EDF are once again pushing for smart meter installations....offering a £100 incentive now...

I get that data relating to anything electronic we do now is pretty much stored and sold online.....I hate this but it a price you have to pay for access to the electronic world (debating if this is a good thing another day!)

But... I feel an amount of resentment towards having my gas and electricity meters sending live data to their masters. I don't know why this bothers me so much but it does...... Anyone else have the same grumpy feels about this? I just hate authority :p

Ok so I have to remember to read the meters every few months and submit the numbers but I can cope with that....why else do I need a smart meter? I don't need one of those little monitoring devices to tell me that I am using too much energy... If I turn something on, I did so because I wanted to use it


I WOULD be swayed into getting a smart meter if they did away with the daft monthly guestimate direct debit and just debited what I spent each month.... but not on a pre-pay kinda rate...especially if they just decide to force people onto such a rate.


As rants go, its pretty rubbish.... but curious to know how you lot feel.

Rant noted.

My previous utilities supplier came and fitted smart maters (free of charge) a few years back. All worked fine, No longer did I have to read the meters.

My rant

Changed utilities supplier to a cheaper one.
New supplier starts demanding meter readings.
I tell them I've got smart meters.
New supplier tells me they can't read those smart meters (they're non-compliant)
I get new supplier to fit new smart meters (free of charge)
Life goes back to not having to read the meter.

Apart from that, I don't have an issue with them. Saves me having to arse about reading the meters.

It's Very simple.

If the energy company wants you to have one, it means it's financially better for them.

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Originally posted by rf900rush
It's Very simple.

If the energy company wants you to have one, it means it's financially better for them.

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Had numerous emails from EDF aswell

But I've had numerous comments from folks about reliability of them etc, So I'm happy to stay as we are at the moment

I just send them regular monthly meter readings online...

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Originally posted by tegwin
I WOULD be swayed into getting a smart meter if they did away with the daft monthly guestimate direct debit and just debited what I spent each month.... but not on a pre-pay kinda rate...especially if they just decide to force people onto such a rate.

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Come and live in Lincolnshire! I’ve had several attempts from the electricity supplier, and my oil supplier, to coerce me into smart meters and smart monitors. Every time they come round, they scratch their heads in confusion and say

‘You’ve got no 4G signal mate’

There are advantages to living in a mobile phone black spot!!!

As rants go that was pretty lame.
But we are all here to listen (and maybe chuckle)
I think smart meters are fantastic. Fit and forget.
I now have solar panels, so monitoring my usage to what I export and how much I am actually spending especially with the cost of energy as it is right now is so easy.
And I even live in Lincolnshire.



[Edited on 23/3/23 by roadrunner]

smart meters are all about profit for the utility. The small convenience to you is far outweighed by not having to make multiple trips to a property to read a meter.
It also introduces next level billing,..

We have had for years economy 7, Octupus have discounted rates, these can get more complex and more nuanced with smart meters and the option for minute by minute rate change.

I have a smart meter, it connects to my electicity ok and every day tells me I am over budget - and yet each month my in credit balance grows.

I am not against the idea of accurate reading, I am less happy that a qualified person doesn't look at my meters every few years and even less happy that some meters are battery powered and will need replaced in 10 years,. seems wasteful to me,

The "over budget" thing really annoys me! It's entirely within the display, and I wish there was a way to turn it off. It's not a message that comes from the supplier.

I often charge one of our 2 electric cars overnight, so according to the display I am always "over budget", as our consumption is much more than the normal user. The additional cost is still much less than paying for a tankful of fuel every couple of weeks though!

One thing to be aware of is that Smart Meters don't measure kWh they measure VAhr.
Which should be the same but it isn't.
Also potential issues with low power factor devices in relation to real vs apparent power.
I believe that all electrical suppliers in the UK for domestic settings charge according to real power however I don't think it's actually written in stone anywhere that they have to.
Old fashioned spinning meters measure actual power. Smart meters it's up to the company. In the same way they could decide to charge according to a nominal voltage of 240v even though that's rarely the actual voltage supplied to a home.

