to think Smart Meters are just an invasion of privacy?

[evrybuddy]

Just had a letter from NPower saying they want to install Smart Meters.

The basic premise seems to be they will collect all data on my gas and electric usage - and in exchange for that...

They will then tell me what my gas and electric usage is and when I'm using it!!!

And I can make of that what I will - and get up earlier and boil the kettle at a different time or get the kids up at 3 in the morning for cheap electric baths or whatever.... in other words I already live a way that suits me, at a gas and electric cost that suits me and I use gas and electric at times when I have to.

Okay, I understand that this may clear up the situation about the man living secretly in my loft and coming out when I go to work and watching TV infrot of the gas-fire all day...

Just what is the point of this huge endeavour?

Just more snooping or what?

Anybody rejected a meter?

The government does have a target to get every household in the UK on smart meters. They are, indeed, very handy, as people have said - they can help you control your usage by showing how much energy you're using. A lot of people are surprised to find how much more costly it is to use heat (e.g. irons, kettles, hairdryers) than light.

But I agree about the privacy aspect. Paul Mason has an article today in the Guardian about the drive to "smart cities" and the large-scale collection of data this will entail. Eventually the government will know everything about us, not only where we were at a certain time, which bus we travelled on, or when we went to the cashpoint, but even when we were in our own homes. "You said you were at home that night? Well, our records show you didn't use any electricity for six hours..."

And then there's the hacking aspect. That's not to be sneezed at either. Think of the opportunities all this electronic data gathering offers to terrorists.

Yip. The phrase "increasing the attack surface" is used by my friends in IT security. They're horrified at Smart Meters as currently proposed.

And they make their living from innovative IT products and services, so can hardly be described as cave-dwelling Luddites.

It is also not possible to run washing machines/dryers at night hecause this is dangerous and noisy

We're on economy 7 & the washing machine & dishwasher are set to come on after midnight.

Perfectly possible to use them at night.

Yes but in order to set them to run at night, you have to invest more money in the first place in order to get machines that are capable of doing that.

The last washer/dryer I had was poorly designed (couldn't remove fluff without taking top off machine which invalidated warrenty). It overheated. There is no way I would leave another dryer on unattended.
Also my cheap rate does not start at midnight - I dont want machines on at 2am!

Fire services recommend never using tumble dryers overnight: Fire Safety Advice Issued Following Increased Number of Tumble Dryer Fires. They're also not thrilled about washing machines and dishwashers being on overnight.

The cost of having your house catch fire in the night is not the sort of thing that appears on the balance sheet of the utility company. But it will be a cost of Smart Meters to the country if we do as the utility companies ask.

And of course potentially rather a high cost to the individual...

Of course, maybe in a full cost-benefit analysis, it benefits the population as a whole to do laundry overnight.

But no one's doing this cost-benefit analysis, because first of all they'd have to admit that increased fires are an expected cost.

We had no choice, they were in the house when we bought it because it's a new build.

It did alert me to the immersion heater, the builders helpfully left it on and it was firing several times during the day.

I chucked the monitor out ages ago when I swapped tariff.

It is happening whether you like it or not. You don't need to accept one, but if you don't the chances are that eventually you will end up on a higher tariff to reflect the additional costs involved in reading the meter/servicing etc.

Just to give another viewpoint...

I can understand concern around data protection, but there could be other benefits to having others be able to access your energy use data. EG you could be offered tariffs that help fit your lifestyle patterns, or even additional services like an alert system to tell you if an elderly relative hasn't made a cup of tea that morning or something. All this stuff is way in the future though.

Personally I'm pretty neutral on the whole thing, BUT if I was a pre-payment meter customer (or Pay as You Go as its now being called) then I would be desperate to get one. The option to pay online, via text, bank transfer, paypal whatever would be a huge bonus instead of having to trek to the shop every time I wanted to add credit.

I don't think that clip on meters that have been mentioned by pp actually monitor your energy costs in ££, just Kwh.

There haven't been significant savings in other European countries but in most cases consumers aren't provided with the energy display that UK consumers receive. Without this its difficult to monitor energy use.

I don't care if consumers refuse smart meters, as long as its an informed choice!

The technology is a fudged up mess of out dated, expensive nonsense. Cheaper, better and more secure technology arrived but the programme pressed forward regardless. It's a horrid mess that suppliers hate too.

I don't think that clip on meters that have been mentioned by pp actually monitor your energy costs in ££, just Kwh.

All the ones I've looked at do (including single-device plug-ins). You just enter the price rates.

I dont want machines on at 2am!

TBH, that's your choice. Every washing machine built for the past 10 years has a delay function. When ours comes on at 02:00 we're all so deeply asleep that no-one hears it. Same with the dishwasher.

I'd rather we didn't have Economy 7 as it restricts the tarifs we can get, but if we do have it, I'm sure as hell going to try to get some use out of it despite the savings being in the realms of pence rather than pounds...

We have also received a letter from npower and will be sending them a Notice of Non Consent which I found on this site:

stopsmartmeters.org.uk/

I think the content of the Notice is pretty self-explanatory as to why we don't want one!

It's not just the bills going up and the invasion of privacy/able to be hacked by anyone, but also the health problems that so many in the US & Australia have experienced since they rolled these meters out en masse. Here's just one link of many I've found:

emfsafetynetwork.org/smart-meters/smart-meter-health-complaints/

Those of you arguing that smart meters will allow energy companies to switch supply off at will - you do know that they can already do that, right? Technically they have the power (no pun intended) to do so.

I'm incredibly sceptical of the "health issues" argument too. SMs run on a similar frequency to baby monitors and wifi routers. Unless you're refusing to have them in your house as well then it's a poor argument.

