Do I need a Smart Meter?

[LucilleBluth]

I've just switched to British Gas and they're telling me that to get the cheapest tariff I need a smart meter.

I don't like the idea....am I being a Luddite?

Wow, thank you Webuiltthisbuffet I hadn't thought of that at all regarding internet usage.
gamerchick
Spot on. Thinking a tory government will do anything for the people without it benefitting them,now that really is tin foil hat stuff!
If something is government supported or sponsored by a tory government you can bet the last peoples interests it's done in is the general public's.

It was actually Labour who began the smart meter roll out in 2008 with their Energy Act 2008, and it was Labour who set the 2020 deadline.

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-8119

My DH works in power generation and has said exactly what webuiltthisbuffet has said - every single point. So we're not getting one ever!

God, mumsnet blame the Tories for everything. It was LABOUR who started it. Get your facts right or you just look stupid.

@Paddingtonthebear we're with Bulb but were never asked if we wanted a start meter do we don't have one. It was one of the reasons we went with them! Did they make you have one? I put my data online each month

I did this detailed thread about Smart Meters a few years ago:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/other_subjects/1327330-Anyone-having-a-gas-leccy-meter-replaced-with-a-Smart-Meter-Something-you-need-to-know

Some things have moved on, but the basics haven't changed.

What's more, we now have plenty of experience of mega-hacks and accidental IT failures, from the Wannacry attack which nearly took out the NHS to the IT-update failures which have grounded planes and frozen banks.

All this coming soon to the vulnerable piece of needlessly high tech in your meter cupboard.

Actually there's already been a MNer whose smart meter tech has frozen.

The utility company made a software update which broke a lot of the equipment it had issued, and she could no longer read her credit or – more importantly – put more on it.

Fortunately the part the utility company broke was the handheld In-Home Display, so they were able to post out replacements (depending on how soon they could get in the stock). Imagine if it had been the fitted Smart Meter box, wired into your mains, that needed an engineer to visit every single house the update had messed up?

It was particularly unimpressive that the guy hired by British Gas to be in charge of Smart Meters didn't know what some very basic, widely-used technical terms meant.

He didn't even have the nous to ask his staff, or you know, google.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_q_and_a/1857299-Have-you-got-a-question-about-smart-meters-Post-your-questions-to-Paul-Nickson-Commercial-Director-of-British-Gas-Smart-Metering-and-youll-be-entered-into-a-draw-to-win-100-voucher-for-John-Lewis-ANSWERS-BACK

Smart meter too easy to tamper with or break.

Not for me.

I’m genuinely baffled why so many people are against them

Really? Yet here is an entire thread explaining why.

EON were sneaky and didn't tell us we had agreed to a Smart Meter in the small print. Only when they breezily called to make an appointment did I find out. They were swiftly told they had no permission to enter the grounds of my home and thankfully that was enough to keep them away. Moral is, if changing supplier always check it's not in the small print.

As for technology, my home is pretty smart. I'm no luddite. The heating is smart, the lighting is smart. The meter I'd just like to tick away normally as it's always done thank you.

I like my Smart Meter. I do think it's a shame that the meters aren't universal so if I swap suppliers, then I lose the nice meter that I have. But I think it's great in that your actual consumption is sent in real time, every day, to the provider, you can see how you can make savings, you can see that doing a massive roast on a regular basis costs money. You can turn things off and see your bills reduce. And you don't have to get a chair out, find a torch, balance and read the meter that's installed by the ceiling in a dark corner of the house.

I enjoy using my energy app on my phone to see my consumption. I am reassured that I won't have massive deficits or credits on my account and that everything is paid for. I just wish the meters were universal, regardless of supplier.

Smart meters just send your readings to your supplier each month. The suppliers can then purchase wholesale energy more effectively, meaning it can be generated more efficiently.
At the moment energy suppliers have to purchase energy a year in advance and have no idea how much anyone is using, which is uneconomical.
If you read your meter all the time and know about energy efficiency, you probably won't benefit that much but you're also not the target market. You lose nothing (conspiracy theories aside) and have already paid for the smart meter through your bills whether you like it or not.

Smart meters just send your readings to your supplier each month

No, they don't just do that!

If this was all they did, there wouldn't be a problem!

@chipsydisco“The suppliers can then purchase wholesale energy more effectively, meaning it can be generated more efficiently.
At the moment energy suppliers have to purchase energy a year in advance and have no idea how much anyone is using, which is uneconomical.”

🤣 no, generation or production of energy the same with or without smart meter. Smart meter just mean supplier can buy cheaper at next day or next month rate instead of next season rate. It so energy company can make more money.

@chipsydisco you are a marketing dream.

@Tianc there isn't a problem, that's my whole point. Anything a smart meter might be able to do in future will be a consumer choice and will be incentivised through tariffs.

@Azeema at the moment, energy production is the same regardless of whether anyone actually uses it, and because it's difficult to store then that's inefficient.

The energy network is hundreds of years old and needs upgrading. Finally the government (not a political party, but the actual government) gets around to doing it and all the conspiracy theories start.
I'm not claiming that it's been well-organised or gone completely over budget and that energy companies are angels and aren't trying to increase their profits, but the underlying reason the government wants to do this is, essentially, to bring the energy industry into the 21st century. You know, like mobile phones and the Internet and all that.

