Dumb Meters

Toby

Toby

Zorg Guru (III)
British Zeds
Joined
Jul 5, 2015
Points
148
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N.E Lincs
So anyone got a dumb meter ?

One of those meters on your utilities that measures your usage, and the utility companies call em smart meters :cool:

I've always called them dumb meters as really anyone with half a brain cell would know if you turn something on, you'll use more - also amazingly if you turn it off you'll use less. Obviously some folks like gadgets and like to see things changing / flashing lights.
Me I dont actually mind grabbing a meter reading every so often, at least I can check over the meter box at the same time.

I remember reading a report by the Ex CEO of Scottish Power a number of years ago, stating that 'smart' meters are of no benefit to the consumer and theres no point in them having them. However they are of benefit to the utility companies who would plan to use them to have varible billing - as in you would pay more for your usage at peak times. But they needed a certain % of the country on them.

Well the good news is its happening, so either they have reached that % or they've scrapped the benchmark
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/oth...o-change-48-times-a-day/ar-AATEwC9?li=AAnZ9Ug

The other good thing about the 'smart' meters the current ones are all going to be rendered obsolete shortly - who thought that one up, was a genius.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-10405685/ALL-smart-meters-need-replaced.html

The £11 billion costs of installation was born by us, the consumer, not the utility companies and now at some point they'll going to need to be replaced. Guess who'll pay for that too - when bills are already increasing.

Welcome to the future, its going to be wonderful.
Apologies to anyone who works within the 'smart' meter industry.
 
Toby said:
So anyone got a dumb meter ?

One of those meters on your utilities that measures your usage, and the utility companies call em smart meters :cool:

I've always called them dumb meters as really anyone with half a brain cell would know if you turn something on, you'll use more - also amazingly if you turn it off you'll use less. Obviously some folks like gadgets and like to see things changing / flashing lights.
Me I dont actually mind grabbing a meter reading every so often, at least I can check over the meter box at the same time.

I remember reading a report by the Ex CEO of Scottish Power a number of years ago, stating that 'smart' meters are of no benefit to the consumer and theres no point in them having them. However they are of benefit to the utility companies who would plan to use them to have varible billing - as in you would pay more for your usage at peak times. But they needed a certain % of the country on them.

Well the good news is its happening, so either they have reached that % or they've scrapped the benchmark
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/oth...o-change-48-times-a-day/ar-AATEwC9?li=AAnZ9Ug

The other good thing about the 'smart' meters the current ones are all going to be rendered obsolete shortly - who thought that one up, was a genius.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-10405685/ALL-smart-meters-need-replaced.html

The £11 billion costs of installation was born by us, the consumer, not the utility companies and now at some point they'll going to need to be replaced. Guess who'll pay for that too - when bills are already increasing.

Welcome to the future, its going to be wonderful.
Apologies to anyone who works within the 'smart' meter industry.
Click to expand...
My Dum Meter is as thick as mince as it mostly cannot pick up our lecky meter so is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
 
We got given a monitor that shows what you're using, but as you have to plug it in it must use power so I unplugged it again after the bloke had gone.
 
The local line company here in South Canterbury, New Zealand, put their own meshed communications system in for the smart meters. This was because the cell/mobile phone coverage did not cover enough of the farming areas. Yes, we have places where you can go on holiday and not have any coverage. Pure bliss.
 
I have been with Zebra Power for the last two years …., no problems whatsoever… regular reasonable price for gas and leccy ……until they went down and the Ombudsman transferred me to British Gas ( which is the company I left ). The monthly cost went up by 50% and they bombard me with emails trying to get me to move over to smart meters…
Had two calls where I told them not interested…but still they persist…….time now probably for a few ‘f***s’ in the conversation till they get the message =))
 
Mazza said:
I have been with Zebra Power for the last two years …., no problems whatsoever… regular reasonable price for gas and leccy ……until they went down and the Ombudsman transferred me to British Gas ( which is the company I left ). The monthly cost went up by 50% and they bombard me with emails trying to get me to move over to smart meters…
Had two calls where I told them not interested…but still they persist…….time now probably for a few ‘f***s’ in the conversation till they get the message =))
Click to expand...
Unfortunately you won't have a choice soon as your standard meter will become obsolete.
Over the last year or so many of these new energy supply companies have went to the wall after making deals with customers that due to rising energy costs they can no longer honour due to not being large enough to absorb increasing costs.
Stephen.
 
