Another Smart Meters Again Thread

I always thought that claim ludicrous.

It's the way you use energy in the home that controls your energy costs in the home, not the meter!

And you're right about the cost saving: it's not a saving to the consumer, it's a saving to the supplier not having to employ so many meter reader personnel - but it's still a convenience for the consumer and good idea for the supplier (but not so good for meter readers!).

Yeah the whole smart meter saves the consumer money is a bit of a con. I think unless you’re extravagant with your usage nothing will change. It doesn’t even save my electricity supplier any money as, although having a smart meter fitted a few years ago, they still insist on sending a reader round every quarter to manually enter the digits into his device. No smart meter on my gas as yet, but I’m sure there will be before too long. 

Huge posted:

I always thought that claim ludicrous.

It's the way you use energy in the home that controls your energy costs in the home, not the meter!

And you're right about the cost saving: it's not a saving to the consumer, it's a saving to the supplier not having to employ so many meter reader personnel - but it's still a convenience for the consumer and good idea for the supplier (but not so good for meter readers!).

Couldn't agree more ................ the unit cost of electricity is what it is, and no smart meter is going to affect this.

My cynical nature means that I will resist having one installed, until forced to, largely due to the misleading sales pitch of the energy suppliers.

This is quite apart from any effect, (unresearched, thus far), that a smart meter might have on either my solar PV installation or my mains supply, from a hi-fi perspective.

Smart meter? Thanks, but no thanks. 

I will refuse to have one of those stupid "smart" meters.  They use a small amount of electricity to work therefore they actually COST you money.  Only a very small amount I must admit but there will be a cost.  The only saving made is by the suppliers who in theory have an easier job "reading" the meters.

TOTAL CON !!!!

I don’t have a display unit in the house and therefore a smart meter costs nothing as the very tiny amount of energy used is from the suppliers side and not the consumers metered side. 

To date I've resisted attempts by suppliers to fit smart meters in my house.  I tend to switch gas and electricity suppliers every 12 or 18 months in an attempt to mitigate the rip-off prices that 'loyal' customers end up paying.  I suspect that the savings from such switching outweighs any 'nudges' a smart meter might give me to switch something off. More particularly, I had understood that these smart meters are often supplier specific and I most certainly do not want to hassle of changing a meter when I change a supplier.   

Wot he said...

Despite starting this thread, admittedly to call the energy providers & hm-gov initiative the 'con' that it is, I did have a meter installed when I was offered one,  not that I need to know anything about energy savings as I'm well enabled in that department & have just about everything of the lowest energy type installed long before smart meters.  The reason I agreed to have one is to find out how they worked;  now after just over one year in use,  I have to say they do make like easier simply because we no longer need to read meters,  either www.posting the readings or letting people in to read them.

We don't have or particularly want a smart meter, for the same reasons as MDS above. Our fixed price tariff with EDF expired recently and looking at alternative suppliers I noticed that the small print conditions  of several suppliers,  required a smart meter for  the less expensive tariffs.   So thats how they save you money!   We ended up paying a bit more not to have a smart meter.

I've never understood the grounds for the 'sales pitch' around these bits of kit. IIRC, this is HMG following an EU suggestion (cum diktat?) around managing energy consumption.

I would be interested if it was clear, down the line, such metering would enable split pricing akin to Economy 7 and alike. AFAIK, this isn't the case - albeit it's been spoken of in some quarters. 

A bit like the Home Inspection Pack debacle of a few years back, this project has all the hallmarks of a bureaucratic shambles.

I've changed provider from Eon this year, as they appeared to only want to offer a barely competitive tariff s/t a meter being installed whereas my new provider is ~30% cheaper without. The latter send a monthly e-mail seeking UTD meter readings, and I can see graphs of my energy consumption on-line. 

I have a "smart" gas meter - due to "dumb" computer issues, the provider is unable to tell me how much gas I'm using, so I'm not getting any gas bills at the moment...

