/regional-news/europe-uk/gb-smart-meters-save-a...

And as I'm in a small block of flats, turning the washing machine on as people are trying to sleep would be downright anti-social.

There are two reasons given in this thread.  You don’t have to agree with them but they’re there.

• One is the inconvenience of a home visit.  That’s a personal judgement you can’t comment on except for yourself.
• One is the CNI attack risk.  That ship (however big or small it is) has now mostly sailed given the number installed, and I recognise I’m in a very small minority to believe this to be a worthy concern.

Doemstic batteries grind my gear from an economy perspective.  What they in effect do with our current grid mix is load shift CCGT output with round trip efficiency losses.  Sure, tariffs can incentivise it and make it a good deal for consumers, but battery balancing is better done from engineering, cost, safety and efficiency perspectives at more centralised sites.  

Plenty of people have solar/battery without smart meters.  A current clamp in the right place and you can load shift your solar energy.

Given the number of fires that occur in washers and dryers (due to the combination of electricity, water and vibration) this probably isn't a particularly sensible thing to do anyway.

However there are other off peak times.  British Gas at present is offering half price electricity on Sunday afternoons.  I'm curious as to why that period as surely a lot of ovens are on cooking a roast, but it clearly works for them.

True.  I doubt I would be happy to take a random day off for that unless my meter was scheduled for replacement anyway (they are replaced on a periodic basis regardless of smartness).

It's a valid concern, but it's only a small one.  If anything in my home was super-critical in terms of not losing power (e.g. I had a fridge containing diabetic insulin) I'd want a domestic generator or a chunky UPS, I'd not be specifically worrying about the means of the power going out, just mitigating for if it did.

This kind-of forgets EVs and their potential to be used in this way.  They can't be anywhere else.

Because operators of energy intensive plant at their workplace have Sundays off to enjoy their Sunday dinner 

They’re coming round next Wednesday to do ours…I’ll let you know how it goes.

Be great if you edit the thread title for us.

I haven’t represented my concerns well.  

The critical circuits in our house (lighting, refrigeration, boiler) run via an inline battery/solar system whose input can be switched to a genny installed in a shed.  Really paid for itself in the extended outage from storm Arwen when other people ended up spending multiple nights in hotels unable to heat or cook.  Me being me there’s a gas stove and a wood burner with a cooking ring too…

My concern is I don’t want to contribute to a system that can be used to collapse the power grid (as per dread-i’s post).  The number of reports of CNi intrusions recently in the US is alarming.  I assume more are known but not (yet) reported on and more still are unknown.  It’s a moral standout not a practical one.  As dumb meters enter the minority it looses its purpose…

I was talking about stationary batteries.  EVs are not equal, as their battery chemistry is optimised differently and heavy use as a stationary battery is bad for them.  Smart charging based on the supply mix of the grid and the driver’s needs is still a big advance.

Personally I'd rather have that money in a high(ish) interest account or an ISA, but each to their own.

My mother is 87 and had a smart meter fitted last year. Now she doesn't need to answer the door to a stranger with a badge wanting access to her house to read a meter.

Third point. Are you really important enough to be monitored?

The problem with smart meters is that the Nazis can see what gas you're using any time they like and it's impossible to suck it backwards with your hoover

It's not about you losing power. It's about destroying CNI by using load manipulation to overload distribution equipment.

I'll leave that (and any other matters of national security) up to the Government.

Remind me how that went with Covid in the critical first few months?

Any illusion I had that recent governments had my best interest at heart or that they paid appropriate attention to expert opinion has been thoroughly shattered.

Not exceptionally.  But nor can one person shouting about smart meters affect the macro picture.  Thus protecting yourself and your own interests is the only thing that makes sense.

What’re we doing in these forums except sharing our views?  

I’m under no illusion that sharing my view here will make a measurable difference, but it tends to elicit some knowledgable and - for me - interesting responses.  It also shows how some people will deny the possibility of a threat the experts recognise as tangible.  I find that interesting.

I know from various private messages that one person (me) shouting over Covid made a measurable difference including to private households, some businesses and a couple of healthcare and local authority settings.  But I also know that to do so took about 0.2 FTEs of work….

