UK unveils plans to 'transform' the consumer smart meter experience The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero plans "tough new obligations" for energy suppliers to boost the long-delayed and heavily over-budget UK rollout of smart meters, while promising better support for those who have already received such a device. "Millions of consumers rely on their smart meter every day for …
They can pry my GEC 'bake-o-lite' electromechanical meter out of my cold, dead hands.
I know that nobody is going to switch me off remotely, push a firmware update, or put my meter into 'pre-pay mode'. Nobody is going to crank up the price of electricity just when I want to put a roast in the oven, and I know that my bills will be an accurate reflection of how much energy I have used.
Many smart meters (and 'dumb' digital meters) on the other hand, have a nasty habit of over-reading when presented with non-sinusoidal loads such as those from LED light bulbs, old-fashioned dimmer switches, and passive- or non-PFC IT equipment such as TVs, phone/laptop chargers and the like which use a bridge rectifier on the front end. The so-called 'smart' meter uses a peak-hold circuit to sample the current at the peak, and makes an assumption (in the supplier's favour) that the waveform is a sinusoid in-phase with the voltage. That means you can pay 6 times too much for having a poor power factor. So if your main consumption is 110 big-screen TVs, then you can end up with some ridiculously erroneous bills.
This cannot be up-voted enough.
I'm sure we all would like to use "less" electricity, particularly as we pay one of the highest rates globally for the privilege but the puerile adverts suggesting "smart" (there's a word which has aged gracefully in this context!) meters will achieve this are peddling a fantasy.
The irony in this article is of course the little financial carrots being dangled - I wonder who on earth is actually going to have to pay for them in the end? Wonder not dear reader, for it will be you - for as long as you live here.
No wonder power companies try every trick into the book to make you have one.
Add my cold dead hands to yours, Cyberdemon!
Awe bless.
Meanwhile I topped up my EV for free between 2pm and 4pm because there was surplus energy in the grid.
Meanwhile I charged my car up fully between 00.30 and 4.30om last night because the electricity costs 8p.
All because I have a lovely smart meter.
The joys of having sufficient solar panels and batteries to not have to play the grid purchase pricing games:
The young adults came home from university late evening - ran the washing machine, tumble dryer multiple times plus long hot bath for student without touching the grid.
Instead, I let my intelligent battery manager sell my surplus to the grid when the price is right.
Yes, these need a smart meter to actually work in smart mode.
Obviously, at some point I expect the majors to massively increase the price of maintaining my connection (standing charge), because to them, paying me for energy is costing them profits and bonuses.
No you didn't top it up for free between 2PM and 4PM. You were using electricity that is surplus to demand and the suppliers are getting paid for what they can supply not what they deliver. Come the winter when we need far more power than we do in a warm summer those solar panels that are over producing at the moment will be putting out about 5-10% a day of what they are currently doing and the gas powered generators will be fired up to keep up warm and give us light. That bill will be higher because as well as the cost of gas it needs to recover its capital an operating costs both for the winter when it was well used plus the summer when it was sitting idle making no money but still accumulating its fixed cost.
You might think you are getting free power but you aren't you and all of us will pay for it later.
Good news about your car, do bear in mind that as ownership of electric cars grow and there are a few million more people wanting to charge EV's at night it will cease to be a low demand time with an 8p tariff designed to encourage people to use the base load. Use it while you can: it's not going to last.
- "Nobody is going to crank up the price of electricity just when I want to put a roast in the oven"
Damn, never thought of that... surge / dynamic pricing for electricity.
Two reasons the utility companies will love that... Firstly they can make a shedload more money, secondly, why invest to increase capacity when you can just dynamically price at peak.
Fucking nimby-pandering fucking nonsense,
Does that mean I can have £2500 for planes flying over, traffic noise, thieves and drug dealers in the streets, bloody tourists, roads closed because of yet another event/demo/royal jamboree/political stunt? They all hit my home value and quality of life.
This country needs shaking up, these whingers' resistance to vital change keeps it stuck in the past, with years/decades of delay and drives costs through the roof.
My heart bleeds for their house value falling because they'll see some pylons, tough, I bet most of them voted for brexit too, fuck 'em.
We're a small island with outdated, crumbling infrastructure, and massive wealth imbalance.
Time to cut the whining and get on with things.
the problem is that they do things on the cheap...
ok so someone complains about Electricity pylons, also known as transmission towers people get the wrong end of the stick we have those because its cheap not because its best...
best is to dig a trench and put electricity cables and fibre optic in it
that way tree's dont need to be tended or snow falls get in the way... but no cheap option rather than thinking about 50 years down the track
equally smart meters are good BUT they went with the cheap option now 2g is being retired. they are only now thinking gee wouldnt it be nice to have multiple backhual options... ANYONE in radio or networking would tell you have multiple backhual options built into it from the start...
cheap / fast / good
pick 2
In urban areas buried transmission is the best and often the only solution. In rural areas it's tricky - long distance underground transmission lines are expensive and complicated to place, instead of negotiating to plant a line of towers (about 3 per kilometre), you have to negotiate every metre of the route through land with things growing which can be a problem when roots decide a cable is in the way or a farmer does a bit of deep ploughing.
For service fixing a cable in the air just a (big) cherry picker is needed for access but buried cables are a lot harder to access so ongoing maintenance of suspended cables is orders of magnitude cheaper, easier and quicker than for buried cables. - If a buried cable in the middle of nowhere breaks it could take days to even locate and dig down to the precise location while a damaged suspended cable can be located rapidly - when power is down a quick repair is the most important thing.
Yes towers are not the most aesthetically pleasing constructions but in most circumstances they are the best solution for the given problem.
