UK.gov blows a fuse at smart meter stall, sets new 2020 deadline Smart meters won't be fully rolled out in the UK until 2020, one year later than planned. And replacing a smart meter with a dumb one won't be allowed under a new set of rules, which are intended to speed up lagging deployments. Smart meters, described the other week as "crap computers in a crap box" by an electronic security …
As I am completely stupid, I decided there was nothing better than to waste electricity and gas. After all, I have plenty of money and would like to have less of it.
Oh no, wait, I don't. And I already don't waste electricity. How does telling me I'm using electricity to have a cup of tea help?
Who covers the on-going costs of fixing the new meters?
When (as it will be 'when' and not 'if') a serious vulnerability is found in a meter that is a few years old, who covers that? Will the meter suppliers be required to support them fully for upgrades and bug-fixes for the 20+ year life of the installation?
Or will this become yet another added cost to the consumers as the years go by changing them as some crap software/OS goes out of support?
"Will the meter suppliers be required to support them fully for upgrades and bug-fixes for the 20+ year life of the installation?"
You jest. Because the DECC/OFGEM specification continues to be a moving target, and because the technology is immature, there's fat chance that these meters will last twenty years, even if the hardware itself is durable over that time period. Not only have DECC managed the feat of coming up with a specification that's not compatible with the smart meters being rolled out in the rest of Europe (so increasing the already unjustified costs), but the mass roll out of unproven technology means that the channces of the real benefits being realised are nil. In eight years time, the clowns of DECC will be insisting that to save the plant, another £12bn needs to be spent fitting new super smart meters.
Yes there is - the present "pay as you go" does not have an easy way to switch you off remotely at the behest of commerical forces/governement of the day/some jumped up oik in local government you gve the bird to (you just *know* that the rules are going to be so over-broad on this that even dog-wardens will have the authority to switch off your power).
(/rant)
happily no, the gov and the police etc can already cut the power off with a phone call, your key metre key account can be disabled when you go and get some credit
there is no way of sending a data packet down a power line
power companies would never waste money on a built in phone or part of the 3g spectrum of billions a year
there will still the guy with his ass half out, outside of your house with some pliers
You really have to be a troll, have you never heard of WiFi or power line transmission or ISM band communications or pagers or any number of other ways of getting data to a remote device?
If *I* can buy a license free radio module that will give reliable datacomms over a kilometre for under £10 per end in one off quantiites then you can be damn sure that the companies making the meters can too.
Why would a company that only makes money by selling you electricity cut you off? Why would the government or local authority want you cut off - if you have electricity at home they can be reasonably sure they know where you are of an evening.
It simply doesn't suit anyone in authority nor the provider to force you 'off grid'.
>>accurate billing
Just send them actual meter readings...
>>The oft-repeated premise is that once we can see live charts of our energy consumption we will rush about turning stuff off, as the ruinous cost of electricity at the moment clearly isn't motivation enough.
This is a fair point, well-tested in fact. Tested by all those people who have those little boxes you attach to your meter and wirelessly broadcast your usage. You can do it already and it works great.
"You can do it already and it works great."
(rant continued...)
No it doesn't - not from the point of view of those making the decisions. How on earth can you expect decent kickbacks/excellent board prospects off the back of a cheap device that is optional? To really secure the gravy train it needs to be mandatory and overpriced/underspecced/require replacement in a much shorter timeframe than existing devices ("Oh, that security vulnerability? Just have to get all the old models replaced. Just put it on the consumers' bills. Trebles all round?").
(/rant)
The price of things has to rise and we have to use less of the world dwindling resources. However on the other hand money is tight and we have to extend the existing ways of making money. That means making things that don't last as long so that more dwindling resources can be dug out of the ground.
So cunningly we claim we are doing it to Save the Earth whilst making the problem worse. This will drive up demand to 'Save the Earth' further increasing profits and making things worse.
It's gotta be the shape shifting lizards trying to destroy the earth.
and lots of families have an interest in what they eat. That explains the decline in shyte supermarket own brand foods like 69p horse lasagne and gmo crap. You'll find many people who purport to have an interest in these type of things do right up to the point it involves thinking / spending more money or having to actually do something about it at which point they lose interest.
so there pushing to get control over something you pay for as it crosses into your house ..
but why ??
over the next 20-30 yrs it will be cold .. yes cold .. this is a control factor there putting in place .. for when the gas becomes to pricey or we have brown out from the eleccy people .. then they just turn you off ..