The other issue of course is that some people will be out of a job - which means we'll all be paying more in social security contributions.

Not sure whether or not it's just "fake news" or not, but I have read that having a smart meter installed has, in some cases, made it much more difficult to change energy supplier.

They are supplier specific, so you need to give readings when you change to new supplier. This is supposed to change when a new type of meter is rolled out later this year......sounds really dumb.

Gazza posted:

They are supplier specific, so you need to give readings when you change to new supplier. This is supposed to change when a new type of meter is rolled out later this year......sounds really dumb.

So, not so "smart", after all? 

Mike-B posted:

Shock Horror     The news this morning says "Customers who get smart meters installed are expected to save just £11 a year off their energy bills, a group of MPs has found.     It was originally thought that the new meters would save consumers at least £26"

.....  err ..... durr .....  what am I missing ??? why would a smart meter save any money for the consumer?  It's just a dumb meter,  it isn't anything close to smart other than able to communicate how much the consumer has used back to the supplier.  

These meters save nothing other than if the meter makes the consumer aware of an item & some action results.  Truth be told the only saving will be for the energy providers who have a smarter way to 'read' our meters.     As such I agree that equipping all the country with these meters is progress,  but trying to 'sell' the concept as a consumer saving benefit is/was a con.  Why not just tell us they are now part of the terms & conditions & add that the display shows useful info that can aid the consumer in identifying possible savings.

I've always been cynical about Smart Meters for a variety of reasons.

The silly ones perhaps are that they could be hacked or monitored  due to their cellular network connectivity - there were suggestions an enemy country or terrorist group could potentially shut down one's power supply by hacking these things bringing a country to a halt - feasible or not I don't know, but no chance if I don't have one.

Secondly the potential for remote monitoring identifying when you're away from home for an extended period which could be interesting for criminals to know.

These devices cost a vast amount of money to install, but the customers subsidise the installation costs through their green energy taxes or similar.

I think we use a lot of energy for an 'average' family (for electricity at least I use over 1000-1200 kWh per month at least - I suspect many here have inefficient practices too. We will tend to leave our hi-fi on rather than power cycle, we have media servers/computers often running 24/7 for convenience and are reasonably happy to pay for it.  We won't power off at the socket but will leave devices on standby (minimal consumption in many cases) primarily as the sockets are not easy to access without bending/twisting/contortions to get behind devices!

Ultimately anyone with rudimentary mathematical skills who wants to save money on energy should be able to take a few interval meter readings before/after changes to their usage and calculate unit or cost savings.  The biggest one for me was realising my old Mac Pro tower was almost like having a convector heater on using close to 1 kWh left on as a server 24/7 - a newer Mac Mini uses a fraction of that, though storage connectivity is more convoluted.

Suspect many have seen those 'plugs' which fir a socket and allow you to plug in a single device or extension lead to monitor usage of a component/group of items - I've found them quite useful over the years, but how much do they change your behaviour?  They wouldn't make me buy a new fridge or freezer as the outlay is excessive to save daily costs, and if it's raining I'll use the tumble dryer as I need to (to be honest prefer the feel of clothe dried like this but currently taking advantage of the line due to the good weather).

I suspect many here have inefficient practices too.

You mean , like leaving hifi equipment on 24/7???

I am with first utility...smart meter, you can go online and see when you use power. Surprise...when you wake up, kettle on, plasma tv, cooking oven it’s high etc......go to work nobody at home it’s k.....it’s low power consumption.....5pm it’s oven on, kettle, tv etc high again. No use at all, I already know this.

SamClaus posted:

I suspect many here have inefficient practices too.

You mean , like leaving hifi equipment on 24/7???

Precisely.

If they were marketed as a "save" meter, with claim of saving money; then I can wholeheartedly appreciate the beef.

But they are marketed as a "smart" meter. The smart part here is not the meter but the owner being smart about energy consumption. Yes ?