Er, both of the above are missing the point that cables are technically infeasible for transmission, i.e. very high voltage AC (400kV) at long distances (>50km). The effect of the concentrated electric field (capacitance) between the inner conductor and the ground sheath is to produce parasitic currents that waste energy the longer the cable is. At 400kV 50km, these 'charging currents' outweigh the useful current carrying capacity of the cable.
Cables are great for distribution (i.e. lower voltages, shorter distances) and for connecting a line of transmission pylons to an inner-city substation (short distance), but they can never replace pylons in the countryside, the anti-pylon NIMBYs are just barking up the wrong tree there
> cables are technically infeasible for transmission, i.e. very high voltage AC (400kV) at long distances (>50km).
There's a few undersea cables that may contest that assertion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable). Pylons don't work too well underwater :)
But yes, buried cables are a lot more expensive than air insulated transmission lines, at any voltage, as described in other comments.
Personally, I like the UK pylons, and yes, I would have one in my back yard.
> There's a few undersea cables that may contest that assertion
These are, in almost all cases, HVDC cables, which do not suffer the same issue with charging current, being as the cable capacitance is 'charged' only once, when the cable is energised, rather than 50, or 100 times a second.
HVDC has its own problems - it is generally a point-to-point link - very difficult to build a network out of it - and it has a tendency to cause 'islanding' if used to connect parts of the same AC grid.
I quite like the "old" pylons, but they can be quite tall. The "new" pylons are a lot shorter, but much chunkier and I've not yet made up my mind.
Two views on Google of the same power line near the M5 south of Bristol. Basic "new" pylon and extended new pylon for going around corners.
M.
As I've probably mentioned here before, had a friend who was of the opinion that the new 3G mast down the road was going to give him brain cancer or somesuch and that while he couldn't prove he'd had any ill effects from the 2G mast at the same site, he was sure it wasn't "right".
His house was more or less directly under a 400kV line. Moss refused to grow on the roof, fluorescent lamps (apparently) would glow in the dark when switched off and there was an ominous buzzing when it was wet. He never complained about that pylon...
M.
Buried transmission cables tend to be deeper than "deep ploughing" and in your haste to push for pylons you've missed the likelihood of farmers crashing a tractor into the pylon. Happens multiple times every year (usually at harvest) and causes far more disruption than just a power cut.
cheap / fast / good
pick 2 ANY 1 or more
You will ALWAYS get 'cheap' ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Tin can' has been kicked down the road ...
someone else can deal with the continued decline ...
as I have 'pocketed' MY Profits & Bonuses and I live elsewhere NOW !!!
[*MUGA == Make Uk Great Again]
:)
I opted to have a smart meter fitted as I'm somewhat infirm and struggled climbing into a cupboard in the kitchen to read the old meters. After the "smart meter" was fitted, it only worked for gas usage not electricity. I literally reported the fault ten times to Shell energy over twelve months and they were unable to fix the problem. So I still had to climb into the cupboard every month for the electricity meter reading. Eventually Shell sold out to Octopus energy. I reported the fault to them... a few days later they'd fixed the problem, they just needed to update something at their end.
The laugh, we had was an uncle had a “smart meter” fitted, only it was just for electric. When he died we switched energy suppliers to dual energy to make things simple for my aunt. When she died 4 years later, I was surprised to finally see an energy bill. Having taken the “final” reading. It seemed the energy company had assumed that both supplies were on smart meter and so as far as they were concerned she had not consumed any gas …
I'll pull the fuse on the grid supply and run the house off my 33kwH of home battery storage. I have 5.5kW of Solar to keep the batteries charged and my EV can do V2H.
FSCK the Leccy Companies.
Yes, I have a smart meter which enables me to get cheap leccy overnight to charge said EV. With my Solar and getting paid for selling the excess to the grid, my total leccy bill for the 12 months from July 2024 to July 2025 was £97.00. That's not per month but for a year.
I am not an electrician (unlike me, for all I know, you may be a chartered electrical engineer, so forgive me if I am taking liberties) I do however have a residential domiciled DNO G99 authorised professionally MCS installed Tesla PW system (with gateway device) and solar PV.
As I understand matters, by default, in the absence of grid power all solar PV inverters are designed to shut off to ensure that during an outage there is no risk to any grid engineers working on the fault potentially being electrocuted by back fed current entering the grid.
The Tesla gateway device, which sits between the electricity meter and my homes distribution panel (fuse board in common parlance) in the event of an external grid power outage incorporates relays that physically disconnect my homes distribution panel from the grid as in live, neutral and earth. I believe the technical term is “islanding”.
Obviously during this islanding period the lack of an earth is a concern and accordingly my Tesla system provides a separate local earth, facilitated by way of an earth rod to provide this functionality during an outage.
Whilst I admire your desire to be self sufficient (given the advent of green everything and potential increasing grid unreliability, it was the main reason for my system) please, please, please take care to ensure you fully investigate and understand the potential consequences of your proposed action.
Finally, an additional consideration, that may provide cause for further caution, is that smart meters appear to be quite smart! Over in the USA I have seen reports of power companies detecting unauthorised PV systems (even those designed to not back feed into the grid) and rapidly appearing on site to investigate. I suspect the UK will be similar.
>” As I understand matters, by default, in the absence of grid power all solar PV inverters are designed to shut off…”
That is a pure solar install.
For a solar with battery, the battery acts like a line interactive UPS, hence next to the meter is a pair of isolator switches and the fuse box has a big dual supply warning label on it.
Recently we had the odd feeling of hearing all the neighbouring house alarms going off - sure sign of power outage, yet in my house and my immediate neighbours, the lights stayed on and TV continued playing a streamed film.
