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Smart meter


Freddy42
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Have you had a so-called smart meter fitted to monitor electricity and gas consumption?  If so, why?

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Nope, heard too many horror stories of faulty meters, even one in the papers of a woman being charged thousands for her bill in error! (The electric company did apologise and admit the meter was faulty)

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Yes as my gas bill was ridiculous and someone advised me to get this.

so fare it's saved me money n not been ripped off yet.

saving on both gas and electric

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They're a good idea as they make it easier to monitor usage and see what power you use when turning on showers and washing machines which helps you to realise what actually runs up your bills.

Also if you opt for daily or half-hourly readings then you pay a better rate because you pay unit price at the time of the readings.

Since having mine fitted i have found about 15 - 20% savings on my bills.

My gas bills has dropped by about 30% in the last 2 years

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We had ours fitted a while back, after s fall out with the monkey fitting the electric meter he finally done what I told him to do - after sending his boss countless pictures and texts:ohmy:. Unfortunately they think they have as much knowledge from a week long course as I have gained from an apprenticeship and 10 years in the trade.. They have no understanding of the need for good terminations and are quite blissfully unaware of the dangers of a potential 100A supply. Boils my 'blood' these so called fitters.

Gas meter packed in wthin a few months, but we didn't bother chasing them to fix it.. Until we realised the reading on the meter outside had packed in too so we ended up with an estimated bill.

And contrary to popular belief - you still get your meter read once a year, of atleast that's the official answer. 

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the only smart meter in our house is me!! lol
i update monthly the meter readings to my suppliers app and it updates instantly my bills so i can see how much ive used. it automatically adjusts monthly direct debit payments to cover the bills .

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I've heard/read too many horror stories to get one installed willingly! 

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If I understand correctly, if you change suppliers the meter has to be changed as well.  A bit inconvenient.  Also, since the supplier is receiving real time consumption data, the tariff can be changed to reflect demand on the system ie you could be charged more per unit at peak times.

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Not got a smart meter but for a few years had a monitor things that looks at the electric and you can set your own goal to use

Put your unit price in and tells the cost you use each day/week/month,great little thing.

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We can't get a smart meter here. We have gas and electric with SSE which is supplied in the normal way but apparently we are 'not on the national grid'. We are in a new build and the pipes are owned by a third party and there are no permissions to put the meters on. No idea what all that means but that's what I was told by SSE and by British/Scottish Gas.


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I'm a smart meter field manager...ask me and I'll give a honest answer, short version is there great the papers and tv talk crap it's scare mongering...but because there's such a high demand some engineers are fresh from collage, weren't we all new in a job once though?

 

JONRO2009 you have what's called IGT (independent gas transporter) lines, most of the gas mains in the country are owned by national grid but some new builds have these instead it's a cheaper way to do it for the peaple building the estate. You can get them changed just phone around or use uswitch/similar.

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Small amount of info for anyone interested, want to know more just ask.

 

there optional at the moment, if you change supplier you don't have to have them although there are some companies who are solely smart meter company's in which case that's all they offer so you would have to have them to be with that company.

 

from 2020 choice is gone and they will be mandatory and no saying I won't have them doesn't work it will be part of having a supply, the aim by the government is to have them all fitted by 2020 but it won't happen. There's approx 66million meters in the country and we as a industry have done about 6million so far.

 

dont worry there great! They can't be turned off remotely it's a myth and also illegal, they read themselves so no more meter readers and they stay on the tariff you have chosen they do not switch without your knowledge or consent. You get what you sign up for which most of the time will save you money no more estimated bills there accurate.

 

The company I work for has no standing charge which is rare, standing charge is basically rent for your meters. Everyone in the county pays it but not many knew they did or that it Evan existed, your free to ask your supply how much your standing charge is roughly it's about 20p-£1.30 a day. You can also ask your supply who is the cheapest supply for you and legally they have to tell you Evan if it's not them.

 

👍

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JONRO2009 you have what's called IGT (independent gas transporter) lines, most of the gas mains in the country are owned by national grid but some new builds have these instead it's a cheaper way to do it for the peaple building the estate. You can get them changed just phone around or use uswitch/similar.


Thanks for the response. That makes sense, I do live in a relatively new build. The house has been up for 18 months. When you say that you can get it changed, what exactly do you mean? After a year of being in the house I looked into changing supplier and spoke to a few suppliers including British Gas. They all said they were not allowed to put a smart meter in. So what exactly do I need to change to be able to get a meter? How will the pipework ever be owned by the National Grid? TIA Jon.


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4 hours ago, Novathere said:

Small amount of info for anyone interested, want to know more just ask.

 

there optional at the moment, if you change supplier you don't have to have them although there are some companies who are solely smart meter company's in which case that's all they offer so you would have to have them to be with that company.