I'm still on an old spinny one. I'd like to be on a smart meter but they want to charge me. At present we've got Economy 7 meters but are on a tariff which works as if it's non E7 but you still give two readings. To move us onto a full fat normal tariff they want to charge to change to a non E7 smart meter. Though they'll quite happily fit a smart E7 meter....

The thing that really annoys me is that before the last price hike our supplier suddenly decided our gas smart meter wasn't phone home and did a ridiculously low estimate. Of course once the price hike came in they suddenly found they could connect to the smart meter again, except the "missing" units were charged at a higher rate.....

We held off going smart for a while, mainly due to scepticism re data and stories of unreliability in the first generation meters etc. After a while and when offered an incentive to change we went for it but when the fitters arrived they said we couldn't have a smart gas meter as our gas is supplied at medium pressure which was a surprise to me. They fitted electric only and we still got the incentive payment. We changed suppliers a couple of years later and the new supplier (Octopus) queried why we only had electric on smart. We told them about the medium pressure and they said that wasn't a problem other than having the right qualifications for the fitters who install it as most smart meter installers are only ticketed for low pressure apparently. It was booked. The relevant people arrived and then said they couldn't find an isolator on the supplier line (should be in the road verge apparently but they couldn't find it). They got Wales and West Utilities out who turned up with six guys, each in their own vans, so seven vans in total with the original crew. They were there for nearly 3 hours and in the end did the swap-over live with a huge loud woosh as a decent amount of gas squirted out into the atmosphere at medium pressure while they did up the new fitting. Haven't a clue if this was the right and proper way of doing it but the top guy had phoned head office for permission and had filled in a load of paperwork so I guess it was kosha. Seemed highly dodgy to me! Three years later it seems to work fine and no problems and we got a second incentive payment too so can't grumble.

I still have mechanical meters. I have a home automation system. I use cameras to read the meters automatically. My solar system back feeds the elec meter so any net I generate I get paid at the full tariff. If I get smart meters I get paid buttons. There's zero benefit anyway, who cares what the meter readings are, I use my house the way I need /want and read/register the meters every few months.

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The thing that really annoys me is that before the last price hike our supplier suddenly decided our gas smart meter wasn't phone home and did a ridiculously low estimate. Of course once the price hike came in they suddenly found they could connect to the smart meter again, except the "missing" units were charged at a higher rate.....

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It’s deep state paranoia…
or fear of things you don’t understand…

If your that worried about your data then the first thing you should do is get rid of your smart phone, ever noticed that after a conversation with others on any particular consumer product your social media feed starts throwing up adverts for the very same product even though you’ve never searched for it!

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Originally posted by snapper
It’s deep state paranoia…
or fear of things you don’t understand…

If your that worried about your data then the first thing you should do is get rid of your smart phone, ever noticed that after a conversation with others on any particular consumer product your social media feed starts throwing up adverts for the very same product even though you’ve never searched for it!

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Done on my work PC/mobile.

Now everywhere I look on the net, on seemingly any device, I'm bombarded with boiler ads, boiler cover ads and on it goes.

I seem to have got numb to adverts and glide past. Can't be good for you though.

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To add to my previous reply, I have a smart meter and it helps with managing budgets, usage information is much better, I can see individually what uses the most electricity (fridge light uses more than I thought it would!) I have applied for a smart gas meter as British Gas bills quarterly but they have said it may take 12 months to fit!

quote:

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Originally posted by snapper
To add to my previous reply, I have a smart meter and it helps with managing budgets, usage information is much better, I can see individually what uses the most electricity (fridge light uses more than I thought it would!) I have applied for a smart gas meter as British Gas bills quarterly but they have said it may take 12 months to fit!

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I have one but would avoid it if I could on the grounds that it's pretty useless and generally when something is 'smart' what they mean is it's trying to be smart but is in fact really stupid.

I'd rather take a meter reading and keep an eye on things that way.