Mandatory Standard API's
I've got gas and electricity smart meters supplied and fitted by eOn. All good, all working, very happy with it. I've now moved to nPower who were cheaper at that specific moment in time, and they don't support these smart meters. So now I'm back to reading the meter reading off of the 'consumer' read-out panel and typing that into their website every month because their computermabob sez no. However, I have been put on their waiting list to receive a NEW smart meter as and when their trial moves to the next stages.
Its a frankly dumb way to work and I'm sure all it involves is sending a man out to change the modem strings, but logic and utility providers is like water and oil.
I can't even write an API to do it myself as no-one will give me the encryption details of how to information is sent from the meter to the consumer display, and they didn't see the logic of adding a USB port to be able to download the data.
So, in my experience, smart meters are just dumb meters with blinkenlights.