UK.gov threatens to 'pull plug' on smart meter rollout

A really smart meter...

... that truly saves me money would be one that monitors the energy company prices and swaps me onto lower tariffs automatically, from moment to moment.

To be fair, the 'meter' part of that is just a small aspect, but I bet hell will freeze over before the industry allows that to happen.

U-switch explains

"Smart meters could also mean lower electricity bills, because they will help energy companies to run more efficiently. If energy companies have a more accurate picture of how much energy the country uses and when they use it, they will be able to make sure they have the right amount of energy at the right time."

http://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/smart-meters-explained/

RE: We tried these in California...

The same thing happened to my father and his water meter.

He lives on a shared drive with 2 other houses, and the water meters are installed at the end of the drive way.

He realised after 5 years he had been paying for the water at the neighbours house. He only realised this after we (his kids) moved out but his water bill increased, at roughly the same time as the neighbouring house was bought by a family with 3 kids.

Turns out the meter numbers had been mixed up, so he was paying their bill, and they were paying his.

<sarcasm>

Of course once this was proved it was easy to get it sorted......

</sarcasm>

Cost reductions

Yes, it would allow some cost reductions by firing meter readers. Whilst I sympathise with those losing their jobs, do we really need to provide employment by keeping things inefficient?

Also it would be possible to allow the consumer to configure their smart meter (via the web) to switch between alternative generating sources (i.e. renewable, nuclear, coal, gas) according to the relative spot price of each source rather than (or in addition to) switching between supply/distribution companies. Those keen on renewables, for example, could set their meters to only switch away from the renewable tariff to one of the others when the non-renewable tariff is 80% of the renewable tariff (or choose your preferred generating source and price premium).

This would cut costs by getting rid of the administrative burden of price comparison/switching web sites and the legions of doorstep (mis)sellers, But again, that would mean job losses.

Proper regulation is needed to get rid of the plethora of confusing tariffs, and cap unit prices to pass on cost savings to the consumer. Maybe re-nationalise the whole edifice and cut out the administrative duplication of dozens of chief executives, sales teams, head office buildings etc.

No benefit to consumer

I have designed smart meters which are in production and my boss didn't understand why I wouldn't let one of my meters be placed on my house. Answer is simple, because it did nothing for me.

Smart meters pay for themselves in locations which are difficult for a meter reader to reach every month. Smart meters with cutoffs really pay for themselves on customers who are "slow" to pay their bills. Once they experience how easy it is for the utility company to turn their power off they somehow find priority to pay their bill.

Cheaper price??

You can see it now, we all get these "smart" meters installed, start saving money and the energy companies put up prices to compensate for their lose in revenue.

Just like the tariff con where you pay more per unit for using less until you reach the limit where you start getting the discounted rate for using more units.

First the meters, then the fines for energy "misuse", energy targets and more and more taxes and energy price hikes.

Why not take the 12bn and develop cheap energy in the UK by exploiting our massive shale gas fields under Blackpool?

I have have had a smart meter for a year and a half for both gas and electricity. it provided some amusement for the first few weeks, but after that I stopped looking. It was only fitted because it came free with the cheapest tariff at the time. The only benefit to me is that I am not overpaying each month so the utility company can sit on my cash. My consumption has not changed at all.

surprises?

Poor people are less engaged with suppliers because generally their experiences are of being harrassed.

From example I tried to persuade a friend to come off key meter, they wouldn't because of fears of harrasment if their incapacity benefits couldn't strech to cover and because billing is out of kilta with the benefits system and its hard to save money for a month- 3 months when your family is hungry and you get less than an average days pay each week.

Because they felt that the result of the difficulty matching benefits to monthly/quarterly bills had left them being victimised through credit referencing and they would be refused.

Because it provided a less stressful life if they could micro manage their micro funds.

There are much better things that could be done much cheaper.

1. align billed and keyed energy prices, penalising key meters is directly penalising people with little money.

2. review the lack of judicial process in credit referencing, remove fees for checking files (in line with stated intent of DPA, where politicians assured us it would not be allowed for companies to use charges as a business model (as experian do))

3. show some 'king compassion, a company with a multi million turnover does not need to agressively chase the hard up for £20 and take such actions as to cause severe life changing problems (a#3 HRA)

Smart meters, rubbish. The turnaround for govt projects is so long these will be obsolete before they're approved. Spend the money on renewable energy or an allowance for solar fittings for those on benefits (with feedback rebate payable to HMRC)

Cost per unit?

If we go off the census information and extrapolate you can assume there are around 30 million households in the UK. At a total cost of £12bn this works out at £400 per household to install a smart meter. Seems a little pricey.

Question

How much energy does a smart meter use compared to a 'dumb' meter?

Smart Meters

how does the energy companies get the data back via the electric mains or via other means i.e. our internet or phone lines?

Bills always go up with smart meters because they read the instantaneous power usage unlike the old ones that lagged a bit. The result of this is the heavy starting current on electric motors is metered with a smart meter but not with an old style meter. Hence dearer bills every time you use fridges, washing machine, tumble dryer, vacuum cleaner, power tools etc. A win for the power company and a loss for the consumer as always.

Almost a hundred comments in, and it's still not really clear which kind of smart meter we're talking about.

The wattmeter toys that let you see how much electricity you're using and have used.