 

from 2020 choice is gone and they will be mandatory and no saying I won't have them doesn't work it will be part of having a supply, the aim by the government is to have them all fitted by 2020 but it won't happen. There's approx 66million meters in the country and we as a industry have done about 6million so far.

 

dont worry there great! They can't be turned off remotely it's a myth and also illegal, they read themselves so no more meter readers and they stay on the tariff you have chosen they do not switch without your knowledge or consent. You get what you sign up for which most of the time will save you money no more estimated bills there accurate.

 

The company I work for has no standing charge which is rare, standing charge is basically rent for your meters. Everyone in the county pays it but not many knew they did or that it Evan existed, your free to ask your supply how much your standing charge is roughly it's about 20p-£1.30 a day. You can also ask your supply who is the cheapest supply for you and legally they have to tell you Evan if it's not them.

 

👍

Spot on info here,thanks.

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15 hours ago, Novathere said:

from 2020 choice is gone and they will be mandatory

On what evidence do you base this claim?  As far as I can ascertain, it's still only an 'aim'.

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I base my claim on the fact I work in the industry and have done so for 5 years, previous to that I was a fco for 5 years. We have updates on this every quarter, this has been the case since 2015 I can assure you whatever you read in the papers is crap. Up to 2020 is the point where you have a choice, after that the only meters that will be available are smart meters...

sorry if this seems a stern answer but I go by facts, papers print whatever they think will sell a paper.

 

there's no software issues. What there referring to is something called SMETS2.

 

smart meters are known as SMETS meters, currently each company has a certain one they use but if you were to change supplier they would need to put in there own smart meter. SMETS2 is the next gen smart meter, in the future when there installed and you switch supplier it's done via a computer there will be no need to change the meter again.

 

 

jonro

 

national grid (sgn in the south) won't ever own them but that won't stop you having your meters changed. Just means the meters are registered on the national database a different way. If you want British gas but there saying they can't do it I would recommend going with a supplier that can do it then switch, smaller company's will do more to get your business as registering on a igt site takes longer, then switch to British gas. Basically they will be doing the paperwork for British gas although there smart meters are awful and are currently 7 years behind the technology some company's are using.

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Thanks @Novathere I understand what you are saying but in practice I haven't found a company that is willing to put in a SMETS meter. Could it be different processes in Scotland? One person told me that after a certain amount of time it won't be a problem.


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You could call national grid, could be a issue with your mpan(elec) mprn (gas) numbers. There meter point references every meter has one, they should be able to sort it out for you they will be able to deal with the igt owner on your behalf. If your abit higher in Scotland it may be Nova Scotia gas who deal with it.

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I'm in Inverness


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  • 4 weeks later...

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/04/smart_meters_more_expensive_fewer_savings/

Smart meters: 'Dog's breakfast' that'll only save you 'a tenner' – report

£390 per meter... £420 ... pff, it's public money, who cares?

 

Smart meters will cost each British household £420 and save people just “a tenner a year”, according to reports.

Cost-benefit estimates for the British smart meter programme vary hugely, with figures ranging from modest savings of around £26 a year (as we reported last year) to the Mail on Sunday’s latest guess coming from Gordon Hughes, an economist at the University of Edinburgh.

“The introduction of the smart meter is a dog's breakfast. At best it is misconceived and an astonishingly expensive project. For those claiming it will bring major savings, I say they need to grow up,” Hughes dutifully raged for the Sunday newspaper.

The £11bn project, which came about in part because of European Union directive 2009/72/EC, snappily titled “Directive 2009/72/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 July 2009 concerning common rules for the internal market in electricity and repealing Directive 2003/54/EC (Text with EEA relevance)”, along with a similar directive on gas meters, is supposed to put smart meters into 80 per cent of households by the year 2020.

An EU webpage last updated a couple of weeks ago says the UK is on track to meet this target, though the source of its claim is unclear. The same page states: “While cost estimates vary, the cost of a smart metering system averages between €200 and €250 [£184 - £230] per customer, while delivering benefits per metering point of €160 [£147] for gas and €309 [£284] for electricity along with, on average, three per cent energy savings.”

Four years ago a British report revealed that the cost of installing smart meters in the UK is £390 per household, while more recent estimates are that the benefits are now as low as £11 per household, agreeing with the University of Edinburgh’s Hughes’ estimates to the Mail on Sunday. All costs for installing the UK smart meter network, from the backend systems to the consumer unit in your home, are met by hiking up your gas and electricity bills.

A Dutch study from earlier this year also found that some smart meters are capable of giving wildly inaccurate readings, exaggerating energy consumption by up to 582 per cent.

The hugely expensive project was not helped when El Reg revealed that the monopoly comms hub supplier for the north of the UK, EDMI, wanted millions of pounds to change a single component in its hub.