@Mandalorian, PM me to discuss rates

You can be smarter than a smart meter. If you aint using it, switch it off. I dont have one, won’t have one.

The government has set targets for smart meter penetration because they don't want the public spending more money than they have to as gas and electricity prices continue to rise
Priceless

The meters now being rolled out should all be METS2 which are compatible with any supplier. Though I wouldn't be surprised if older METS1 ones which are only compatible with one supplier are still being fitted 'by mistake'. I've been turning those down for years.

I've not got one but my work now offer a day's leave for waiting in for one to be fitted, so I might soon! I'd be more averse if I had a pre-pay meter as there's more scope for things to go wrong, but I'm quite up for avoiding having to read both meters and log into my account and enter the numbers each month. I'd also be up for using more electricity at cheaper times - my washing machine has a delay function and we are often up at odd hours anyway. Making the Grid more efficient and resilient is a good thing.

As we found from the recent power cuts, our electricity generation is on the edge. Demand constantly increases and as we all get pushed to electric cars there will not be enough capacity at peak times.
Smart meters will allow suppliers to charge us different rates according to the demand. So the price will be higher during the day and less at night. If you get home in the evening, switch on all your appliances and charge the car you will be hit with a much higher rate.
That's why the smart meters are needed.
If you hold out against smart meters you will eventually be told that you are on the highest rate 24 hours a day.

DH agreed to get them installed without telling me. There was no faff and they came and did their thing fairly quickly and left. So far we have had no problems and we have enjoyed the bribe a lot. The benefits for the companies is something they will gain later on. Short term I'm enjoying myself, but to be honest, I only found out about it when the gas man was changing the meter. Dh said suprise we will get cheaper energy.

Anything a smart meter might be able to do in future will be a consumer choice and will be incentivised through tariffs.

If you hold out against smart meters you will eventually be told that you are on the highest rate 24 hours a day.

These two posts sum up the intention of smart meters.

The government plan (enthusiastically supported by the electricity companies) is to introduce peak-time charging. This will certainly be in the evenings when you've just got in from work, but may also be when the wind doesn't blow.

Economy 7 already exists, but has comparatively low take-up because most consumers don't choose it.

The same technology could already be used to offer skyhigh pricing 6 pm to 11 pm with a lower price at other times. We don't see that tariff being offered by most companies (I think one might), because most consumers wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

It would also be electoral suicide for most political parties at the polls.

So that very same pricing structure is going to be introduced through the back door.

Instead of having an engineer come to your house to fit a special Economy 7 meter, s/he fits a Smart Meter. No change for you, right?

Then, instead of offering you a peak time price, the utility company offers you an off-peak discount (because the Smart Meter now tells them how much electricity at each exact time of day). Nice for you, right?

Then the price of the "normal" supply goes up and up and up, while the "discount" looks less and less like a discount, and more like what you were paying all along.

And when you turn round and say, "Hey, you just put us on an evening peak tariff and we can't afford to cook dinner and wash the kids clothes in this working-poor household ", the company will turn round and say, "But that was your consumer choice. We haven't done anything: you chose to pay peak pricing."

As we found from the recent power cuts, our electricity generation is on the edge. Demand constantly increases and as we all get pushed to electric cars there will not be enough capacity at peak times.

And here's another thing.

The government knows fine well that it will have to increase total electricity generation to accommodate the electric cars that it also wants.

Given this, Smart Meters are not going to solve the UK's generation problems by shunting dinner-cooking from evening to during the day.

What shunting the dinner-cooking around might do – at immense inconvenience to the population – is reduce peak demand in the evenings.

But. And here's the biggy. Once electric car use has expanded, the least disruptive thing to shift the time of will be ELECTRIC CAR RECHARGING.

I think we're absolutely shooting ourselves in the foot using Smart Meters and Smart Sockets to mess with moving machinery like washing machines or delicate electronics which can be easily crashed or hacked. (That's before even mentioning the increased fire risks of pushing more washer/dryer/dishwasher usage to overnight.)

Because IIUC the car-charging ports will need new wiring and separate sockets anyway. These could be made the only outlets with the Time of Use pricing.

A battery is relatively insensitive and doesn't care if the charger's power cuts off for 10 mins; a washing machine or electric shower or router does.

A battery cannot easily be crashed, hacked or hijacked to perform other functions. It doesn't carry any data (unless that's foolishly been added as a surveillance function).

And a battery is relatively portable and removeable. It can easily be lifted out and replaced if a hacker does somehow manage to fry it, or it can be easily carried to a different charging port if the (separate, safely quarantined) circuit it was charging on is somehow hacked.

Once the electric car usage of the country is high enough, car charging can act as a massive smoothing factor in electricity consumption.

But oh no, let's have working households turn off their fecking cookers in the evenings...

If you hold out against smart meters you will eventually be told that you are on the highest rate 24 hours a day.

Actually if we all hold out against smart meters, a specifically peak time price is less likely to be introduced because it will appear as an across-the-board increase, which will be political death.

This is why the government is so desperate to get high smart-meter penetration. So it can pretend the peak-time price doesn't affect the majority of people – it's a luxury "choice" by those who "choose" to pay it.

I read the early DECC documents. They go on about how they won't activate all the features at once, because "consumer confidence in smart meters must be maintained" until they've rolled out so many there's no going back.