Bigger things looming to worry about than the power grid when it comes to that…

That's a strange comment, I'm perfectly able to budget using my normal bank account and don't need an app to do it for me, I suspect most of the users of this forum can do it too. 

Interesting, I didn't know that

I pay the same per unit as I would if I paid a fixed fee each month. We do have a DD set up but we give them a reading and they debit the actual and not the high side of theoretical split over 12 months. 

Why assume that? A lot of the tech you list might be part of a majority UK lifestyle, but it was never essential and was never adopted by the infosec-aware. Its incremental incroachment on every aspect of ordinary lives since the mid-90s hasn't been universal; we're an outlier in terms of how accepting we are of intrusions into privacy.

Britain is socially very keen on tech that isn't actually an improvement on existing systems for doing the same things. I'm not sure why this, given how socially conservative the population is.

@Heike: Having lived in Germany for a long time, I get your concern and, on matters of privacy, I listen to the German consensus much more attentively than I do the views of the British. I'm sorry you've received so many patronising and rude replies.

How?

Monzo is revolutionary to me.  It learns my spending and shows me where I am both in terms of "left to spend" and a spending rate graph.  It's so much better than Excel.

However it does work better with fixed monthly payments than variable ones.

In any case even with spreadsheets budgeting fixed amounts is easier than variable ones.

my view is that Scottish Power have got £920 of your money, I would want it back, even if its just to put into a high interest account. I would get a smart meter immediately and stop being paranoid about "them" watching your every move.

the thing most people want I think, and the current situation makes smart meters irrelevant, is fair standing charges

We've been told by our supplier the good news is that our energy costs should go down but the standing charges are going up - for people who try to be very economical this is a punishment

that's after being put into debit by surprise by hundreds of pounds for the switchover from being in credit of hundreds which mess we had to take the initiative to sort out.  More than half the time the flaming "smart" handset is suffering from signal dropout even though it is in the closest power socket to the electricity meter but is still separated by two thick stone walls. It's not as if I didn't have the foresight to warn them of this and say we'd have them as long as they worked.  I obviously lacked foresight when I trusted them to recognise this condition.

They and their products came out of the focken devil's anus

Apologies if you know all of this already...

In an ideal world, the standing charges should be the supplier's fixed costs for supplying you with whichever utility regardless of whether you use 1 kWh of energy or 100,000 kWh. These fixed costs depend on many things and it's quite likely that the recent high inflation has pushed a lot of these up, so an increase is not unexpected.

The unit rate should be the supplier's variable costs so you should pay double if you use 100 kWh rather than 50 kWh. The variable costs basically depend on the wholesale market price of energy which has certainly fallen since the horrendous peaks a while back, but what the costs actually are get complicated by things like the supplier buying ahead etc.

If the standing charges are set so that they're not expected to cover all of the fixed costs, then the rest will be recovered by increasing the unit price. This means that heavy users will be over-charged and will be subsidising light users.

Conversely, if the standing charges are expected to cover more than the fixed costs, then the unit price should (🤣🤣) be lower than necessary since it no longer needs to cover all the variable costs. And in this case the light users would be over-charged and would be subsidising heavy users.

The problem is that we as end users have no idea whether the energy suppliers have got the fixed/variable costing above correct, and in fact they can't get it right, they can only estimate (informed guess) what they think is going to happen with respect to costs and consumption. We also don't know if they're playing the game and overcharging as much as they can get away with.

The price cap stops any such exploitation over a certain amount, but it also encourages all suppliers to set their variable tariffs at or close to the price cap. After the spate of energy companies going bust, it would take a brave (or very financially secure) company to significantly drop its prices (i.e. reducing profit) to obtain greater market share.

So your complaint of "the standing charges are going up - for people who try to be very economical this is a punishment" would only be true if the fixed costs weren't going up (by a similar amount).

If (as you seem to be wanting) the standing charges remained the same but the fixed costs were going up then "people who try to be very economical" would likely be being subsidised by those who use more energy - would that be just?

Having said all of that, I'm still healthily sceptical about utility suppliers' charges - remembering that post privatisation, the suppliers' primary loyalty is to their shareholders.

Sounds like you've "agreed" a variable DD so you still get the slightly lower DD rates - best of both worlds.