I for one will not be letting them change my meter ..or i'll just buy one and have it installed ..
I know how much I pay for both .. i'm happy with that a smart meter is not going to change my habits ..
I recently had to have my meter replaced as the old one was genuinely faulty.
The engineer had to find an old style meter from the depths of his van to replace it with as we have no 2G telephone coverage in our area - result!
And as we have just had a new meter, I expect us to be last in the line for an 'upgrade' to a snooping/remote kill one. Hopefully they will be a little more secure by then.
I have a real-time usage monitor and report my meter reading every month to the supplier. What positive will a smart meter give me?
Eon sent me an email asking me to read my meter myself. There was a neat link that took me to their webpage. Didn't have to register - and received an email thanking me for the reading. A quick job done in a few minutes of their request.
The bill came in with an estimated reading.
So basically we need to fit some shielding to the inside of the cuoboard under the stairs and its all golden then? I remember seeing some wallpaper marketed at hotels that blocked mobile signals. I predict strong sales for them, until you get branded a terrorist for subverting national infrastructure and get shipped off to orange jumpsuit land.
I got a smart meter from Eon a few months ago, they sent a letter through the door asking if anyone wanted one. I did so I requested one and it took them less than half an hour to remove my old gas and electricity meters and replace them with the new ones. No cost to me at all and all my readings get sent automatically to the supplier a few times a month.
The meter and wireless display that is in my living room cost 16p a year to run and was of course installed and supplied for free, You dont even have to have the wireless display running if you dont want to.
Regarding energy saving, I have found that it does indeed help energy saving, for instance I found my microwave was drawing too much power and was faulty, so the meter helped me in that way. Also, I left the iron on once and only noticed when I walked into my living room and saw the display showing up as red(using lots of energy) after hunting around for a few minutes I found the iron on in the spare room, I could have left that on for days if it wasn't for the smart meter, so already have justified several years "running costs"
I really don't see any reason why anyone would object to having this installed, except maybe security concerns with the unit itself, I don't know why anyone would want to hack my smart meter though and cant see what they would get out of it.
It really has opened my eyes on what appliances cost a lot of money, boiling a full kettle takes more energy than a full washing machine cycle at 40 degrees, not what I expected.
I'd be surprised if it will be as effective for you in a year. The "ooh shiny" aspect of the service may wear off and you'd be back where you were before in terms of consumption.
And you only mentioned benefits for electricity. Where are the benefits of the gas meter? I already have my radiators in rooms I don't frequently use set as low as they go, so I don't see any benefit from smart gas meters at all.
To be honest I don't have the gas display on at all. I am not worried too much about gas as I will have the heating on when its needed, so no I don't really have a use for the gas meter other than the readings being sent automatically.
The novelty will probably wear off, also having your rads set low in rooms you dont use doesn't make much of a difference to gas consumption(see I can tell that now I have a display). If you have multiple rooms that you dont need but use 1 room a lot then you would probably be better off using an electric heater for that single room and turning off your central heating all together.
@nuclearstar
Nice to see some positive comments.
> I really don't see any reason why anyone would object to having this installed
Does the supplier have the ability to remotely disconnect you? If so, then the whole infrastructure chain - from meter through to billing systems should be deemed safety critical. Without such, it will only be a matter of time before a pensioner is remotely disconnected in the middle of winter and they die of hypothermia before being able to organise help - or even realise what has happened.
Perhaps someone from an IT supplier involved with this can tell off the record?
Disconnection is not going to be a big issue. the big issue, coming soon, is the variable pricing the meters enable, as in variable many times a day.
And while they are free "at the point of treatment" (paraphrase) never forget that they are paid for by the end user; you. Eventually. The government is never going to "go nuclear", other than by letting a few new ones be built to replace the old ones, so you can look at the "smart" meters as being one of the links to enable wider use of widely variable generating sources. You may not [yet] be able to store excess wind generated power, but you can, instead, ensure that the amount generated matches the load. Even if only by minimising load.