About the only thing that can be upset is the desktop PC, but a small capacitor based power filter gets rid of the thyristor noise…
Surprised they don't already do that.
Some retailers in AU are/were doing something similar - charging your entire usage at a rate based on your highest 15 minute usage in the month I believe.
AU electricity market has its own unique fuckedness such that if you live in the sticks going off grid is becoming extremely practical.
Because once a smart meter is in every home, it’s not an appliance - it’s infrastructure for control.
Today they tell you it’s for “off-peak” discounts. Tomorrow it’s tied into the same “safety” and “compliance” systems being built under the Online Safety Act and other surveillance laws. You post the wrong thing online, rack up the wrong kind of “carbon footprint”, or fail to follow some new behavioural rule - and suddenly you’re on a reduced allowance or higher tariff “for grid stability” or “environmental responsibility”.
It’s a perfect social credit mechanism without ever calling it that: granular data on your daily life, the ability to remotely throttle what you can use, and a legal framework to justify it all under “net zero” or “online safety”. And because it’s being pushed through under the banner of “green progress” and “modernisation”, anyone who objects can be smeared as anti-environment or a luddite.
The cost overruns, the broken meters, the lies about savings - none of that matters to them. The end goal is a switch in every home that they control, not you. And once it’s there, it won’t just be about energy - it’ll be about obedience.
Also cost overruns is a nice euphemism for someone laughing all the way to the bank.
Ah, and don’t think it stops here. This wave of smart meters might “only” measure and control your total usage - the next generation will go further.
Once serialisation comes in, every device you plug in will have to identify itself before it’s allowed to draw power. Anything “non-compliant” could be throttled, shut off, or trigger a temporary disconnection “for safety” or “grid protection”. That’s when they stop managing your supply and start managing your life, appliance by appliance.
Give them a hand now, and sooner or later they’ll take the whole arm.
I’ll give you a hint: the technology to make devices talk over the mains already exists - look at Powerline networking. There’s nothing stopping a future system where anything you plug in must broadcast an ID packet to the smart meter. The meter could then verify the device, check its expected power draw, and report back to the energy company. If the actual draw exceeds what’s authorised - say, you’re using unregistered or modified equipment - it could automatically shut off your supply, hike your tariff, or even flag it to law enforcement for “unauthorised energy use”.
Technology has literally passed them by with the shutdown of the various networks these things sometimes use, the mesh networks have been proven to be non secure ( recessim demonstrated the US version is wank amdbauvingseen som of the UK stuff, I don't doubt it's just as bad)
The sheer scale and nature of the UK network means it will never reliably work or be up to date and suppliers who don't give two shits about customers will never bother updating, instead pushing the burden of proof for failures, over billing etc onto their customers.
As usual, it's a bullshit implementation by a bunch of greedy private companies who've lobbied government with their wallets
Scale and nature be damned.
We built these 60 years ago, and the infrastructure has well-exceeded it's 40 year working lifespan - so much so that the virtually all the companies who built the transformers and distribution gear have ceased trading. They built it too well, and this is how we rewarded them.
We should have been replacing this stuff regularly, but because it soldiered on all the profit went elsewhere. Ditto water, sewerage etc. Don't get me started on the railways and canals!
Now we spend more on talking about the work than doing it - that's the real reason for where we are.
Pray tell what is this integration of which you speak? As I understand all the "smart" meter does is provide 30 minute historical usage.
If the meter could communicate with large appliances in the home to coordinate their use with the availability of low-carbon generation then that might actually contribute to net-nothing goals. But I don't believe that functionality actually exists. Maybe we'll get it sometime in the future after they've ripped out and replaced a few more generations of meters...
Hence why we have companies like Octopus rolling their own predictive demand management for EV charging via their own back channels. This is bad for various reasons, lock in to a particular subset of EVSE vendors, lock in to a particular energy provider being just two. But then the ex-commodity traders who run the providers must love the idea of getting their hooks into consumers so that they can sell kit that works specifically with their tariffs at vastly inflated prices.
Avoid companies like Octopus who want to sell you kit that only works with their network. Then you have 100% Vendor Lock-in.
I had a quote for an Octopus Heat Pump. Nice bit of kit but even with the Government grant, the extras made it unaffordable. I went with a local company and saved £3000.
The other side is that they also provide open data. I've not gone down that route myself - too little time, too many things to do - but people have done their own things using the various home automation tools (whether open or closed) to manage their demand to suit pricing.
>” Avoid companies like Octopus who want to sell you kit that only works with their network.”
There isn’t really any choice, either accept the peanuts the major operators begrudgingly bestow or go with Octopus… [ Although you could go with community minded operators like Tomato Energy. ]
This I suggest is a regulatory failure, consistent with the laissez-faire “market forces” doctrine of the Conservatives…
> Octopus Heat Pump
Just remember a heat pump typically lasts 15~20 years. In my case that’s ~£3k for a gas boiler vs. £12k+ for a heat pump….
Yet another political slimepit, whose sole achievement is to suck up the money hose.
Add it to all the other failed ICT and other infrastructure projects which successive governments dream up to feed their propaganda machines.
TIP: When you can no longer hide and it is your enforced turn, you can INSIST THAT SMART MODE IS DISABLED. I don't know how easy it is to remotely enable SM against the user's wishes (have a thought for poor Big Brother!), maybe depends on the model and how resilient to "accidental" hammers its comms are.
P.S. Dear Vulture Webmaster. Any chance you can clean up the ul and/or li CSS to shrink that white space a bit? Maybe even debug the change in bullet style when the auto-line-spacing gets added?
> How do you get smart mode disabled?
Unplug your IHD.
