"Smart meters are meter readers nothing more."
I wish you were right, but you're not.
The nationally important (and highest cost, to build and to install) part of what the industry laughably still tries to call a "smart meter" is the remotely addressable off switch, whose purpose is electricity demand management.
For real(ish) time electricity metering, you don't need an expensive off switch, you don't need an expensive/intrusive installation visit, you just need something like a domestic equivalent of a clamp-on ammeter and some electronics. These wouldn't need any real rewiring at all and can be bought retail for maybe £40 per unit.
But the clamp-on ammeter equivalents don't provide the capability to switch off the domestic supply, and are therefore no real help when there is a real need for large scale demand management at short notice, on a remotely controlled and *selective* basis.
Here's BigClive's 15minute look at what's inside a recent(ish) UK Smart 'Meter'. See if you can avoid spotting the remotely addressable off switch - most of the commentards here so far don't seem to have realised that's what Smart 'Meters' are actually about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32NYQpvy8Q
(I'm told that if you're an Ovo customer you may recognise this meter as a Liberty 100, or maybe its bigger brother, the Liberty 110).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