It was a no brainier as the original post so declined them all same as a water meter. I’m sure in the future it will be enforced to have them with no savings to the consumer. As with Malc we got shunted over to BG and have a decent credit and still awaiting for all the fallout to be sorted while they are asking for an increase in direct debit which was negotiated down on our recent usage. I feel real sorry for folks who are living on a knife edge and don’t have much funds for the hikes being asked. Shame the government has not had the foresight for the UK to be energy self sufficient. Interesting read https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/2/9/uk-based-scientists-smash-nuclear-fusion-energy-record Lovely idea to have cheap energy for the massive but if it ever come about I’m sure Joe public will still have to pay through the nose for it.
 
I'm with the with one many legs!! Octopus, thankfully they haven't pushed us to get a Dumb Meter installed and let me take the monthly readings. They do give me two free spins on the wheel of fortune when I put the gas & electric readings in. I've had a couple of quid out of it, but my next door neighbour got the top prize of £571 on one of his spins last year.
 
Left British Gas duel tarrif for Eon Energy who had a better deal a couple of years ago they fitted smart meters. Look after my Bills advised a change to Together Energy when our contract was comming up for renewal so moved to them. The smart meters we had were version 1 and new supplier couldn't read them so we submitted regular readings. We then had our meters upgraded with the latest versions and after Together Energy went bust we were transferred to British Gas. Not at all impressed with British Gas will wait for Look after my bills to find a better deal when the market settles down. Britis Gas are awful for trying to contact them and end up speaking to someone in India, the got rid of a lot of their own engineers and use Contractors for most customer jobs. We had a new Boiler from British Gas and that was fitted by Contractors. Monitor seems to be working ok post switch still waiting for the Gas side to be updated and displaying the correct tarrif. Really noticed the tarrif change on the electric we are using daily since the switch.
 
Just slightly off topic but mentioned above .
In Scotland only commercial property have water meters residential do not have them .
Stephen.
 
I got one, only because its the only way to get paid for the electric I export to the grid. Also with Octopus seems a good company and their export rate is better than anyone else, still on a long term fixed incoming tarrif until May so will see what that brings.
 
Stevo7682 said:
Just slightly off topic but mentioned above .
In Scotland only commercial property have water meters residential do not have them .
Stephen.
Click to expand...

We've had a water meter with Northumbrian Water for about 6 years. With only two of us in a four bed detached house the meter has halved our water bills. Definitely worth having one installed in our case. A friend of ours living in a smaller semi detached house with two people living there are paying twice as much as us. We're trying to get them to get a meter installed, it doesn't cost anything to get done but will save them loads of money.
 
Our house was built in 1983 so we don't have a water meter. Any new builds do have to have one though. Fighting shy of an Electric "Smart" meter for as long as we can. You do not need a Smart meter if you were brought up as we were and have that old fashioned thing called "Common Sense".
If you switch it on then you switch it off when you've done. As the Meerkat used to say "SIMPLES".

Tony.
 
Some marketing bod was tripping on acid when they decided to claim that smart meters will save you money. Trouble is a swathe of the great British public are too lazy or too dumb to understand that as @Toby says, they are Dumb meters. The only way to save energy is to use less, these things actually use energy, so plug in the monitor and you use more (OK only a tint bit, but add it all up over millions of homes??).

Anyway, as we have over various governments destroyed our own energy production, shied away from nuclear clean energy, we will continue to depend on Russia, wind and solar. Anyone for fracking?

Rant over :whistle:
 
Its ok Ian continue to rant :(
We only use Russian gas for about 3% of our total usage, around 50% is from North Sea - whose removal costs havent really increased. But the companies profits have over the past year. The uk company responsible didnt have to increase their prices to UK customers.

We will have an enviromental impact coming in the future, around 10- 12 years time with regards to wind power.

The blades of wind turbines have a working life of circa 25 years, many have been operational now for around 10 years. What do you think happens to them once they are removed ??