You need to look beyond the rhetoric of government.
Shale gas, if ever exploited, will be sold abroad.
Keep prices high to minimise use.
Disable excessive users.
The New World is arriving !
Variable pricing. Here we go!
This already happens in parts of North America. Have a look at The Ontario Energy Board's Time of Use prices for an example of what smart meters enable.
Shouldn't worry about that - when the main use of "off-tariff" ends up being people charging their electric cars that the government is so insistent on everyone having - the electric companies will do away with cheap electricity overnight as the demand for it will be through the roof (it's roughly 4-7kW for 5-8 hours) which means they will want to charge much more for night-time electric. Taking the Nissan Leaf as an example - the blurb says it takes 12 hours to charge at 10amps - that is roughly 2.5kW * 12hours = 30kW @ 12p (standard rate) is £3.60 or it can charge in 8 hours at 16amps! and costs pretty much the same - BUT can you really see the electric companies allowing hundreds of thousands of people to charge their cars cheaply overnight?
33,333 people charging their cars overnight will consume a total of 1MW
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I have an energy monitoring kit (Loop by Navetas) for my electricity usage and it has saved me money. It does force you to adjust your behaviour and show how some of how much your old equipment may be drawing power.
Smart metering will help us budget as well as you will know how much you have used and makes bill payments easier when they arrive and no bill shock. It would help most people adjust their behaviour on energy use and force people to buy energy efficient appliances rather than some rubbish that guzzles electricity. This will drive a market where consumer goods will have to compete on energy use as well as features and functions.
People who don't want to save on energy use need to really understand that the cost of natural resources will outstrip inflation and everyone will suffer. I guess they are the same people who do not want renewable resources and want to stick to coal and gas which is in abundance. If we want to live with load shedding and blackouts everyone is welcome to carry on as business as usual.
@nuclearstar
Please explain how it was free? You might not have paid for it immediately but I doubt it was free. Possibly 'free' in the same way the NHS is 'free' i.e. you pay for it but not so directly.
As for the benefits and knowing how much it costs, I can concur, living as a student with an electricity key I knew exactly how much everything cost so there possibly is some educational element for some folks.
This fad will last until some MP gets their meter hacked.
You do realise that you could of had similar energy saving eye opening experiences by just having an energy meter?
I have found it useful to obtain a reasonable energy meter, that allows data to be download to a computer. This enables you to draw charts - energy suppliers only keep their meter readings, so their charting tools are of limited use and will prevent you from accumulating several years worth of data. I know now (from 8 years of data) what my typical annual consumption is - the only ways I can make real reductions in my energy consumption is either to radically change my lifestyle or install some form of micro generation (eg. solar panels). So a smart meter doesn't really giving me anything.
I still have yet to see a convincing, well reasoned, argument for this. Other than not having to pay G4S to come read meters by hand to make sure people are not telling fibs in their self-submitted meter readings, I see absolutely no advantage to this scheme, and tons of disadvantages. Especially when you are told it will "help manage grid load" (in other words, you can have your supply turned off to stop the voltage or frequency for other people dipping too much). If it's done at the meter, I hope to !($^*(@% the security is good.
Oh, wait, look at all the insecure SCADA devices out there. This can't go wrong, can it? <groan>
you can have your supply turned off to stop the voltage or frequency for other people dipping too much). If it's done at the meter, I hope to !($^*(@% the security is good.
What in god's name do I want my supply turning off for? Return to the dark ages? forget it with extreme prejudice!
Currently (pun intended) I am on a low tariff as I send my energy supplier my readings monthly. When smart meters are rolled out this option will no longer be available and I will end up being on a standard tariff. So I will end up paying more for this crap. As I am fully aware of my energy consumption I have not been rushing around turning things off so the much touted froth about less energy being used is also crap. :-(
suppliers of what? energy? Everywhere I have lived in the U.S. there has been a single supplier of energy for me as a customer in a particular region(I have spent a few years overseas as well but was too young to be involved in that sort of thing at the time).
This whole smart grid is just a security disaster waiting to happen. Sad to see.
It will remove those damned estimated readings for us folks who work for a living and cant be arsed to waste 3 days waiting for the meter guy to turn up.