You can ask your supplier to put it into 'dumb' mode, and they will do it, either by remotely switching it into a mode that doesn't send half-hourly usage data, or they will simply ignore the data and send a token meter-reader-person round every so often, but that doesn't mean they won't still switch you off remotely if they (or their cyber-intruders) want to.
That's the latest intimidation tactic. They've been badgering me to have a smart meter fitted for a while, but now the letters are telling my Elec meter's "certificate has expired", so they absolutely have to fit a new one according to some Govt act, because my readings might not be accurate.
I might have bought in to the Smart Meter thing once upon a time, if I'd thought it was open, transparent and genuinely for the benefit of the users. But the record of the whole privatised utility sector has only convinced me that a combination of greedy finance-sector obsessed executives, supine regulators and incompetent politicians has made our utilities into gravy trains, not public benefits.
They don't bother me for a smart meter.
Probably because my house is wired for a generator and a PV array, and I have made it very clear that if they send someone who isn't qualified to work on a system with multiple internal power sources, I will a) require a full set of RAMS, and b) not be responsible if they do send someone who doesn't understand it, and they find out the hard way that if you pull the main fuse, that does not mean the internal system is now "safe"
Thanks. Interesting that you get a different bullet style again, from the draft style. Even, it displays in the feed as a square bullet, but when I click to reply it displays above the reply box as a round one. Living standards and compliance, don'cha luv itt??!?!!!
The whole circus around Smart Meters is a close match for the Tesla hype.
They suggest all manner of amazing things will be possible once you have one fitted including a level of granularity on seeing how your power is used which will never be possible. In reality while it will show you what you have used in the various units and some history to see how it compares it is attempting to replace common sense. If you turn on more things you use more energy....WOW
As we are seeing with these backend problems they offer minimal gains to the consumer compared to the much larger probability of failures from the technology chosen.
It depends on who or what you are. For a business or any large installation they are invaluable but for domestic users they are of limited use - if you are a rich bugger with a big house and swimming pool etc then great but for someone in a grotty flat or small house there is little advantage. Also avoid SMETS 1 meters like the plague, they are useless.
To be fair the vast majority of the great unwashed have no idea of the order of magnitude difference in usage between the little red light when the TV is on standby and running the washing machine non-stop all day. So *potentially* a smart meter with its remote display thingy is one way to help them understand that. But a) does it really need us to spaff billions of pounds on poorly conceived and executed infrastructure to teach this lesson? and b) when you need clean, dry socks for work/school what's the alternative?
"Smart", "Eco", "Green", "AI". As with all things, these should be treated as warning labels. Any such attributes are more likely for the benefit of the supplier / manufacturer, not the consumer.
(And the only way "Smart" meters will help reduce your electricity bill is by allowing you to turn things off when they jack up the price because the sun ain't shinin' an the wind ain't blowin')
"It's a physical rocker switch for the power!"
In these modern times, that's and entirely correct and beneficial thing. When did you last see a TV with an actual power switch? Although having said that, most devices being left on stand-by these days are mostly very good on only sipping minimal levels of power and switching them off makes very little difference to the your bill. The worst offenders are probably DVRs such as Sky and Virgin Media boxes. The VM boxes, at least, have two options for "sleep" mode. One is fairly low power but means no timed/scheduled recordings will happen. The other uses only slightly less than full on usage so the entire OS is running so as to keep track of the time and make those vital scheduled recordings (and to record all the shitty "suggestions" that most people never, ever watch!). Seems like an ideal situation for a tiny microcontroller which can mirror the scheduled recordings list and keep track of the time and only wake up the box as required. Of course that would be an added "feature" for the markers to sell you and they'd increase the "green cost" buy far more than the consumer would save.
Are they going to pay me to use my broadband connection? £39.99 a month please.
Not even a smart meter, but a fairly old gas meter that records in cubic feet. When British gas "updated" their systems, they estimated our gas usage and it was 100 units over the actual usage. When I pointed this out during the call to complain, the dick on the other end said our actual usage would "soon catch up".
I calculated that it would take nearly 3 years for us to use 100 cubic feet of gas. Of course, they were assuming it was measured in kwh.
Took nearly a year to get the money back, and that's after we cancelled the direct debit and refused to pay.
I don't think I've ever seen a meter reader here in 13 years but I take a photo and submit a reading whenever requested so it's no hardship.
At least my meters aren't subject to external tampering.
"I don't think I've ever seen a meter reader here in 13 years but I take a photo and submit a reading whenever requested so it's no hardship."
Once upon a time, the meter readers came around every three months or so, (Ours had a long black mac and a peaked cap, a uniform not unlike Blakie from On The Buses) and we got an accurate bill. Now, unlike I think any other industry, the consumer is expected to tell the supplier how much of the product they have used and be billed on that basis. If for any reason you don't supply the reading, the "punish" you by over estimating your usage by at least 50% every time, despite having years of historical records of your actual usage got the relevant time of year and prevailing weather conditions to compare with. You'd almost think they do it all by hand and don't have computers that could easily make a far more accurate estimate of your usage. I wonder how many £millions of our overpaid bills they are playing with in the overnight loans market?
I'm not ideologically opposed to Smart Meters like some, but if they're being forced on people they should work as advertised.
We all know significant sums of money are being peed up the wall, with the cost being passed on to consumers that are already stretched. We should be expecting a gold plated service given the cost!
...this smart meter, what's it running? OS version, software etc.
Who is patching it and when?
What security tooling is in place?
What monitoring and scanning is being done?
That day I start seriously thinking of getting one is the day I get answers to those questions. Not before.
All it'll really tell me is my wife never, not exaggerating, never turns out a fucking light. Ever. Then witters on about recycling and water use. Couldn't make it up.
