Octopus Meter upgrade

[JerkintheMerkin]

I've just received an email to say that my meters actually need upgrading. Admittedly they are pretty old but Octopus have said traditional meters aren't readily available so would install smart meters. Should I go for smart meters or is this a stealth way of forcing them onto people?

@hannahcolobus thanks for this information.

We’ve just had a smart meter and it doesn’t save any money per se, but it does mean that you monitor usage and spikes. We noticed we were using electricity overnight and traced it to the hot water being on unnecessarily.

Keep in mind a smart meters can be put to prepay or cutoff remotely.

We are with Octopus and have smart meters. We have an electric car and also a backup battery to power the house and so can have the EV tariff. We are on Octopus Go. Consequently we can charge the car and the house battery on cheap rate (7.5p per kWh at the moment). So we rarely spend more than 7.5p per kWh and our bills are not high. Couldn't do that without the smart meters!

I think this is by far the biggest risk to getting one, and I can find nothing reassuring to indicate they won't be used to perform managed blackouts at some point in the near future when we inevitably run out of generation capacity, or used to implement punitive costs at peak times, like the Triad warnings/system currently used in industry/offices where electricity rates are like 100x for a few hours during the winter peaks.... Personally I'd rather not be part of that.

@Hannahcolobus. Found your post interesting. We had a smart meter fitted several years ago by OVO and could check the usage from the mobile unit we had inside.

We have now been with Octopus for 3 years and although they take our readings automatically from the meter, our indoor mobile unit doesn't work so I'm assuming we are on the type 1 system you mentioned.

Should we be asking Octopus to upgrade our meter or will that cost us? We never used the mobile unit much previously but that was in the days of reasonably priced utilities. Could be useful with these horrendous price hikes.

Octopus fitted our Smart 2 meters in about March 2021.
So far it they have been nothing but trouble. I am reliably informed that there has been a software issue between the meter provider & Octopus meaning they couldn’t process the meter readings or produce bills monthly as they did before we made the switch. This meant that meter readers were being sent round every couple of months to do their thing.
Octopus only seemed to take my annoyance seriously when I refused access to the very nice man and I have not had an automatically generated statement since since Feb 2022 without calling them and demanding one.

This whole situation would be funny if it wasn’t so bloody annoying, particularly as when I look at my account online I can see all readings recorded electronically contemporaneously every half an hour as they are supposed to be since the things were put it.

Personally, if I every have a chance to move to a house without Smart meters they will only be changed when the engineers turn up with a police escort to force entry.

I've asked for a new in home display unit for my smart meter (my old.one from prev supplier packed in before i switched over) and they reckon they don't have any and there's a waiting list. Which is annoying.

@Hannahcolobus excellent thanks! 👍

If they can take the readings you are probably not on the type 1 meter. If you can't get the readings inside then possibly your mobile unit is too far from the meter. Ours works in some places in the house, but not in others.

Bearing in mind the fact that we had regular blackouts in the 70's which were by area and we were told in advance when and where would be cut off, I don't think this will be any worse or more likely with smart meters.