But then if they actually looked at monthly consumption of power from the likes of me, they'll find its about 150-200 units per month and has been for the past 20 yrs... so why I get an estimated bill of 400 units per month every time is anyones guess.
PS can I have a nice simple tariff eg : service charge + price per unit used, and not service charge-20% if over 1000 units used+ 15% discount on the first 200 units + 5% discount if theres a Y in the month +10% extra if I go over 200 units+4% overcharge on service -5% discount if paid by direct debit via a cayman islands bank account which exempts me from VAT at 5% but involves a 6% extra direct debit charge on a monday
I get an email around bill time asking me to provide them with meter readings if I want an accurate bill if they're not planning on sending someone round. Of course, it helps that my meter is in an outside-accessible cabinet anyway, so I don't need to be here when they come to read it.
"Of course, it helps that my meter is in an outside-accessible cabinet anyway, so I don't need to be here when they come to read it."
I paid for my gas meter to be moved outside many years ago. Now I get British Gas ringing me up two or three times - with a recording asking me to take a reading then register/login to their website to upload it. I ignore them - and they send me bills based on estimated readings.
And my dad got electricity in his lockup and had the meter put outside.
Then got estimated reading of 1000 units because "they could'nt find the meter"
He replied "Its on the ****ing wall 3 feet off the ground exactly where you lot told me to fit it, if you cant find it, I'm not paying"
2 days later they sent him a corrected bill for 12 units.
surely its better if the meters were owned by Transco?
Not sure I want any energy supplier owning my meter, I'm sure they will find a way to rip me off.
I do suspect reliability & Security will be issues.
My Meter is 30 years old and has never to my knowledge been tested for accuracy we may well find people / suppliers getting unpleasant surprises.
"Existing smart meters are using the cellular networks, generally 2G, which isn't ideal. The signalling overheads required by a GSM connection can easily be bigger than the actual data being harvested from an electricity meter, and there's considerable overheads in maintaining a GSM even when it's not being used."
Exactly correct, and completely misleading. The overhead (TCP/IP wrapping and such) can be more than the actual data being harvested, but you're hardly overloading tower/backhaul facilities even at double the number of bytes going across, and if you pool your cellular usage plans with the operator and make sure the rounding is legit, there's no real issue there. There's GGSN/SGSN overhead in maintaining a GSM's PDP session even when it's not being used, but there's worthwhile ways around it, like piggybacking updates when the meter connects to the home server, or for unusual circumstances waking it up and getting it to establish a new PDP via sending an appropriately-crafted SMS to it.
There's really good reasons to oppose smart meters having remote-disabling of utilities in households (and I for one do oppose them), but security of GSM and technical opposition to 2G modem connections (assuming no public IPs of course) aren't good reasons. It's just the best tool for a job that doesn't need doing.
There's really good reasons to oppose smart meters having remote-disabling of utilities in households (and I for one do oppose them),
I strongly oppose them, they have no right to cut a bill paying customer off. Period.
If they're worried about rolling blackouts, the responsibility is on them to install more powerplants. This is non-negotiable.
@An0n C0w4rd
You also forgot, that contract law doesn't override your statuary rights and legal protections.
Yeah I'm saying that they'd still be breaking the law by cutting you off despite paying your bills on time
Look up the punishments for taking payments for services not rendered. I can't be arsed with googling the correct phrase, but I believe it involves the consumer protection act and / or the sales of goods act.
I was thinking more of a small tuned noise source, so anything within a very short distance finds it can't receive anything else. If there's an external antenna fitted then according to my amateur radio friends, a pin through the coax and cut off flush can be very hard to find.
Of course, all this is in violation of various bits of the law, so perhaps I'll stick to a tinfoil lining for the meter cabinet. I don't think you need to resort to lead, it's not gamma radiation.
How can it ever be uneconomic - if they have 20 million customers across the UK who have to use it for the foreseeable future due to having a smart-meter forced upon them then they have a captive customer.
If every operator bar one pulls out of having 2G then a monopoly is created and they can charge the energy suppliers (and therefore the customer) whatever price they want.
Government has no business dictating to vendors how to meter their product beyond assurance that metering is accurate.