As government figures have gradually watered down their language when referring to the project – the Conservatives’ 2016 manifesto referred to “offering” smart meters to households – it could be inferred that the “80 per cent coverage by 2020” target will be missed. Estimates vary widely over how many have been installed so far but the figure appears to be somewhere in the low millions, as compared to the UK’s 27 million households.

With the UK slated to leave the EU by 2020, it is unlikely that any financial penalties will result if the target is missed.

 

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On 7/29/2017 at 3:55 PM, Freddy42 said:

Have you had a so-called smart meter fitted to monitor electricity and gas consumption?  If so, why?

I've not fitted a monitor to the main supply but I have purchased a few of these WiFi sockets which operate via an app on my phone aswell as the wife's phone,

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You put in the unit cost of electricity and it calculates the usage cost, on/off times can also be setup if required and there controllable from anywhere in the world via internet connection.

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I've moved one of them around the house to monitor various devices for a few weeks to evaluate there cost, 

For example; we have a wooden garden shed in the back garden with a clothes tumble dryer inside, The dryer has an "auto" setting which instead of drying continuously for a set 120 minutes, it monitors the temperature inside the dryer and stop/starts 

I wanted to monitor the energy consumption of the dryer while it's in this "Auto" setting because it's not installed within the house where the surrounding temperature is atleast 15 degrees Celcius,

It's practically outside with no insulation, meaning the auto setting could end up costing me a fortune if it's heating the entire shed every night.

So through the use of the monitor I was able to see that the dryer; when in auto setting was coming on and off 24/7 wheater there was clothes inside or it was empty and would maintain a regular temperature inside itself.

So the auto dryer isint ideal for installation outside of the main home. 

I now operate it on time duration instead.

Another use was to monitor the energy consumption of the 12 year old kitchen fridge,😨 as fridges rarely break down the main problem that manifests is the deterioration of the door seals allowing cold air to escape causing the motor to operate more frequently.

Through the use of the graphs on the energy monitor it was easy to see the consistency of motor coming on for as much as 20 minutes at a time even throughout the night when the door would have been closed for atleast 9 hours.

As result a new fridge saved over 100 pounds per year.

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That plug in meter looks good and like the idea of turning something off on the app.

Mine is the old N power one which does help a lot,the plug one wouldn't help me a lot as we live upstairs and not loads on.

Got to say i would like one with the app to look at so i get the one in the house which clips onto the main power cable and sends

wifi to the upstairs monitor but would like the app to go with it.

Wish there was a Gas one that works the same.

 

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Early last year i researched the internet and bought a few energy saving items which looked worth the investment aswell as others to make life easier.

Another useful item I found available on eBay was a Dragon's Den featured product called "energy egg" 

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It's basically a wireless remote controlled socket adaptor but instead of a remote control switching it on/off it has a PIR sensor built in to an egg shaped housing.

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☝green thing there is a 9v battery.

I've got the socket fitted to the television in the living room and the egg sits in the corner,

ive three kids whom watch some television then instantly get really motivated and go upstairs or outside to play without thinking of turning anything off, 

So if there's nobody in the room for 5 minutes the television switches off, and when someone enters the room then the power is restord to the television allowing it to be switched on again if required.

I've created a whole thread of energy saving products here: 

 

But another three products I found very good regarding saving on the heating cost were first 

EndoTherm heating system additive, it's available with the 1/2"BSP hose which allows you to pour it in to a radiator via the bleed valve opening.

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Ideally drain the water from your heating system radiators put this bottle in and refill the system, it helps to head up quicker aswell as reduce sludge and does work very well👍

Second item is Aladdin Automatic bleed valves, there available in various sizes to suit all radiators, mine are 1/2"BSP but I've bought a few 6mm for my mother's radiators aswell,

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They automatically release the air from the radiator ensuring there's never a cold spot and your always getting the optimum heat transfer from the radiator without ever having to bleed the air again.

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Third item is heat reflective foil, I've removed the bedroom radiators and fitted this foil to the wall using silver duct tape prior to recording the radiator and installing radiator covers to protect the kids from potential burns. 

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The foil reflects the heat back on to the radiator and in to the room, it reduces the amount of time your boiler comes on to maintain temperature as the walls won't be soaking up the heat from the radiators.

20161004_200955_zps7hvhewvb_edit_1475608607065_zpssvntplyc.jpg.657b2493a66123f9528a089563640795.jpg

I'm now changing all six radiators to steel milano radiators as there steel the heat wave from them is more consistent,

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There tubular design gives almost double the surface to air contact compared to a regular aluminium radiator resulting in a greater head output from a smaller radiator, i started off with just planning to purchase one for the livingroom, but having tried it out throughout last winter I've changed the entire house which now heats in half the time. 

I've also put a balloon in the chimney, a cap on the chimney, plastered up the chimney breast and vented it to the side. 

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