-1x-1.jpg


This is from Wyoming, blades from 3 wind farms - aorund 1000 blades which equates to 330 turbines approx.
Currently there are 341 000 turbines around the world, with many more planned.

Think we're going to need a bigger hole.
 
Althulas said:
That’s a sight to see Tony! It’s a shame that the materials used were not recyclable but I suppose the cost of aluminium ones would be a lot more expensive than using composites.
Click to expand...
Glassfibre ( turbine blades ) can be recycled though - however costs would come into play

For more info, and pictures of burials ;)
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Just wait for the whines from the electric car users, when their car talks to the meter, which increases the tarrif on energy used for charging traction batteries! It only takes a bit of software, which is probably already in the meter and cars . . . Of course, the government would feel forced to do this, in order to save the planet etc etc. when the real reasons will be to make money, and to compensate for the lack of electrical generating capacity in the UK - Hinckley Point 'B' is to be closed soon, and the new 'C' station is way behind schedule. I cannot complain, however, as the profits EDF are making from it help to subsidise my electricity bills here in France!

Also - I am amazed that the advertising standards people have not prosecuted the smart meter companies for advertising that a smart meter will enable its users to use 'clean' electricity! Any 'clean' energy is fed into the national grid, where it is mixed with 'dirty' energy, so one never knows the source of one's electricity.

Tell people a small lie and they may realise it, but tell them a big lie - and keep repeating it - and they will believe it . . .
 
Don't know where that came from. It is only partly true. Early smart meters (SMETS1) used mobile telecoms networks but the current ones don't. They do indeed need to be changed - approx 7m of them.
The newer meters (SMETS2 - Edit : of which there are over 10 installed) use a proprietary protocol which connects to local base stations dedicated to them and them alone. I used to work for the company that installed and operates the network for the Northern area. The meters themselves can connect directly or use other meters as a network to hop from one to another to the base station, in much the same way as street lights are now controlled. The data rate is very low compared to other applications.
That said, the IoT capabilities of 5G are also perfect for this service, but, you are then reliant on one set of Critical National Infrastructure to run and operate another. Considering how often mobile networks can crash (especially the data networks behind them) it makes operational sense to keep them separate.

SMETS1 meters do not allow you to change suppliers. If you do change, those meters go dumb. This is why there is a need to move to the newer version. Arguably, you shouldn't need to change meter until you change supplier - but then when you do change, who pays? The new suppliers are not going to want that cost to get your business. Putting aside the current crisis and problems in the market (caused by external issues and wider government exacerbated failures in the energy supply industry over decades), it makes operational sense for the infrastructure to have the same capabilities. The problem is that the first versions of meters were pushed out before the technical requirements were fully thought through. Always a problem on bleeding edge technology.

However - as stated, smart meters currently benefit the operator. The meter itself is different to the In Home Display. Most of us have little need to see exactly what is being used (except for showing unruly teenagers what they are doing to the planet as well as our own bills :mad:). The power companies simply don't have to pay for meter readers. A big cost so a big big saving.
They don't need to have access to consumer meters to see demand though. They measure that at many points in the distribution. Indeed, they use it to find illegal tapping of supplies in the local systems. They keep a very close eye on demand profiles as well as the 50Hz frequency to ensure supply meets demand.

The real benefit to consumers is when the return communications path allows the suppliers to have dedicated demand based tariffs and to also shed demand in return for much reduced costs (although IT based solutions or 5G could do the same but would be far more complex to set up and operate as well as being reliant on other networks out of their control). That needs higher power things such as washing machines, dishwashers etc (and yes - car chargers) to be switched off often only for short periods when demand exceeds supply. A situation we are almost certainly going to face because of the complete failure of government to manage the power generation mix. Indeed, I heard recently that some operator is offering free power to those that opt to shed load at peak times.

Old Economy 7 meters use a nationally based radio system to change the tariff between night/day. That is a simple command to switch every meter at the same time.

However - even SMETS2 meters are not without problems. Ours goes dumb due to a problem radio inside the box. It won't reset or burst back into life again until we've have a power cut. A ToTo solution that needs thousands of homes to have power switched off. That isn't progress at all.
 
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