If an electric utility wants to replace dumb meters with those which are remotely readable then so be it! Whether it is cost effective or not should be up to the provider and their skills at operating their services.
I have designed smart meters which are (or were, have no idea today) in service. One used a cellphone. Another used ethernet connected to a fiber terminal at the residence. Agree the security is crap, bosses "designed" the protocols, barely. Our devices had no inherent security. Depended on the cellphone or a private TCP/IP network managed by the fiber terminal.
All we shipped had all the electronics to cut off customer power. But few were shipped with the expensive 200A relay. Couldn't tell from outside whether one had cutoff or not. Our customers reported the remote cutoff worked very very well with problem customers who only had to be cut off once, sometimes twice, before learning the importance of paying their bills. We were told 5% to 10% were "slow paying."
I bought one of those cheap clip-on monitors a while back and yes, it has encouraged me to sort stuff out, including buying one big PC and running a bunch of virtual machines on it which dropped my base load significantly. However, it's pretty much down as low as it's going to get so I don't need a smart meter, the little device on my desk tells me what I need to know. Someone's put the kettle on because it just went up by 3kW.
I have one issued by British Gas. The transmitter is battery operated. Possibly because of that it is very unpredictable when it sends updates. Switch something on/off and it never shows any immediate change. It gives readings to three decimal places - in theory 1watt discrimination of instantaneous use.
It appears to say a lot of my devices take the same power when in standby as when switched on. In fact it suggests some of the smaller devices make no difference if they are unplugged - yet they must take more than 1watt. A toy of passing interest - nothing more.
We have had them for Electricity for some time (Toronto Canada). They charge us extra for usage during peak times. No they are forcing us to get smart water meters. Not sure what the plan is with them, charge extra if we flush before 8am? Rat out anyone who waters the lawn during a watering ban, or just charge extra when there is a "shortage".
"Might I suggest "No" ?"
No doubt at some point they will have a tariff for non-smart meters that will be punitive. It's effectively a government approved cartel.
Can't see how they can have smart water meters - unless they hope to modify the house plumbing at the stop tap point. Either that or lay electricity supplies to the main stop cock holes in the pavement.
With a bit of thought they can make DCE more targeted. Ethernet over mains is usually stopped from escaping the house by the meter.
/paranoia
Judging by the content of many of the comments so far, I'm guessing most of you wear tin foil hats as well. What a bunch of Luddites.
Are smart meters the solution to world hunger and will they bring world peace as well? Of course not. Having said that, there are some genuinely interesting possibilities arising from replacing existing meters with smart meters. There are of course also potential misuse of data and other security issues that need to be considered carefully.
"there are some genuinely interesting possibilities arising from replacing existing meters with smart meters."
When I am forced to pay 300 quid for something I expect to be assured of more than "genuinely interesting possibilities".
The reality is the main driving force behind smart meters is the desire to equip us all with personal guilt meters and the farcical notion that if only we knew how much energy we were using we stop using it.
"There are of course also potential misuse of data and other security issues that need to be considered carefully."
Those are the bits we're worried about because we know exactly how well they're done... lowest bidder with the highest kickback with quality and security to match (as usual) I'd wager.
"Those are the bits we're worried about because we know exactly how well they're done... lowest bidder with the highest kickback with quality and security to match (as usual) I'd wager"
yes, but the completely trustworthy Ed Davey MP (LibDem) wants us to have these, so clearly he and his party are accepting complete financial responsibility for the cost of the meters plus any consequential costs from any future screw-ups. Otherwise he'd be an honest chap and not support a policy he's not prepared to back with his own wallet.
So what problem is this actually meant to be solving? Monitoring energy use? I can already do that. My existing meter has dials on it which tell me how much I've used. Not having estimated bills? I don't really give a toss if the bill is estimated... and I can just spend 2 minutes every 6 months or so to read the thing then enter it online. Is it really worth god knows how many tens of billions of pounds once the inevitable government-IT-project-fuckup cost and time overruns are taken into account to install one of these meters in every house in the country? Someone somewhere is getting some SERIOUS kickbacks...
kickbacks? Don't forget the criminally high amounts paid to people as programme managers (look at NHS IT under the delightful Mr Grainger, for example, one of the most capable and IT-literate managers one could ever hope to meet - oh, except he didn't know why people should use antivirus software, shouldn't plug in their own home laptops to secure networks and demand admin access, and why his views are more important than any specialist with years more experience). Muppet.