Or (as per John Smith and David Kelly) something with no need for a display but whose remote power-off will come in real handy in five or ten years (maybe sooner if the weather turns bad) when the generation gap kicks in and the rolling blackouts start.

The £400 per household calculated at 15:11 says (imo) it's the one with the remote off.

DO NOT WANT.

But never mind me, Professor Ross Anderson at Cambridge isn't a big fan either.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/

The smart meters will probably work on the cellular network via pulsed microwave in a mesh network. They are more powerful than cellphone base stations. This of course may have potential health impacts.

It can purportedly provide data to the electric company of what you are using and how often you use it by adding a small microchip to the device which monitors the line, for example an electric motor like a hair dryer or a rampant rabbit. Latest study suggests they can theoretically tell what you are watching on the television by looking at the different patterns of juice the thing sucks down while its flickering at you albeit this is more technically challenging. The power companies will sell this data to whoever will buy it.

I wonder

....if these smart meters would survive 300v being fed through them as happened to my current one a couple of years ago.

They already know and can reasonably predict how much electricity is being used off the grid.

This will tell them how much electricity YOU use in real time, not the community in general. Of course they would never pass info about that strange several hundred Watt load that's on for a long, fixed time each day to the Police so they could check the lighting in your loft...

What would be good...

...is if I could book my energy usage ahead of time and get it at a cheaper price (like air fares). No chance of that I suppose.

To clarify...

1) the £12bn cost will be borne by the energy retailers..... But it will become a cost of them doing business and hence become part of the cost of energy that consumers pay for in their bill. The taxpayer will not pay (except that he is also a consumer...). The consumer bill is MOST unlikely to itemise the cost of the smart meter (they tried that in Victoria.... Not good..)

2) the clamp devices are not smart meters. SM's will have communications to them so that addl functions can be delivered, like time of use tariffs, remote connect/ disconnect of homes or devices if energy is short, support for eVehicle charging etc etc.... As others have commented, they also offer the potential if connected for new applications like home security, and possibly some health and well-being related applications (none of which are a priority for this programme or being explained to consumers as potential benefit)

3) lots and lots of people in many sectors (meter mfs, IT companies, telcos, energy svcs co's, consultancies, economists, etc) have tried to nudge this programme into a sensible place over the last 4 or 5 years, and contributed to numerous rounds of ofgem/ DECC initiated consultation. These efforts have not been entirely successful.... Yet (possibly ever) ... But they have been expensive.... Will DECC reimburse this effort if the project is cancelled in 2013...?

I wonder if Lord Truscott will want his £5000 back?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4401188/Lord-Truscott-Peers-charge-up-to-5000-a-day-to-facilitate-law-changes.html

Not just £6

£6 extra the first year, £12 extra the next, then £18 and so one. There is no plan to bring prices back down afterwards. I pay all that money and still do not own the meter. Sounds just as sensible as paying for fibre that BT rents back to me.

The Dangers of Smart Meters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0zNWGzzjjE&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLED520B56FBF0C3A0

Costs

These were put together by the energy companies - in a cartel fashion.

This and the previous government have lost the plot - the energy companies have had free reign and ofgem are timid indivuduals who won't say boo to a goose because their entertainment by the rich power companies would end... who pays for ofgem ? "We recover our costs from the licensed companies we regulate". Nice.

A lot of meter-hate here.

Somoene said that the measuring is pointless because the power companies alreayd know how much power they send out. Actually that's not true any more. Only about half the wind generation in the UK is measured as 'grid input' - the rest is attached on the 'distibution side' of the main meters so it just gets used locally. Same for all the PV on roofs. This lot is a non-triivial fraction of generation, at least some of the time.

Smart meters may be expensive but you are all ignoring the costs of _not_ having them. That will be either blackouts or even more expensive supply. The ability to have much more flexible tariffs, some stuff which gets turned off sometimes, loaning your EV battery to the grid for balancing purposes and so on, is necessary to make a low-carbon grid work.

If you don't think you want a low-carbon grid then that won't impress you much, but again the costs of not doing that (knackered climate, food shortages, probably outright war after a while) are likely to be orders of magnitude more than 12 billion.

Yes, there are serious issues of control (who has it) and encryption (you can't actually read your own data from the meter except via the provider), but those are implementation details. The fundamental infrastructure upgrade is necessary. I just hope it's been designed right so we don't have to do it all again in 10 years time...

And these things usually send their data back over the GSM network. Some will use the power network itself, or other arrangements in very remote areas.

For anyone that cares the specs are here: http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations/cons_smip/

Rolling these out without the 'remote disable' feature would be one way of enormously increasing acceptance. People are right to be nervous about that aspect (as Prof Anderson points out).

Oh and on 'what use is real metering'. Well I found out that our 2 PIRs use 16W each all day on the offchance that someone walked up - that's not worth £40/yr so they got switched off. And I found a bell-transformer using 15W permenanetly despite the bell having been removed years ago, and a radio using another 11. There are probably millions of little power-wastages like this going on up and down the country. It's true that they won't help if you couldn't care less, but if you do care (even if only about the money, rather than the waste) then some data can really help you reduce your consumption. Most people who care, find that they can easily reduce consumption by 40%. Fitted to the houses of the populace at large (who mostly don't care) you get about a 4% reduction (that californian data). Our consumption dropped by about 30% and I thought I'd done as much efficiency as I could already.