One of the advantages is pay less in summer, but disadvantage is pay more in winter. People on a fixed salary often prefer fixed monthly costs; I'm totally guessing (and assuming) here, but as a business owner, you're probably more aware of income variations so have to keep a more significant "cash float" for your business, which may translate down to you making sure you're more able to adjust for personal expenditure fluctuations than most.

Not every supplier offers this but it does avoid the estimation if that's what you prefer.

I keep getting pestered to have one installed, despite living in an area with no mobile phone signal rendering the meter useless.

In my previous house they tried to bully me into taking a day off work to supervise the installation of a smart meter. I reminded them that I am the customer and that they work for me, not the other way around. I quoted them a figure that it would cost them for me to take a day off and asked them for payment in advance. The calls stopped.

That would seem desirable. Incentives to use less power are good for many reasons, and are one reason for the push to smart meters 

I know what you are saying but over the years the companies have really stepped up the proportion of what you pay that is fixed and yet we are still exposed to large fluctuations in energy costs.    It seems very much, from the consumer end, that it's heads we lose and tails the companies and shareholders win

Exactly that, I know what I earn, I know what I spend, I budget accordingly. We spend less on energy in the summer but more on going out, more in winter but less on going out, it all kinds of balances out.

I wouldn't mind paying a fixed DD if they were not so gready with it, last time we discussed it the number they set was about 50% than I actually pay per year. Sod that. 

The companies increase standing charges because the regulator lets them, because we all have to pay for the consequences of all those other companies that failed. They failed because the government allowed them in the market despite obviously poor resilience, sadly exposed by the crisis following the Ukrainian war. The result is the public pay a fortune for the consequences of a broken idea of markets. The whole thing would be way better off under state control.

Government dithering on failed markets on the railways have led to some disastrous performance faced by customers.

The whole charade is about to play out again in the water industry. Awful investment performance and profit gouging has put the infrastructure and environment at risk. Investment to rectify this is agreed by government and regulator. Hence investment will be made in the same incompetent and greedy companies and the customers will pay for it with higher bills.

Your information and logic is a bit twisted. Most of the standing charges you pay to your energy retailer are passed through to the DNO (district network operator) who own, invest in and maintain the local distribution network including your meter etc, and also to the National Grid. The energy retailers that went bust did so because they gambled on making a profit by guaranteeing a fixed price to you and buying from the electricity generators at variable market rates, which ended up being a lot more than they predicted. As in the news the electricity grid needs reinforcement which will be paid for by standing charges, which are generally calculated on the peak load you may require rather than average consumption. Your observation on water fixed charges may be true, but needed to replace crumbling Victorian infrastructure and upgrade inadequate sewerage treatment works. However unlike the electricity DNOs the water companies have paid excessive profits to themselves, parent companies and shareholders by underinvestment. This has been easier for them than the energy companies due to separation of generation, distribution and retailing of electricity.

I really don't see it as muddled in the slightest when the government and regulators allowed this and the very significant increases in standing charges (65% on average since 2019) that mostly arise from those companies that went  bust have been picked up by customers rather than government. My main concern is not an issue of private profits it's extra costs to customers because of government and regulatory failure.

It's argued this is yet another failure in regulation by some experts and providers

https://www.current-news.co.uk/energy-industry-unsurprised-at-ofgems-review.... 

Got to be honest I agree. 

I think I must have agreed to receive communications about it when I signed up for this contract, but the amount of cold calls about it - including waking me from much-needed sleep while recovering from a brain injury, for goodness' sake - has made me not want to get one. I'm sure they're fine, but the amount of pestering is definitely driving me in the opposite direction! 

Some serious paranoia up in here!

Are you saying you don't think the energy companies are are a collective of a far right authoritarian regimes that use militarism and violence to supress individual rights?