We've had one a while and there are problems with its functionality. Something to do with the software provider the energy supplier uses. When it does work it is handy though.

Bottom line: you don't have to have one. If you don't want one, don't have one!

The idea that the government could tell when I was or wasn't at home and then use that against me is very worrying. Your IT mates are right it gives hackers another way into your life, and the entire idea is a badly thought out one. There are bemefits but not enough to make me want one.

Just looked at my washing machine. It doesn't have a delay function. I bought it less than a year ago so in no hurry to replace. So I couldnt have my machibe on at 2am without being up to put it on. I think it is dangerous though

To disconnect your house's supply at the moment, the energy company has to show evidence and get a warrant from a magistrate to enter your premises.

They have to physically visit the premises, at which point they are likely to discover if the occupant is in fact a vulnerable person whom they are not permitted to disconnect and should in fact have been on one of the assistance schemes, like this chap: British Gas apologises to man who spent winter without gas.

And it costs them to do it, so it focuses their minds on not getting it wrong.

With Smart Meters, all the above disappears.

Because they don't need to access your property, the magistrate drops out of the loop. If you dispute a £????????? bonkers bill, they can just reprogram your meter to be a prepayment meter and load the disputed debt on it. You can continue to dispute it, but they'll continue to take your money.

And they can do it by accident, software failure, or just inappropriately.

British Gas were not permitted to cut off that learning-disabled chap above - they just installed a prepayment meter he didn't understand and washed their hands of the matter when no gas went to that property.

In fact, BG weren't permitted to install that prepayment meter in the first place, as it was inappropriate for that vulnerable customer. But they did it anyway. This is only going to get worse once it becomes cheap, easy and even accidental to switch a meter to prepay, and no one is required to visit the premises.

Tianc they'd only find out you were vulnerable if you were at the property though, wouldn't they? If you weren't in they'd still just fit the meter anyway.

And with a physical visit you'd end up with a load of charges on top of the bill for the cost of the visit, warrant etc.

Like I said above - you don't have to have a smart meter. They're not compulsory.

Just out of interest, do you have a mobile phone? Because mobile phones collect data in much the same way that energy companies could with a smart meter.

I can think of a few people who need to have their energy supply reduced because they are idiots who use way too much.

Gas is a finite resource and gas hobs are not meant to be used as heaters

The number of errors, and the ease with which they make them, is likely to shoot up once the switch-over can physically happen without a visit to the property and the other layers of authorisation.

There are various bits in the regulations about what the companies ought to do regarding switching a Smart Meter to prepay, to protect vulnerable people. But energy companies are not exactly famous for following the regulations, or for not making errors - or for admitting and correcting errors once made.

Nope, I don't have a smart phone. If I ever did need one, I would switch off a lot of location tracking, etc. Because I'm quite picky about my data.

And I'm not sure why you feel that using the same technical method (phone tech) to collect an entirely different set of personal data (home appliance usage and occupancy) somehow makes that personal data OK to collect?

Just coming back to an earlier point you mentioned Tianc - surely the number of disputed bills etc will go down with smart meters. There'd be no need for estimated bills as usage can be more easily defined.

And you don't need a smart phone for mobile phone companies to collect data and track your location. I'm not saying it's right, just that it is something that happens. You make a phone call, send a text, it's all data that's collected. Your approximate location can be defined by your nearest phone mast. Your call history and text messages can be accessed by government/police if needed.

Also for anyone worried about the government/energy companies being able to see whether they're at home - you do have control over how often the data from your smart meter is collected. You can opt for it only being monthly if you so wish.

And re hacking, the encryption used is on par (or better!) than that used by the banking industry. If you're not worried about online banking then I wouldn't be worried about this tbh.

Accessed by police/govt with a warrant which defines time and scope, and for which they can show due cause.

Hell, the police can batter my door down if they have a warrant or meet other specific criteria.

But most of us go our entire lives without that happening.

So, quite a difference between that and collection of personal data on a massive scale by commercial companies.

And here's another thing. Since when was me making a cup of tea, data? At the moment it isn't. I make the tea, I drink the tea, at the end of a month I pay a bill, event over.

My daily activities aren't data. But once a finely grained Smart Meter is installed, they will be. And once the company has created that data, it would be shame not to use it. There's now a whole industry called Big Data whose aim is to turn our personal data into profit for companies - and anyone else who gets their hands on it like a 15 year old in N Ireland.

We don't actually know where this is going, because we've never lived in an era where this much tracking was possible. And possible by so many entities, not just paranoid states spending a ridiculous proportion of GDP on it (East Germany, I'm looking at you).

It will certainly make life interesting.

I'm going to resist one as long as I can. I'm already energy aware and use as little as possible. I don't usually get all 'tin foil hat' about things but this unsettles me a bit.

As for no arguments about estimated bills, these have already been replaced in some countries by arguments about Smart Meter malfunction.

The difference being, if it's merely an argument about an estimate, this can be resolved by someone taking the actual reading. You know, like when I were a lass.

An argument about a malfunctioning meter is much harder to resolve. The more complex the metering (eg Time of Use), the harder to deal with.

And in particular, history shows us that companies whose business model depends on a specific expensive technology, that would cost zillions to replace, tend to claim that technology never suffers errors and defend it to the death.

It's now come out that for decades, there were indeed phantom withdrawals from cash machines. But the banks denied, denied, denied and the consumer took the loss every time.

Similarly, the Post Office denied, denied, denied there could be problems with its Horizon software, and jailed subpostmasters on the back of this. When the independent report it commissioned said, actually there are errors, the PO stuck its fingers in its ears and went "Lalala".

Smart Meters tick all the boxes for high dependence of business model, expense of mass replacement, complexity of system - oh, and power imbalance between provider and individual user - so we would expect to see similar issues arise.