Ed
Most people don?t realise that the main purposes of smart meters include:
a) to charge higher prices at peak times and cause localised power cuts within the house
b) to enable utility companies to effectively cut customers off without going through the current check and justification mechanism of a magistrate?s court.
Purpose (a) is because the Dept for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have decided to manage falling generation capacity by rationing power, rather than increasing capacity. But instead of using a per capita method of rationing, as with food during WWII, DECC has plumped for pure ability-to-pay.
The rich will continue using what they like when they like; the poor will face unaffordable prices at peak times, and localised power cuts switching off their freezer and washing machine. The working poor ? Clegg?s ?alarm clock Britain? - will be disproportionately impacted, as they have little choice about when to shower, cook, dry clothes, etc.
Why has there been no national debate about this?
Obviously the utility companies are delighted at being able to pass on peak prices, instead of averaging as now. It dumps their commercial risk onto the individual customer.
It?s less clear why DECC are supporting this method.
But then this is the same DECC which allows utility companies to charge more for the first so-many units and then discounts on the excess. Which is jolly nice in commercial terms of competing for high-usage customers, but has no place in reducing overall consumption.
Which brings me to (b). And indeed all the other lovely things packaged with Smart Meters to benefit the utility companies but which put customers at risk.
Like the facility to reprogram Smart Meters remotely, via internet and mobile phone technology.
Utility companies will be able to reprogram Smart Meters into prepayment meters, or cut supply completely, or restrict it to a trickle, without having to access the premises ? and therefore without asking permission from the customer or satisfying a magistrate.
They?ll promise not to be naughty, of course, but their track record isn?t convincing (utility co takes £854 out of a MNer?s account in breach of direct debit regulations and another doesn?t even know what meters are at MNer?s address. And these are hardly unusual.)
But this pales in comparison to the risk to critical national infrastructure of remote reprogramming, which makes every Smart Meter in the country vulnerable to everything from software-update failure a la NatWest, to Chinese state hackers. The government?s own Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure has warned continually about this.
There?s also the little matter of privacy, which I won?t try to cram in here. (See previous thread with detail and links to DECC documents and cybersecurity analyses: Anyone having a gas/leccy meter replaced with a Smart Meter? Something you need to know. )
Smart Meters, of a rather safer kind, could potentially have a role to play in reducing carbon footprint. and there is a valid discussion to be had about how we as a nation wish to ration essential goods like power.
But the Smart Meter package as currently envisaged is primarily about utility companies? bottom line, using DECC?s green agenda as cover. Why on earth are you playing along with this?