FIFY

Smart metering will help, albeit in a small way to reduce our dependence on them

Obviously there are huge advantages with having a smart meter, but one downside I believe (I’m sure I remember a heating engineer warning me about it) is that each energy company has its own type of meter, and if you ever want to change company there are quite complicated technical issues with changing over and installing a new meter system. So, by installing their own meter, the energy company has got more of a stranglehold over you. I don’t have a meter because there happen to be considerable complications with fitting one, owing to the mass of dfferent pipes that happen to be in the way under my kitchen sink on the inside wall of the only possible place that one could be fitted. I.e. it would be a major replumbing job which in turn would mean moving my washing machine, and probably having to rebuild all the kitchen units, position of sink, etc, on that side of my small (terraced cottage) kitchen.

That changed with the new generation of meters.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/smart-meters/#differentmodels

I have the old style smart meter. I had to change companies, all it means is it's used as a dumb meter instead. So there's no stranglehold over you.

Surely it goes wherever your current meter is?

He said there are pipes in the way that would need to be re-routed. Who in their right mind would plumb pipes over a meter though. They need a ticking off.

Can need quite a bit of room depends on current set up even without plumbing in the way. Not always a straight swap.

For example, my electric smart meter is about 3 times, or slightly more, longer, and slightly wider and deeper, than my old digital meter was. I knew there couldn’t be a straight swap just by looking at the free space having seen the size of the new smart meter online.

I therefore had to have some existing cabling rerouted, an electrical junction box resited, new longer meter tails and one Henley block shifted plus a new replacement Henley block fitted (don’t know what was wrong with the old one).

If any plumbing in addition to electrical cables, etc, are in the area it understandable there could be fitting problems.

I was told on the phone my smart meter would take an hour to fit, but with the extra work when seen it was about 2 hrs 15 mins. Must say the person that did the work was fantastic and did an excellent job all without any fuss or comment. A credit to his company.

There was a Ch5 program on at the end of Jan that is worth watching if it is available on My5 catch up (I don’t have that to check, sorry). Gave insights to both sides of debate. Title was something like Smart Meters - should you get one?

I got smart meters installed this year as I wanted a dual rate tariff.  Fortunately mine work well as far as connection to supplier.

The in home device (IHD) is only useful up to a point. Often the gas can’t connect (gas meter signals to electric meter which signals to IHD/supplier) and says I’m not using any gas when it is getting used. Catches up and so can show I used a day’s gas in just one hour; ok for supplier as they only need a daily reading.

With the electric the IHD is of limited use as it can only cope with one price and that was set to my old pre dual rate contract; can’t be updated apparently even to current day rate only. It does show the usage, instantaneous and half hourly, though the price is totally wrong so no good if anyone needed it for accurate budgeting. Also, summaries of past usage are just a pie chart with no amounts on the bars except just the highest day/week/month in the time period being displayed. A guess of other days/weeks/months is just made on the length of the line!

Unfortunately, my supplier doesn’t show a detailed breakdown either (though I understand you can get third party apps to give breakdown info, some at a cost others free).

Overall, I happy with smart meters so far (yes I still have reservations inline with things said here as well as many well published problems and concerns) as having an EV I have made huge savings on charging it at home (c/w public EV charge points /previous petrol car fuel costs) to accept it is what it is for convenience/savings/green shift, etc.

One concern, not mentioned here I think, is I can see some folk could go down a rabbit hole trying to reduce electric/gas usage to the detriment of their health. My IHD goes into the red just for normal electrical items like the kettle, oven, and washing machine. You have to remind yourself that it is only a temporary thing given that a kettle is not on for long, the oven and w machine’s demand is cyclical and they use little went up to temp, not heating water or whatever.

My 2p, but hope it is of some help here.

It’s an absolute mess under the kitchen sink - quite what its history is I’ve no idea. About a couple of years ago a guy came to fit a smart meter, took one glance at the present meter and undersink plumbing, and said it couldn’t be done. I think, though, I’ll try getting someone to have another look at it now.

There is a good reason why there is an active Facebook site named "We hate Scottish Power".

Their ability to sort problems rarely reaches competent, the front line staff on the telephone do their level best but there seems to be a totally useless structure behind them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9zqn77ezno

Yes a catalogue of nightmares recounted on the radio today. So much for there only being upsides to them.

I'm not sure how useful the headline is, my smart meter is one of the 'four million not working properly' but all it means is I have to send in meter readings by hand which is the same situation as I was in before so hardly a disaster.
If the criteria is a meter must automatically send the reading to the provider than all non-smart meters count as not working properly so whilst it's potentially useful to know this I'm not sure it's that useful to know in the context of comparing smart meters to non-smart meters.