It's a fair bet someone equally special is running things for DECC
Where are the gas smart meter's wired into the house electricity supply? Do they tap in before the electricity meter? Does it have a manual isolation switch for the smart meter gadgets?
My gas meter is outside the house - it's going to be very untidy trying to run a protected cable to the electricity meter box.
"The gas meters have a battery installed and therefore don't need a mains connection. Which means in about 10 - 15 years the meter needs changing out. I asked the guy whilst it was installed in our (rented) house all about it whilst he was installing it."
How odd.
The last time I checked this at least one utility was phasing out electronic gas meters as they found the cost of replacing the battery every 5 years too expensive.
These are the type without a radio transmitter that were less accurate than the mechanical type they replaced.
So... Meter rental for the new supplier you say. People will be screwed whether they move supplier or not.
1. All suppliers charge each other high meter rental.
2. All suppliers pass on that charge to their newly acquired customers.
3. All suppliers hike charges to existing customers (including dumb meter users) because they will be shafted even more by 1 + 2 if they move.
Any device that can turn off the power to a home is safety critical. Depending on climate, loss of power may result in hypothermia or heat stress. There are also various types of home medical equipment, such as CPAP, artificial kidney or lung machines, infusion/insulin pumps, etc. that require power. There are specific requirements for the design and construction of both hardware and software for safety critical systems. For example, there are no safety critical systems that have been based on Windows* software. I would be interested to know more about the design of these devices, and their intended use.
Here in Australia, where summers are hot and reverse cycle air conditioning is endemic, our state government wishes to enable targeted load shedding using devices like this. This would save the political embarrassment of shutting down whole suburbs, at the cost of introducing a kind of city wide Russian roulette, while obviating the costly necessity of maintaining infrastructure that is capable of supplying uninterrupted power on the hottest days of the year. It would also reduce the cost to power companies of reading meters. It doesn't really have much to do with allowing individuals to monitor their power usage, although it may be presented as such.
*There are about 35-40 MLoC in Windows XP. If the typical figure of 10 faults per kLoC for commercial software applies, then this is just over one third of a million faults.
£11bn or ~£500 per household would buy a lot of energy saving insulation and porbably result in far more energy saving than smart meters.
However the possibility of variable pricing would encourage use of the delay feature on many dish washers and washing machines; a significant reduction of the evening peak in energy consumption/generation could be achieved if even 10% of users delayed these machines till the early hours = more efficient electricity genereation.
I wonder how these gadgets would stand up to a substantial localised EMP?
Easily generated by any hobbyist, and I imagine it would fry the chips. This is their kit, so they are responsible for fixing it. Again, and again, and again.......
And I bet they would never figure out what was going on!
About as well as my pc. My TV. My laptop. My fridge. My phone. Please don't use emp as an anti smart meter campaign device. I liked the 20th century. I like the 21st century. I don't want to live in the 19th century. Even without smart meters.
Not so much a sledgehammer as a steam roller to crack a nut.
Its simple, you just dont understand, thats all.
When the eco-weenies all arrive home in their electric powered cars at the same time and demand 80amps of current how is it best to manage that demand ?
Rolling blackouts or maybe controlled load shedding of designated demand ?
These cars dont actually run on pixie dust and fairy farts, the power has to come from somewhere and when there isnt enough something has to get switched off.
Would you prefer a smart meter that can control the appetite of your neighbours Tesla/Prius/G-wizz or to sit in the dark for a bit ?
I'll get me coat, its the one with a torch in the pocket.......
The smart meters being installed in the US use a wireless to call it's home with the power to reach 19 miles with the signal. It seems that it's also powerful enough to make people, in the home it's attached to, sick. I hope this is not the same in every county. In fact, if it is, that's kind of weird that it would be happening in all countries simultaneously.