As anyone who was fool enough to get one or couldn’t avoid one knows, the customer benefit from smart meters amounts to not having to give readings.
A saving of about a minute a month.
I got one for a block of garages for me and my neighbours simply because the old meter is inside a neighbours garage and it was a pain to get in there.
The bloke who installed it asked if I wanted the remote device to get readings and pretty much said to get energy use info I would have to be standing next to the garage.
I don’t care how good these devices may get in the future, I don’t want energy companies having an advantage over me.
For that reason I will avoid getting one in my house, plus I pay on receipt of bill and not direct debit, screw the savings that can be made - pennies.
Direct debit means you accrue credit in their account and they make interest off your money.
I got tired of my energy company ducking about with the amount of direct debit they took from me, with wildly inaccurate predictions.
At one point I was £600 in credit FFS.
I do my own smart monitoring where it’s worth doing and automation where it’s worth doing.
To monitor everything you are using is just anxiety inducing and avoiding it is easily worth a quid a day.
"Direct debit means you accrue credit in their account and they make interest off your money.
I got tired of my energy company ducking about with the amount of direct debit they took from me, with wildly inaccurate predictions.
At one point I was £600 in credit FFS."
Yea - that does grate.
I switched to a variable DD - so same rates (because it's a DD and you get a discount for paying it monthly), but I only pay for my usage in that month.
Obviously, that means some months are more expensive than others, but you can sort out the budgeting and get interest on the surplus if that's something you want to do.
I did it with Octopus, but Martin Lewis/MSE will tell you how to get it sorted for a different provider.
The credit thing?
I moved to a smart meter and OVO still kept over-estimating my bill by ridiculous amounts. The question "why are you estimating at all, when I can literally see my half-hourly smart meter data in your portal and it's accurate?" went unanswered.
After the second such bill, I complained formally.
After the third, I told them that if it happened again, I'd be escalating and moving supplier.
I changed supplier shortly after. They were collecting 30-minute readings of my meter, yet were charging based on made-up numbers with no basis in reality.
The reason, as has been hinted at, is that they can then use that money to earn interest and then "pay you back" any extra you paid about once a year. But not the interest.
The long-term fix is really simple: make it so companies cannot earn interest off funds held on behalf of the customer (or if they do, that that interest is paid to the customer)
But my short-term fix was even simpler: I moved companies, filed a complaint and OVO paid me my money back, plus had to pay me for not billing accurately.
See, we can complain about smart meters forever but actually they don't really hurt consumers at all (which is one of your points, really). They don't necessarily help much, but they don't hurt.
But being able to prove that OVO had their own, accurate readings that they were literally ignoring? That's invaluable.
I did something similar with my water company, forcing them to put in a water meter. Turns out that I use ONE-TENTH of what they were charging before I had a meter. Literally a 90% discount. I'm technically still using the "accrued credit" from their old billing 2 years later, because my bill is so pathetic now that no further payment has been necessary yet.
Let them put in their expensive calibrated meters. It really makes no difference to me (and on Octopus, I've had four hours of free electricity usage so far this year - which is only possible when you have a smart meter. I used them to charge my solar batteries to the absolute max, so all my chores, charge all my tools, cook dinner, etc.). And even going by my own analysis of that data (I pull it all into a spreadsheet) over two years, there's no "energy saving" and there's no privacy problem. I have graphs of everything and you know what? I couldn't even tell if I was at home or not from it, and I know the answer! Beside the fact that the base load varies by local temperature (e.g. heating, fridge, freezer, etc.) more than anything, I have a load of stuff that turns on rather randomly (e.g. NAS) and stuff that pulls power if I touch something from my phone (e.g. aircon controlled / scheduled remotely) AND I have a solar & battery install that's not grid connected but - via an ATS - takes load off the house if it's got power. There's no "smart" there, but it totally screws up any stat analysis you might do because it'll suddenly dump a huge load back onto the house, or it'll keep it running all day and night without a problem. And that depends more on the weather too.
So I have no problem with smart meters. I'm more interested in it saving me having to be home for a meter inspection (strangely, OVO keep insisting that my meter needs checking when I've not been with them since 2024 and all the previous hassle is long settled) or some such.... hell, I take photos of the meter readings and check it tallies with my spreadsheet most weekends (hint: It does. It always does) so I don't save anything in that regard.
But they do act like a perfect undeniable record of what I should have been charged, that not only my supplier and myself, but anyone I authorise has access to (it turns out you can give USwitch access to confirm your usage for comparison shopping between the suppliers, who knew?). Tell me why you're billing me £1000 this year when I've clearly only used £600 in electricity (real-life example). As a mathematician, OVO's "annual estimates" are based on some ridiculous formula that bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever... I know, because I'm sitting there with two years of data and their bill and there's no correlation whatsoever.
I'll have them just for that.
I don't want one of these faulty pieces of crap. They don't save you any energy or cash. We already minimise the amount of energy we use because the bills are so high. That is the fault of the British government as they set the prices via a price cap, compounded by their take down of Sterling with Brexit, making us all 25% poorer.
The entire roll out was a complete waste of taxpayers' money. Those responsible should be in prison.
Having censored the internet they are now screwing with our lives some more. Looking forward to seeing both Tories and Labour kicked out of power. There will be nothing better to replace them, but I just want to see them both lose as punishment for what they have done.
> Looking forward to seeing both Tories and Labour kicked out of power.
I've felt this way all my life.
Please, please, if you feel the same, please don't be tempted to vote for the Faragistes in whatever guise they happen to wearing right now. Green would be good, Lib-dem a fair substitute. Local nationalists if you have to. No matter how grave the problem Fascism doesn't fix it.
-A.