What I'd really have liked to know before getting one

 - what's the network coverage like and what's the chance of getting a network connection

 - What's the chance of the electricity company cocking up the administration and billing me incorrectly

I was never that worried that the meter itself would register reading incorrectly but maybe I should have been, who knows!

As it turned out the electricity company paid me £30 for a missed installation appointment. I truly don't think they realised that their employee turned up, installed the meter but it just wouldn't connect.

If they don't work they just become dumb meters.  If you want a dumb meter, this isn't a problem.

This is all just tinfoil-hattery in my book.  Have one, have never had a problem with it.

I'm in the same boat. I would like a working one as it's useful but Octupus energy have no time for me

Just had ours fitted today.  Have photos of the before and after and all the readings of old and new meters.

Biggest worry is my power company screw up the billing after the switch over. Keeping everything crossed. 

The engineer showed us how get readings should we need to submit readings manually.

Hopefully we'll now be able to get some money back from our solar install now.  

Aye, keep us posted.

Steve

I'm slightly baffled by that explanation, (although I'm not an expert). According to that link, Smets 1 meters operate using 3G.

EE and Vodaphone (and all the suppliers that use them like BT, Plusnet, Asda etc) aim to have their 3G networks switched off by 'early' this year. Three by end of the year and O2 by 2025.

I don't see how they can change 3G meters to 4G remotely, as I believe the hardware is completely different, unless there's some wireless functionality which allows Smets1 to connect to the householders wifi.

Why you wouldn't have one? Because around 1 in 5 are faulty or do not work as they should, resulting in huge problems. Have you not seen the news reporting on this?

It's not that they are faulty as such. It's that they can't communicate with different energy suppliers. This has since been fixed.

And it doesn't prevent them from being a dumb meter anyway.

That sounds pretty faulty to me!

Good

Maybe

Crap design rather than faulty. It works as expected. It's just the expectations were set too low. So not a fault.

So it doesn't work as a smart meter and having the existing meter changed exposes you to electricity incompetence. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it is fine for everyone.

someone will be along nicely just now to cast "tinfoil" snowflake comments, ignoring people's experience of this technology not working or billing nightmares caused by it

I heard the BBC feature and they made the mistake of suggesting it was the old style meters that were proprietary to a particular supplier causing problems.  I can definitively say it is the newer ones that don't work properly as well.  I refused to have the older type and insisted I'd only think of having the newer type.

One of the major problems seems to be that the fitting technicians or their employers seem to have no concept of proving an installation is workable before it is "too late" and they have decommissioned the old one

I was offered a smart meter a couple of years back, agreed to it, the sparky came out and fitted it, couldn’t get it commissioned.  
 

Many frustrating phone calls with poor sods outwith the UK who have a script they can’t deviate from and don’t understand I live in a somewhat remote location, various texts, chat bot sessions etc and I have got precisely nowhere.  
 

At least I can still take a reading and send it in, although they only accept them every six months, which is a bit rubbish when usage varies.

I looked at this link and read about the Data Communications Company (DCC). Never heard of it before. They manage the telecomms behind the second generation smart meters.

https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/our-smart-network/

If you look at the link you will see an organisation chart (described as an ecosystem!). It is a mind boggling dog's breakfast of different parts and companies. Imagine the commercial wrangling that goes on between all these groups- and we're paying for it! 

You just might do one day…. Their ability to revoke security keys from the meters is a key part of a hypothetical attack that first opens the pre-pay mode disconnector then revokes all security keys denying further remote access.  At this point the meters are bricked and can only be physically serviced or replaced. 

Lot of electrocutions and fires due to people bypassing them before they can be fixed by the relevant people.

Quite aside from the inefficiency you note it’s an “all eggs in one basket” type of thing.  When you look at how the Iranian centrifuges were destroyed without anyone ever getting network access in you get a sense of how hard it is to protect a single critical site.