The bit that makes me laugh the most is this -
supposedly the point of a smart meter is to tell your washing machine to delay for a bit or to tell your freezer not to switch on for the next 15 minutes - it all sounds really logical and useful and that aspect of smart meters I think will be useful..... but...... there is a problem. The "control your house" technology hasn't been decided on or standardised - and it is most certainly not shipping in current domestic products. The last I heard was Zigbee was going to the be likely candidate because of it's mesh technology (z-wave is licence encumbered) - but for the foreseeable future at least these smart meters are not going to be able to control appliances when the grid demand is too high - and we are likely to be left in a situation where thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of early smart meters don't even contain the necessary technology to talk to household appliances.
I can't help thinking that we really need to sort out the appliance technology and then introduce the smart meter rather than the other way around.
Existing smart meters are available in any configuration you want, using any kind of radio you want. Or even no radio at all.
Ok, that's an exageration. Existing smart meters are available off-the-shelf for several different kinds of radio systems, (including cellular networks), for several different versions (including 2G), or even no radio at all, or custom made for anything else if you are going to buy several million of them.
I'm surprised at the suggestion that British suppliers are specifing 2G cellular modems, because I was under the impression that that was the least popular option for general roll-out, but no doubt it's a commercial as well as regulatory decision.
Yes, it will be easier actually, with radio signals they could be spoofed and you could impersonate the transceiver at the other end so the meter thinks it sent the readings in, but hasn't.
There is also the possibility of reverse engineering the signal and impersonating the meter head on, first we block the meters RF transmitter, then we transmit the figures WE want back to the power co.
In a nutshell, it's possible to 'roll back' the meters, but chances are, now it now involves a laptop and sophisticated RF gear.
I have no problem providing it saves me money, I know two OAPs who have them on their water and gas they are over the moon as they have saved almost 50% off their bills in the last year....
However I do not them as I know this will be/is a serious fuckup from the government, costing us way more than it should due to cronyism and back-handers. The energy companies will use it as an excuse to screw us about. Security? Ha ha! Do not even attempt to put the words security and government on the same page, let alone the same sentence!
They've worked out that the things don't stack up financially for the installers and that the comms standards and infrastructure required to support them properly will not be around for a few years yet?
And the solution is to accelerate rollout and add another layer of cross-charging bureacracy to add cost?
The British Civil Service: Designing ridiculous solutions to idiotic political non-problems for over 100 years....
IIRC there was a case a long time ago when someone's equipement was damaged by either the frequency or voltage of the UK mains supply being dropped a bit during a time of insufficient supply, and the end result was you either get supplied power that meets "the standard" or you don't. I have no idea if this still applies.
If there's not enough power for an area, the surely they'd just cut it from the substation onwards? Much simpler and probably cheaper in terms of control kit. Apart from dealing with non-payers but there's already a mechanism for that. One also hopes that there won't be profiliing of customers with these things so that (for example) most people get cut off but not "VIPs" (politicians, local officials etc)
If some devices are recognised as being "critical" such as medical devices etc then will some form of UPS be required? That could cause an upset regarding costs but I'd also be thinking of one for things like my freeview+ box, simply as if I can't watch something at the time of broadcast as the power to the TV is gone at least I can hopefully watch the recording later, but for those people running a home based business on (say) eBay or even filling in government forms on the internet as a citizen, if the power to the PC/Router etc is going to just drop off then there's going to be an awful lot of complaints and non-compliance "the power company ate my homework/tax return" etc.
If they are thinking of some form of prioritisation where dryers are turned off before pumps on central heating boilers then there'll be a market in hacking your goods so that everying reports to the meter as being "critical for life" and doesn't get cut off.
We have the unthinking mob attacking tax avoidance because following the law is not good enough. We have the unthinking mud hutters who push for wind and solar farms causing massive damage which is paid for by abusing the market.
And now-
"Companies investing in smart meters need to know they'll make their money back, and that's what the new rules are intended to guarantee."
Seriously? So there is no market motive to do this so it will be forced while placing rules to guarantee a private company will make money? Surely its up to the company to take the risk if they feel it is worth it. And if they dont we dont get force fed these computers.
What they should do, is conduct a survey of all customers, on Nuclear, Wind, Solar etc, so when there are power shortages in the future (which there will be, until a government makes some unpopular decisions), they can turn off the customers who are anti-Nuclear, anti-French or wherever the remaining power is coming from.
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