Smart meters, are they that bad?

[BrendasUmbrella]

British Gas phoned today and told me that my gas meter is reaching the end of its life and they will be coming out next month to switch both meters over to smart meters. If I want regular meters I will have to pay a fee of £120-180 for installation.

I went online to read up on smart meters and apparently they will drain my bank account while frying my family's bodies with radiation and allowing the government to switch off my supply whenever they feel like it

It looks like I'm getting them anyway! Does anyone think they're a good thing?

I like them personally, but it seems I’m in the minority! I like to be able to see instantly what is using a lot of energy in my house, and to be able to see how much I’m spending daily. I have never felt it is intrusive (like Alexa...). I can’t personally see a downside to them, but I’m sure others will disagree.

I don't mind my smart meter. I can see what I'm using etc. Although tbh a lot of the time I just ignore the meter like i would any gas/electric meter. I dont have to take meter readings etc which makes bills simpler. I haven't seen an increase in bills or anything.

I like mine, it makes me very aware of what I’m using and I try and cut down. It was free to get installed though.

I find ours very useful that I can top up online if needed. I haven't found them to cost more than our key meters

I always liked the idea of smart meter, but the current ones go dumb when you switch. I cannot see the point of that. We switch nearly every year.
We also travel all the time and hate the idea if people knowing we are away.

Make sure it's a 2nd generation one that doesn't go dumb when switching supplier (SMet2 or something)

I have asked for second generation both from Edf and British Gas and they both said no. It was a couple of months ago though.

Smart meters are fine. They only pass on readings, they don't allow the provider any active control. If you don't want them to do that, pop a metal box over the sender unit to block it.

British gas fitted ours. It stopped working about 3 months in but we were unaware. It then meant our bill was estimated for 9 months.

When I complained their attitude was pretty much 'yeah they break a lot and there's not much we can do'.

I've had them for years. At first I had the little display thing out, but it wasn't telling me anything I didn't know (using appliances costs money - who knew???) so I unplugged it and stuck it in a drawer.

To me the advantage is that they don't need to come and read my meters, both of which are in ridiculous places and involve moving lots of stuff out of the way - I get accurate bills with no disruption. They're worth it for that to me.

Smart meters are for the benefit of your energy supplier, they provide no benefit to you as a consumer.

There is very little profit in energy supply, once ongoing maintenance costs are deducted it's virtually a zero sum game. What smart meters do is allow the energy suppliers to access real time user data. This could in theory allow the national grid to better anticipate demand and therefore free up capacity across the network. This would potentially allow for reduced maintenance and supply costs, thereby increasing the profits for the utility companies.

However, the reality is that the above is just the PR sales pitch. There is enough historical data available to extrapolate reasonably accurate usage patterns. The real profit for the providers will be in the sale of customer data. There are various organisations and agencies who will pay serious money to access this information.
Insurance companies would be able to prove a house was unoccupied when assessing claims, the council would be able to see how often a second home was used for tax purposes. The police would potentially find this information useful when investigating crimes, DWP for benefit fraud. There is a virtually endless pool of customers for the energy suppliers to see the data to.

This is the real purpose. Your friendly local green energy supplier will just be a data bank, selling information for profit.

Exactly what Newoneonherr says.

It provides useful information about when your house is unoccupied, based on you energy usage. Would you want that information to be made available to people or companies that you have no say in?

What Newoneonherr says. We won't have one.

As far as I know there are no serious issues other than the privacy concerns. The first generation smart meters have a habit of "going dumb" when you switch supplier - and some of the suppliers have stockpiles of these ones that they're trying to shift. Then again, if you don't like the idea of a smart meter, maybe that's not such a bad thing!

There have been reports of inaccurate displays. The meter still measures the units correctly, but a bug causes it to show the wrong price. Your actual bill is calculated correctly but it can cause confusion.

Are you sure it was them and not a scam?

I've had one for a few years. The benefit to me is that I don't have to read the meter. I know that if the shower, kettle, toaster and tv is on and the fridge and the freezer kick in at the same time it shows red. So how are you supposed to manage it all in the morning? I have switched suppliers and they come along after a couple of weeks and swop the meter.

I have one for my prepay gas and electric metre, I like that it is somewhere I can see at a glance instead of going into cupboards/outside to see what I have left. I also prefer that I can top up online now, in my last house with prepay metres it was the old key system which was a pain having to go to the shop to top up or running out etc

Like Pinkflipflop ours was broken for months and the company pretty much just shrugged their shoulders. It took many more months after we knew about the problem to get it fixed because they couldn’t make appointments in advance, apparently couldn’t contact us by phone or email, couldn’t speak to me because I wasn’t the first name on the account, etc, etc. Still in dispute (or we would be if I had the energy).

We’ve had one for four and a half years. It’s never worked, despite fitting a booster signal after a short while. Ovo fitted it and still call to read the meter, despite us having changed suppliers at least twice since then.

if the ads are right and our electricity consumption will double in a few decades we are quite screwed. With the greenwash stopping nuclear, climate change stopping coal and gas and wind being useless, we WILL get managed demand and power cuts and that is what smart meters are for.

Standard meters don't reach end of life unless they fail. Smart meter installation is not yet mandatory. BG are lying to you. Change supplier, they are usually expensive anyway.

I’ve got a first gen, I switch every year so it’s dumb now.

Maybe not the point but surely the government could switch off your supply if they wanted to, whatever sort of meter you have? Why they would ever want to is another matter.

The radiation emitted by smart meters is less than that emitted by a phone or wifi router, so unless you also avoid those then I dont see any heed to avoid a meter.

I don't really have an opinion either way. We dont have a smart meter because our meter is in a metal box so the radio signals wouldnt be able to get through.

'they' will want to because by the time your kids are in their 30s, we won't have enough generating power.

I've literally just today arranged to have one fitted. Im sick to death of having to scrabble around under the stairs moving all the toys and what not to get a meter reading.