But that's exactly how they were marketed ............. have one of these, and save money on your energy bills.

Yes, you and I can see that it's entirely down to us to monitor our consumption, but the thrust of the campaign to install these things was that we would all save money.

Predictably, the usual recognised way to save money is to investigate changing energy supplier, but it seems that, at present, once locked into a smart meter, changing supplier might prove to be not that easy.

Again, thanks, but no thanks.

The figures I heard were £11bn for the infrastructure investment covering 30m homes

that's £366 per home

"Savings" per home predicted at £26pa that's 14 years to recover the investment.

Revised predictied "saving" is £11 pa, that's 33 years to recover the investment.

Doesn't make sense, even if the "saving" was fully automatic rather than dependent upon lifestyle changes.

But then, I probably heard the wrong figures.

Don Atkinson posted:

The figures I heard were £11bn for the infrastructure investment covering 30m homes

that's £366 per home

"Savings" per home predicted at £26pa that's 14 years to recover the investment.

Revised predictied "saving" is £11 pa, that's 33 years to recover the investment.

Doesn't make sense, even if the "saving" was fully automatic rather than dependent upon lifestyle changes.

But then, I probably heard the wrong figures.

And if those numbers are right, the VFM is even worse because the meters themselves are likely to have a much shorter life than 33 years and so will need replacing at new cost; and the savings of £11pa should be discounted over the life-cycle of the business case because of inflation.  A pretty crap business case if ever I've seen one. 

Do smart meters understand the concept of solar panels and the feeding of power into the grid.

The £11bn is cost of implementation. The benefits of implementation are approx £14bn.

Report 2014

With total expected present value (PV) costs of £10.5bn and total PV benefits of

£14.8bn up to 2030, the net present value (NPV) for the domestic roll-out of smart

meters in GB is estimated to be £4.3bn. As a result of consumers using energy more efficiently and suppliers passing through net cost savings, the roll-out is expected to reduce the average household electricity and gas bill by £26 in 2020 and by £43 in 2030.

Report 2016

With total expected present value (PV) costs of £10.6bn and total PV benefits of £14.3bn up to 2030, the net present value (NPV) for the domestic roll - out of smart meters in GB is now estimated to be £3.8bn. As a result of consumers using energy more efficiently and suppliers passing through net cost savings, the roll out is expected to reduce the combined electricity and gas bill for the average household by £11 in 2020 and by £47 in 2030. (both undiscounted and in 2012 prices).

The headlines didn't include the £47 reduction in 2030. That’s more than the previous estimated reduction of £43.

fatcat posted:

The £11bn is cost of implementation. The benefits of implementation are approx £14bn.

Report 2014

With total expected present value (PV) costs of £10.5bn and total PV benefits of

£14.8bn up to 2030, the net present value (NPV) for the domestic roll-out of smart

meters in GB is estimated to be £4.3bn. As a result of consumers using energy more efficiently and suppliers passing through net cost savings, the roll-out is expected to reduce the average household electricity and gas bill by £26 in 2020 and by £43 in 2030.

Report 2016

With total expected present value (PV) costs of £10.6bn and total PV benefits of £14.3bn up to 2030, the net present value (NPV) for the domestic roll - out of smart meters in GB is now estimated to be £3.8bn. As a result of consumers using energy more efficiently and suppliers passing through net cost savings, the roll out is expected to reduce the combined electricity and gas bill for the average household by £11 in 2020 and by £47 in 2030. (both undiscounted and in 2012 prices).

 

The headlines didn't include the £47 reduction in 2030. That’s more than the previous estimated reduction of £43.

 

Ah! thank goodness for that ! I got the figures wrong. So much for BBC News these days !

Will we eventually be forced to have a smart meter fitted. or will it be "incentivised" by the offer of a reduced tarrif ?

Last year my electricity bill was c. £1,000