I’d be a *lot* more accepting of smart meters if they didn’t have the disconnection feature, or if it required a physical site visit by the supplier to remove a physical or digital interlock that is not networked.  There was a lot of mealy mouthed denial of this ability early on but a parliamentary report made it clear.  It’s not smart meters that make a massive vulnerability but the cost saving of eliminating physical meter changes to force people on to pre pay.  

I still expect to get a tin foil label from some over this, but I’m saddened to see it being used in response to genuine news stories of genuine examples of people having mega grief with billing when the meters don’t work as intended.

Maybe the Chinese could make themselves popular with the British public, whilst at the same time economically destroying our energy CNI, by knocking all our meter readings down...

The problem with the tin foil label nowadays is that its users are often unaware of its weaponization in contriving public consent. And the tech industry famously has major difficulties with the concept of consent.

Smart meters are, pretty much by definition, supposed to be adding some value (the adjective 'smart') to an existing infrastructural technology, the utilities meter. Where this falls down in the UK is that the public has to be actively persuaded to accept a transition from a secure public service technology that works for 100% of the population to an insecure one that does not. Masking some of that failure by dismissing scepticism as luddism is all too useful a commercial ploy.

In some ways this acceptance reflects our reluctant acceptance of degradation to public services generally, and the concomitant increase in inequality this brings. Some might actively welcome that inequality, in which case their acceptance is not reluctant but politically motivated.

But where it's specifically a case of introducing a layer of supposedly innovative technology on top of an already functional one, it seems to me that we are really not very capable of distinguishing between progressive tech, regressive tech, and rent-seeking/data-grabbing tech, irrespective of our political views. That might not matter so much where there's consumer choice, but when it comes to public services, coerced acceptance of inferior systems is never a promising sign.

Apologies, I haven't read the entire thread so this may have been covered. I finally succumbed to a smart meter being installed last summer as 1. I wondered whether they may charge for them one day, 2. I thought I might be able to make use of the cheaper tariffs at certain times of day and 3. I quite liked the idea of the smart monitor to track how much electricity some things (like dehumidifiers) actually use.

I responded to an email from British Gas which explained how smart monitors (not meters) saved money, had photos of them and even a video at how useful they were. After they installed the meter, they then told me they were no longer supplying the monitors. I've tried to address this by contacting them but they have given up responding to me - I probably should buy one but annoyed as they haven't followed up on their promise - has anyone else found this? They also told me my smart meter is working properly so I can't sign up to the half price offer they do on sundays (although it still seems to communicate a reading for my bill). I should just change provider. Any thoughts?

These stories are what puts me off getting one. Everything is fine now, why change it, that's my thinking

Uswitch have an app (Utrack) which you can link to your smart meter.  It gives good info on you usage with comparisons daily/weekly etc.  You can see how much you use clearly.

https://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/News/article/uswitch-launches-new-mobile-ap...

My experience was that my supplier emailed me a few times to get me to 'upgrade' to a smart meter. I decided it sounded reasonable although I couldn't see how it would save me energy. I agreed and arranged a date. I ended up having to take a whole day off work because they couldn't specify a time... The guy arrived, took one look at my electricity connection and said my supply was the wrong type but he would arrange for it to be changed. I never heard anymore about it but still get emails suggesting I change to a smart meter.

I like my smart meter. It just works. No more estimated bills or building up large credits or debits. Long term must save the cost of someone having to come round and read it.

I think once variable pricing becomes more widespread and if it is only available to those with a smart meter then there will be a clamour to get them fitted to take advantage of cheaper rates.

We've had the smart meters for a few days now. So far the in home display seems to be displaying sensible numbers. On sunny days our electricity use has been basically 0.0p (maybe 1 or 2p) as we've solar + battery so just the standing charge. The gas seems to be displaying sensible stuff too, just standing charge in the morning and some money gets added at night when we turn the heating on. 

Will still need to wait a few weeks to see if the billing side works but as (due to previous fights with power companies) I am payg without a direct debit even if they mess up I should be able to enter a manual reading. 

I'm well aware I pay a small amount more by not having a DD set up but being able to control what I pay and not having the worry they'll change it to something ludicrous is worth that extra expense. 

With octopus I can set the DD amount and request refunds of excess from within the app

Thanks, I've just had a go and it says they can only connect to in-house displays, not the smart meter itself but they say they are developing this.