@captain veg
"Green would be good, Lib-dem a fair substitute"
That is a terrifying thought. Trying to appease the green vote is what left us in this eco-mess and green madness. The lib dems manage to come up with some good ideas and then some seriously nuts ideas. Often enough I think they just create policy with no fear of having it meet reality (the coalition showing their 'deer in headlights' moment). And in no way is this an endorsement of reform nor any party. But the idea of the greens taking over is terrifying.
The only reason most people “want” a smart meter is because they’ve been sold a fantasy. The marketing was a cocktail of half-truths and omissions: “You’ll save money” (false for the vast majority), “you’ll get accurate bills” (you already could), and “you’ll see your usage in real time” (you can buy a £20 clamp-on monitor that does that without turning your meter into a remote-controlled switch for your supplier).
The real purpose of the rollout isn’t to empower consumers - it’s to patch over decades of under-investment in the grid. Smart meters give suppliers and government the ability to ration electricity remotely, force you onto prepay with a few keystrokes, and nudge your behaviour so you use power at times that suit them, not you. “Off-peak” tariffs aren’t some gift to the consumer - they’re a way to free up capacity for the highest-paying industrial and corporate customers while the rest of us rearrange our lives around when it’s “convenient” for the grid.
They’ve blown billions of pounds on this boondoggle - money that could have been spent on actual infrastructure upgrades - while telling us it’s about “saving the planet” and “modernising”. The National Audit Office already ripped apart the cost-saving claims years ago. The technical failures (millions running in “dumb” mode, incompatibility when you switch suppliers, dependence on obsolete mobile networks) aren’t bugs - they’re symptoms of a programme that was always more about control than service.
And now the government is dangling token £40 “compensation” like it’s doing us a favour, while quietly making sure the capability to cut you off or jack up rates remotely is baked into every home in the country. This isn’t consumer tech. It’s infrastructure austerity dressed up as progress.
Quote
"They’ve blown billions of pounds on this boondoggle"
Yeah enough money to have built a Hinkley point D station to go with the C thats already being built...... AND had money left over for the transmission lines....
Imagine that... being able to retire 4 more CO2 generating gas power stations...... that would have done a lot more than any "smart" meter bollocks.
Living in a very solid house built some time around 1840 and refurbished in 2005 by some muppets ... our gas meter is actually underground in a small chamber where there is not a chance in hell of getting a phone signal. Out electrickery meter is on the othe side of the house, in a corner between two very solid and thick brick walls. There is also no phone signal in this location. More to the point, evidently the two meters have to communicate with each other. Good luck with that given the 12 metres and four very solid brick walls between them.
A technician came out, looked as our gas meter and said, we're going to have to move that because there won't be a signal. You'll have to pay for the meter to be moved and you'll have no gas for a couple of days. We'll probably have to move your electric meter too...
He was shown the door and told not to return.
We are periodically nagged by our electricity supplier to make an appointment to have smart meters fitted.
Once everyone is on a smart meter the government will have total control over the power supply, and with net zero you can forget using your cooker / washing machine / dishwasher when there is no sun or wind (happens for periods of typically 4 - 6 weeks a year in the UK) whlst "Bacon Buttie" Milliband proseletyses about the absolute necessity for net zero by 2050.
By the time everyone is on smart meters, most people will be on solar anyway.
Honestly, just over the last two years, the EXACT SAME kit I was buying is nearly half the price it was, and it was already some of the cheapest things there were (batteries and panels).
The ones who can't do that - and even councils are moving people to solar and heatpumps - are likely on a pre-pay meter or a private landlord anyway, so they'd struggle with doing either.
But honestly, I'm now planning my retirement (~20 years out) around the fact that I won't be using grid electricity by then.
And though there's nothing new in being able to cut you off, really, even without access to the property - the barriers were mainly legal, not physical - via my smart meter I've had 4 hours of free electricity (as much as you like in those hours) already... because we're basically throwing electricity away when it's sunny and dry. The last few weeks, all my chores were done during those hours, and I charged my solar batteries to make as much use of it as possible. I literally tripped my RCD because I turned everything on and even did things like charge my drill batteries and suchlike. I even thermal-camera'd my fusebox - which is rather old - to make sure there wouldn't be a problem if I did pull a lot of power in the winter.
And Octopus keep linking to this:
https://wastedwind.energy/
We're basically throwing energy away now. Cut you off for it? They're more likley to be begging you to use it or forcing you to stay connected to the grid. They have a MASSIVE investment in the grid, and we're all going to start fulfilling our household's entire energy needs in a few years, and I wouldn't be surprised if they started introducing taxes on electricity because of - say - electric cars. To make up for the fuel tax disappearing, and to then charge people by their usage at home even more. Whether or not they have an electric car.
I need 8KWh a day. I basically have that in batteries already. My roof can take at least 24KW of solar. Multiply by a minimum of 8 hours of sunlight per day, and cut it DRASTICALLY for the winter months... and I don't think I'll care about the grid in another 5 years, let alone 20. My heatpumps take ~200W to cool/heat my rooms to 20C, even in the depths of winter.
The only thing I'll need a lot of power for? An electric car. It's likely to be the only reason I bother to keep grid connectivity. But even that wouldn't be "essential". I'd have enough power in the house to get it going, and could just pay at an EV charger somewhere for the rest if needed.
@Lee D
"We're basically throwing energy away now. Cut you off for it? They're more likley to be begging you to use it or forcing you to stay connected to the grid"
Not likely. While times of high wind and solar that might theoretically work but when winter hits those on solar will be begging for the gas turbines, french nukes and lighting their fireplaces. The UK has been close to blackout the last couple of winters.
