Author Topic: Smart meter?  (Read 2027 times)

Smart meter?
« on: 10 March, 2018, 04:29:41 pm »
I have received a letter from my electricity supplier giving me a date when they intend to fit a smart meter. Are there any views from people’s experience please?
One of my cycling friends had one that jumped to several thousand pounds, another friend’s has ceased working.
Do they still leave a reliable meter somewhere?
Many thanks for any views.

Kim

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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #1 on: 10 March, 2018, 04:40:16 pm »
The system is a bit of a clusterfuck, in that one supplier's smartmeters can't be used smartly (they still work fine as a normal read-it-by-eyeball meter) by the next supplier.  But that's down to regulation to solve.

From a consumer viewpoint, it means you get accurate bills without having to make frequent readings, and you have to move all the camping kit because a meter reader has turned up at the door less often.  In the future smart meters will enable much finer-grained tariff structures, so you can potentially save money and use less fossil fuel if you're able to do more of your electricity consumption outside the morning and evening peak.  Scaled up, this will help balance the demand on the grid, and is a good thing.

You generally get a little energy monitor thingy that links to the meters, which should be slightly more advanced than one based on a current clamp (not only does it know the voltage, and what the gas meter is doing, but it should be aware of billing data, so able to give you an accurate realtime cost display for tariff), but IMHO once you've tracked down spuriously high-load appliances those are largely a gimmick.  It probably says something that mine is now unplugged, in favour of a microcontroller feeding a count of the flashes of the meter's blinkenlight into RRDTool (you can infer a lot more from a high-resolution graph than you can from an instantaneous power and total used display).

Faulty meters are serious business, and should be diagnosed and replaced promptly by whoever's responsible for the actual meters, while the supplier deals with any resultant billing cockup.  I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #2 on: 10 March, 2018, 04:53:41 pm »
For dual fuel users, if there's a fair distance between your gas and electricity meters then you'll still be submitting manual meter readings for your gas.

(Only the electricity meter has the cellular connection, the gas meter talks to the electricity meter than then does the upload to the supplier. Ours are too far apart - they knew this but still installed the meters - so we have to submit gas readings every so often. Also, I have to submit those gas readings by phone as the website doesn't allow me to submit online as it knows we have a smart meter.)
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Kim

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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #3 on: 10 March, 2018, 04:57:16 pm »
Yeah, it's Zigbee (imagine a less sexy sibling of Bluetooth) between the meters, as the gas meter's supply of electrons is limited to those available from a primary lithium battery.  It's also used for the link to the energy monitor thingy.  Like all wireless communications, it works except when it doesn't.

fuaran

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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #4 on: 10 March, 2018, 05:09:39 pm »
The system is a bit of a clusterfuck, in that one supplier's smartmeters can't be used smartly (they still work fine as a normal read-it-by-eyeball meter) by the next supplier.  But that's down to regulation to solve.
The latest version of the smartmeters (SMETS2) should allow switching between suppliers, and still work smartly. Though not sure if anyone is actually installing these yet, or if they are still old versions.

robgul

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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #5 on: 10 March, 2018, 05:15:56 pm »
The system is a bit of a clusterfuck, in that one supplier's smartmeters can't be used smartly (they still work fine as a normal read-it-by-eyeball meter) by the next supplier.  But that's down to regulation to solve.
The latest version of the smartmeters (SMETS2) should allow switching between suppliers, and still work smartly. Though not sure if anyone is actually installing these yet, or if they are still old versions.

Checking just last week when we changing our dual-fuel tariff it appears that there is no roll-out of the 2nd generation yet - my advice would be to cancel the installation (they can't force you) and wait.

Rob

Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #6 on: 10 March, 2018, 05:44:39 pm »
My existing meter has apparently come to the end of it's service life, they've told me there's an obligation to replace it.  So the engineer comes in December to do so, takes one look in the cupboard that contains the meters for six flats,  tells me he can't do it because they're all on a shared fuse and it would require written permission from the other five flats to disconnect them  and that I can't organise this myself.  Three months later, I keep getting the letters, I've given up ringing them and I still have the out of service life meter.  So much for their obligation.

Kim

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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #7 on: 10 March, 2018, 05:50:14 pm »
That seems daft.  Surely there's scope for a "we need to fettle your electrickery supply, we're going to turn it off for a bit at such-and-such-a-date" letter?  It's their fuse, after all.

Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #8 on: 10 March, 2018, 06:12:21 pm »
That seems daft.  Surely there's scope for a "we need to fettle your electrickery supply, we're going to turn it off for a bit at such-and-such-a-date" letter?  It's their fuse, after all.
Yes, and it looks like I have the oldest meter, so it's not the first time it's been done.  Annoying thing is I think all the other residents were in and I could have got consent there and then.

Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #9 on: 10 March, 2018, 06:20:30 pm »
I was offered a smart meter, they phoned me on my mobile and asked if I had a mobile signal. I said it's a bit shit but I'm at the property now and you're speaking to me on it. So they turned up and said: your mobile signal is shit you can't have a smart meter, and went away.  ::-)
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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #10 on: 10 March, 2018, 06:44:27 pm »
We were going to get a smart meter, for no better reason than that it would be more compact than the old one and thus allow us to make the cabinet housing it less obtrusive. 

Then, after a chat with our electrician (who runs a large firm & thus has clout), he got SW Power to come out and inspect (they say they won't do that).  Between us we arranged to move everything to the cellar.

E, reading about the pitfalls of smart meters, decided we should stick with the old analogue one (and there was some doubt whether a smart meter would work underground).  So we simply moved the existing set-up downstairs. 

The gas meter is outside and a fair distance away, so it doesn't seem that we're close to upgrading any of it.

Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #11 on: 10 March, 2018, 06:50:14 pm »
We are going to wait. We had new old-style meters not long back.  Every while I nip under the stairs and take a pic of the readout - it's no big deal, and there's always a chance I'll need to kidnap the meter reader if the supplier cocks things up :demon:.  Meanwhile one more person has a job, however dangerous..
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ian

Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #12 on: 12 March, 2018, 06:36:16 pm »
Tempted to get one, BG couldn't answer the question as to whether it's the later, standardized version or if it wasn't, when such an exciting development was likely to occur. At least it'll save me correcting their readings and random estimations  (the last fuck-up being the water, I suppose, who added an extra 70 cubic metres to my reading because, well, what the hell, why not, after all  I might have acquired a swimming pool since last time). BG only managed to muddle up metric and imperial. I may ask the repairman when he's around tomorrow to fix my bathroom radiator, but if it's a minor job, then the upgrade is someone else's problem.

Valiant

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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #13 on: 14 March, 2018, 05:32:33 pm »
They turnt up to the town hall to replace old rotary meters with a few smart ones. They installed one and realised the signal was terrible. So they came back and installed a wifi one, except it couldn't do 5ghz. So now we have one of each a gprs one, a wifi one and a rotary one. All of which have to be read by eye.
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Re: Smart meter?
« Reply #14 on: 14 March, 2018, 05:45:26 pm »
Our leccy meter was replaced a couple of years ago with a new digital one.  The gas meter was also replaced with a dumb one a year or two previously.

I feel like resisting smart meters until they have their act sorted.