Smart meters

[ioioitsoff]

I posted this in property but got no replies, sorry it's dull.

Wibu to get a smart meter? What are the pros and cons and will they need to come in my house to do it? The meters are outside.

I don’t see the point. You know leaving lights on etc use energy. I refuse to have one as the current ones don’t work if you change supplier which I do regularly. I also know someone who had no power for 4 days due to the workman making a balls up.

@ioioitsoff
each to their own, but I had one - major supplier. they still couldnt get my readings right! It was online! I learned that my kettle use energy... otherwise I didnt see the point. I wanted to avoid getting any meter reader personnel into my house so I thought, yeah - great idea! but when it does not read properly?
I honestly cannot see my personal benefit (some says that Providers can predict the usage by having monitors out - my concern is, that if this day and age a Provider cannot monitor a pipeline, there is something seriously wrong!)

and as @likethebattle said, I change providers frequently, some has it some doesnt. I am happy without having one.

I see no benefit to the consumer.

Only benefit is to the company. My supplier already charges a much higher rate for peak time consumption on one of its tariffs.

That'll become the norm when enough of the country have been conned into getting one. They are still not all transferable between suppliers yet either.

We have almost halved our electricity bill since we got a smart meter. Not because it does anything clever, but because there's a little display in the kitchen that says how much £££ per hour we're spending on electricity the whole time. Means we make a huge effort to switch stuff off, not to reboil the kettle etc, and to use things at cheaper times.

And yes, the latest ones (SMETS2 I think) can be transferred between suppliers.

I got one a couple of years ago...
I never look at it.

it does need dusting occasionally so I suppose there has been a slight change in my life..

Smart meters record data. This data will be sold to the highest bidder. The business model of the "energy supplier" will be based on the sale of this data, the actual cost of supplying your energy will be treated as a business overhead.

I never look at my smart meters. But I can top them up via an app on my phone which I couldn't do before.

Late breakfast, you could have halved your bill without one.

They have had billions spent on them for no reason. I hate the concept but truly hate the patronising wanky adverts on radio for them.

We had one fitted recently and what’s it done, apart from never having to do meter readings, is just made me more aware of the gas and electricity that we actually use. We’ve not reduced use particularly but now I can see the spike I tend to boil the kettle and make tea where sometimes I would have boiled it 3 or 4 times before I actually bothered. I use my slow cooker now rather than the oven for stews and things that take a long time to cook. The tumble dryer is also quite expensive so I’m drying things on the airer for a while first where I probably wouldn’t have bothered before.

I’m not so worried about lights though as they seem pretty reasonable (mostly led) and the fans in the kids bedrooms don’t actually cost much so I’m less fussed about them now.

Sure I could have halved my bill without one, but I never did. Now I'm prompted to go switch something off each time I walk past it. I don't get the secrecy either - my phone company knows how long I've spent on the phone - and when , and my ISP knows how many MB I've downloaded. So do Sky, Netflix and a host of others. Why should electricity be any different?

I had one fitted last week.
Am interested in what I'm spending,though yesterday I over did it with the heating and the display showed £4.78 at the end of the day. Going to watch my spending!
Though I may get bored and hide it away as it does make you more obsessed

There is no benefit to the consumer and you can't always take them to other suppliers. It depends which phase they instal.
The gov want us all to have them asap, so they can monitor our usage at certain times, and put prices up for peak times.
Thanks to all those who volunteered to have them.
You're pretty dense if you need equipment to tell you what you are using.

Maybe I dont have smart meters. If I di I wouldn't have a clue how to see how much electricity the kettle used or any of that other stuff.

I'd actually like to see how much electricity Alexa and the smart bulbs use.

I have some friends who got one fitted, they then started going out for dinner more to save the electric cooking.. figure that one out

Not much support for them then ?! I can't see it'd make me cut my bill much anyway as about all I could cut down on is things like charging devices that the teenagers use and it'd take a dictator stronger person than me to reduce that.

I just got an unexpected £250 bill and I’m now 170 in debit where normally my useage is £30 a month and I’m always in credit. I just agreed to have one fitted as this winter I made some changes hoping to save electricity and I think one or more of my changes may not be as cost effective as is hoped. It will be useful to see what is it isn’t as energy saving as I thought it might be

We’ve had three different suppliers since ours was fitted four years ago, so it’s been useless. Mind you, it didn’t work from the day it was installed, even with a booster.

The advert with Maxine Peake gives me the rage. Until they are reliable and universal, I won’t be bothering again.

Like people have said, you know when you're using electricity or gas. You don't need a gadget to tell you that!

Depends what kind of person you are. I never wanted a smart meter but DH was working from home when the gas engineer came to service our boiler and he was persuaded to sign up for one. I tend to get quite anxious about money so I'd spend a lot of time fretting about usage I when I couldn't reasonably cut down on it to any significant degree.
DH has tucked it away in a high cupboard now so I have to make an effort to look at it, which is much better for me. Oh, and I don't have to send monthly readings, but tbh that wasn't any hassle in the first place.

My meters are both in really inconvenient places, so not having to have them read makes my smart meters worth it for me. The display thingy is in a drawer somewhere, I couldn't see the point of it.

The fact that they seem so obsessed with me having a smart meter that they offer it me for free and keep making appointments for me that I haven't asked for makes me fairly confident that it's completely for their benefit, not mine.

I had a bill for over £300 because of their estimated vs actual. I didn't realise they hadn't read my meter for almost 3 years. We both were working full time so just assumed that if one of us hadn't seen the meter man the other one had. Turns out they only came during office hours when nobody was here. And apparently it is your responsibility to give a meter reading not your supplier if you are not in when they come. 🤷‍♀️ Smart meter has eliminated that.

Our display also lives in a draw.

@DickKerrLadies

It's for the government's benefit. The government have threatened the energy companies with fines in the millions if they don't roll out smart meters asap.

It was ordered before anyone was ready with the right technology hense the nonsense with smets 1 and 2.

Fwiw smets 1 will be readable and transferable between suppliers and soon as the DCC is up and running (Data Communications Company) who are an independent government body who will poll and store all the usage and reading data from all these smart meters and THEY will sell the data. Not the suppliers.