As for throwing the energy away, again showing the vast expense for useless toys. Instead of generating energy where it is needed we have a lot of unreliables generating where it can generate and when it can generate. All backed up by inefficient gas turbines which have to be able to ramp up and down as required.
"two big gas-fired power plants, Langage and Peterhead, did trip out. Their combined output is 2GW, and had they gone off at 5.30, blackouts would have been a certainty."
LOL. gas failure.
Very, very lazy indeed.
Perhaps actual analysis instead of Tufton funded smog.
@AC
"The UK nearly blacked-out due to gas fired power station failures. As stated in the link you provided. Good catch. Very interesting. Thanks for that."
I thought that might be your meaning but it is problematic. The UK has relied increasingly on gas from the Thatcher years and it hasnt seemed particularly unreliable. So not having enough spare capacity in case a power generator fails is not normal.
But second to that the whole unreliables effort (wind/solar) relies upon gas generators which must run inefficiently to be able to step in and provide the power when they dont work. So the failure being the lack of wind and solar energy causing the reliance on the gas generators but not having enough spare capacity.
The UK has been 'investing; billions into our energy generation infrastructure so why on earth would the UK grid be so short? A large amount of spending has been for the very unreliables (see above) that require the gas backups.
@AC
"If the spare capacity is gas, and it fails, the problem is with the gas spare capacity. Why are you making excuses for this failure?"
What spare capacity? The point is there isnt the spare capacity that should be there because its wind and solar which dont work at that point. The power generation built aint generating. To provide the required energy (not spare) that the unreliable generators aint generating we have the inefficient gas generators as a step in for when the unreliable generators dont work. That isnt spare capacity, that is wind/solar and the gas power are the expected energy source and there should be spare capacity beyond that.
At one point we had coal power plants that were being fired up at winter to provide some of that spare capacity, but they closed down and the replacements have been these unreliables which require the gas backup to provide any power. The expectation should be that something could happen to a power generator and there be sufficient surplus to make up the shortfall. We dont have that which is why we get so close to blackouts in winter.
I think you are misunderstanding and thinking there is sufficient spare capacity but for the gas failing. The point is the gas is the support for normal running of wind/solar. The spare capacity is missing after all these billions spent and monuments to a sky god erected that require the gas plants to do the regular job.
I'm rather unsure where you're getting the idea that "wind/solar" are unreliable. Solar gets hit with sun, electricity comes out. Wind generators get hit with wind, same.
They're not "continuous', but in Texas after that one big hard freeze, wind and solar came back MUCH faster than the gas and other thermal generation. Wind and solar came back soon after the ice/snow stopped falling. The gas was off for much, much longer. (Ignore TX governor at the time, he's clueless about electrical generation, and has a vested interest in keeping thermal (gas/oil) generators happy.)
@Not Yb
"I'm rather unsure where you're getting the idea that "wind/solar" are unreliable. Solar gets hit with sun, electricity comes out. Wind generators get hit with wind, same."
From an extremely basic primary school level of understanding yes. However the output is variable due to cloud, suns direction in relation to the panel, panel condition, etc. Wind can be none to way too much and every variant in between. There is also the regular condition of low wind low solar which can last weeks. It happens so often the Germans have a name for it- dunkelflaute.
Due to all of that variability you cannot rely on that power being enough nor consistent. Also the variability has to be smoothed out to avoid damage to components using and transporting the energy. Batteries are used in an attempt to store power but it is very expensive and they need topping up from excess generated energy which of course is unreliable as explained above.
Until the magical technology is created to make unreliables work they are not suited to situations where such reliability is required. Somehow some people find that difficult to grasp as they flick switches and press buttons with the expectation that things will just work.
@AC
"This suggests you have deeper or special knowledge in the field."
Nope it is totally honest. The response I gave contains nothing technical and is a very simplified view any high school kid should be able to follow and understand (aka my explanation was very simple) and his explanation while not wrong was even more simplified which of course loses important details.
'"Millions of consumers rely on their smart meter every day for accurate billing, cheaper tariffs, automatic meter readings and real-time data to help keep track of spending," Charlotte Friel, director of retail pricing and systems at energy watchdog Ofgem, claimed in pre-prepared statement.'
Actually they don't. None of them. Accurate billing and cheaper tariffs have precisely nothing to do with so-called smart meters. Automatic meter readings might benefit the electricity companies but add no value for consumers. Real time data? I suppose someone somewhere might find that useful. It ain't me. If it's cold I switch the heating on.
<pedant target="author" reference="pre-prepared statement">the expression "pre-prepared" adds nothing more than an extra syllable to "prepared". Not big. Not clever.</pedant>
-A.
£0.00
Mysteriously, I had no hidden devices stealing electricity and knew that using the oven or having the heating on cost money. And lacking anything that I can time shift, I haven't got access to a better tariff.
All I have done is hand the supplier the ability to remotely disconnect me.
>” And lacking anything that I can time shift, I haven't got access to a better tariff.”
You should be able to get some minor cost savings by subscribing to the special smart meter time boxed tariffs and so be filing for them for things like the fridge and freezer.
I found the display unit irritating, as clearly it has a default tariff setting and so displays energy costs based on some imaginary tariff and which has a low threshold before it goes “budget exceeded”. In my case it’s only value is showing zero consumption, as it’s very basic interface strongly discourages any attempt to set the tariff correctly.
The ONLY reason for Smart Meters, is so Energy Companies could sack all the meter readers, because meters were generally indoors, and householders were never in. That didn't work much as the Smart meter broke, they STILL had to send a meter reader, only now they are sub-contracted at probably a much higher cost. It is all a SCAM!
I, nerd, actually LIKE submitting my own readings for gas an electricity - weekly, every Saturday morning. And then update my graphs (12-month moving averages) so I can see when I replaced my old gas-fired boiler and my old fridge to more energy-frugal modern units.The only use I would have for off-peak power would be to charge my (non-existent) electric vehicle.
So a big NO to all their blandishments: not to mention the adverts with an insulting mock-up of Einstein.
> And then update my graphs (12-month moving averages)
Being your data which you entered you can do lots with data.
The energy companies make it very difficult for you to get the actual meter readings , so you can graph and analyse them yourself.
It would seem they don’t actually want people to be buying less energy from them.
The energy companies make it very difficult for you to get the actual meter readings , so you can graph and analyse them yourself
I have a smart meter display which allows you to step back through 8 days (I think) of daily readings, then six weeks of weekly readings, then twelve months of monthly readings. I keep a spreadsheet of daily readings when I can, but sometimes I miss the 8 days and have to work backwards from the weekly readings. Have to remember not to try to do the readings between about 2350 and 0100 because the dates get all screwed up on the display.
For some months last year the blasted thing stopped reading correctly at all for one of the fuels, gas I think. For example, on the 5th it would tell you that on the 4th you used <n>kWh, on the 6th the number would be completely different for the 4th, and on the 7th, different again. It was difficult to reconcile the readings. After some back-and-forth and "resetting" and such, I was sent a new display unit. The new unit is practically useless. It shows you a figure for current use, but it only shows you a bar graph for historic use, from which it is impossible to read an accurate figure. Getting a kWh figure meant going out to the meter every day, and the gas meter's own display still shows volume, so then it's the conversion thing, just like in the old days.
However, suddenly the old unit started working again and (fingers crossed) it's ok at the moment.
M.
The energy companies make it very difficult for you to get the actual meter readings , so you can graph and analyse them yourself.
What was much more useful was the twenty quid clamp on energy meter I bought long before they started peddling smartmeters, as the display unit came with a serial to USB cable to allow you to download the data to a computer.
Smart meters, lets be honest was never smart from the beginning and the amount of lies told by government and the industry was staggering, and the savings have never appeared. As for sending reading through my broadband, no problem, you pay me a few quid a year off my bill and I then I will just block you at the firewall and say it's your fault, you come out, I unblock it and you leave, I block it, prove it otherwise!
The real reason for smart meters, reduce manpower (no sexism implied), energy control, as in remote cut off, variable hourly tariff pricing to make the energy cartels more money and the government more VAT !
"instead doubling-down with claims that the devices could help deliver environmental, rather than direct monetary, savings"
This is a government exercise through and through. Remove the stupid gov decision that we should be strong armed into 'smart' meters and the issue will rectify itself with what the customer wants. There is no environmental benefit from this stupidity, the savings only theoretical and nobody seems to like them. So the gov should quietly just drop the whole smart meter stupidity and stop throwing our money at it.
Stupid gullible public let their greed of earning shares and making profit on infrastructure they already owned during the thatcher Reagan era .... Where the rot really started!!!
Personally had a clever excel sheet and kept moving provider regularly (not much effort) relying on their incompetence and stupid switching offers to make £100's off the profiteering incompetent sharks over the years :)
It's your moral duty to abuse the abusers albeit only a token shafting
Even now I have a smart meter but leccy only to use my IT skills to make the most of time of day tarrifs.... Still got my old spinning dial gas meter happily spinning away (feeding my ever so simple 15 year old non combi boiler) ..... Designed so they actually go slower with excessive wear and tear ignoring all the letters to change it, knowing no one would follow up
Having refused one for years I was convinced in a 1/2 hour telephone conversation with the suppliers salesman that they had solved the distance problem so the gas meter can talk the electricity meter 20 meters away and the electricity meter can talk to the in house display over 20 metres away and through a couple of brick walls. I said very clearly that I did not want one if the in home display did not work. I check the facts and it appears they have implemented a dual band technology which can use a lower frequency to extend the range.
Installer arrives late after 5pm on a winter evening and confirms they have dual technology meters and it will work in the house. Having removed the electricity meter he tells me the dual band is only on the gas to electricity meter not the home display. The home display won't work over the distance I tell him, yes it will he says and ignores my request to refit the old meter. After 2 hours in darkness and cold the home display does not work over the distance.
I complained to the supplier who eventually says I have been mislead and the manager of the colleague who mislead me is being informed. But it is OK because the home display will work in the garage where the electricity meter is. They ignored my request for a copy of the telephone conversation under data access legislation and suggested I use their app for my phone to get 1/2 hourly updates or buy a commercial in home display, which uses the same frequency so will not work over the distance, and they then ignored my further emails.
My supplier still uses a fixed charge per month irrespective of my usage so I build up a credit in the summer to pay for the winter usage. They will only refund a credit amount less the the monthly payment amount so I am always in credit. Effectively ignoring the smart meter readings!
My advice is don't believe a word they tell you.
Whenever I see "old" tech being booted in favour of "new dynamic thrusting white-heat" tech, I feel like saying (and sometimes say). "You'll be replacing all of this in five years, ten at the most. And by the way, some components these things use will be end of life even sooner."
So far I've got a "smart" electricity meter behind the house (this is the USA), a "smartened" gas meter in front of the house (it still has a mechanical readout), and a "semi-smart" water meter in the basement (it responds to RF queries from passing vans). The smarter stuff seems to talk to thingamajigs on utility poles nearby. I do know that there is a massive microwave network locally, thanks to a short contract at a local company.
That being said, while the water meter is now comparatively old, the electric and gas meters are still on probation. At least they can be read manually. Way back when we hired a sparky to relocate the old electricity meter outside the house, we had to leave handwritten signs out for the meter reader, who hadn't been told by the company that he needed to go around back.
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