Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

Reluctantly may have to get a smart meter.

The house we recently moved in to has old style gas and electric meters in the corner of the kitchen at the back of an L shaped cupboard. I need to get on my hands and knees and climb part way into the cupboard with a torch and twist my neck uncomfortably upwards to get the meter readings. Our supplier requires me to do this every month. I'm too old for such contortions. Only thing is, I can see a smart meter fitter taking one look at where the existing meters are and saying "no chance pal". Plus we will likely change supplier at some point, and if the meter no longer works after that it is just a complete waste of time and money anyway.

As for smart meters saving us any money, it is extremely unlikely as we are already very careful with energy consumption and take the view that in Winter we expect to wear suitably warm clothing indoors and not crank up the heating while wearing summer attire.

So can't make up my mind whether to have a smart meter fitted or not.

Smart meters are meter readers nothing more.

We've already seen how unsecure they are and how they get turned into a glorified brick when you change energy supplier.

What is the point in spending such a huge amount of taxpayers money for something that clearly doesn't work!?!

The thing that really gets on my nerves is that the best tariffs are already smart meter only.

I do not want a smart meter and i'm not going to be forced into having one.

Reduction in Customer Bills or Cost to Suppliers Collecting Data

If this is really supposed to reduce the money that the public are paying in their bills by encouraging people to turn things off, just buy every household something like the basic OWL meter and job done. You might need someone to install them in the houses of little old ladies but this could be done during a yearly visit.

But I suspect that the real reason this is being supported is that the suppliers will be able to get readings a lot cheaper and if they do need to disconnect you they can probably do it remotely.

Appx 27mil homes in UK, basic OWL meter £35 (probably cheaper if you need a few million of them)

So total cost £945,000,000 or less than 10% of the budget for the Smart Meters

Smartmeters installed a month ago...

Gas - working fine apparently, looking at my account it seems to be reporting daily.

Leccy - nothing. Not a single reading submitted since it was installed.

The little in house display gadget is working fine for both too - turn on the microwave and watch it go :)

Guess the meter readers are going to still be in a job for a while yet then.

Saving me money

Well, having had a smart meter for a few years Now (eon) that no longer work since I switched away.

How EXACTLY am I supposed to "save" any money.

Never did look at the display even when it worked.

"Smart meters are meter readers nothing more."

I wish you were right, but you're not.

The nationally important (and highest cost, to build and to install) part of what the industry laughably still tries to call a "smart meter" is the remotely addressable off switch, whose purpose is electricity demand management.

For real(ish) time electricity metering, you don't need an expensive off switch, you don't need an expensive/intrusive installation visit, you just need something like a domestic equivalent of a clamp-on ammeter and some electronics. These wouldn't need any real rewiring at all and can be bought retail for maybe £40 per unit.

But the clamp-on ammeter equivalents don't provide the capability to switch off the domestic supply, and are therefore no real help when there is a real need for large scale demand management at short notice, on a remotely controlled and *selective* basis.

Here's BigClive's 15minute look at what's inside a recent(ish) UK Smart 'Meter'. See if you can avoid spotting the remotely addressable off switch - most of the commentards here so far don't seem to have realised that's what Smart 'Meters' are actually about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G32NYQpvy8Q

(I'm told that if you're an Ovo customer you may recognise this meter as a Liberty 100, or maybe its bigger brother, the Liberty 110).

Capita gets a big piece too

Don't forget that to make the SMETS2 meters only work because all the data is centralised at Data Communications Company (DDC) which is owned by Capita.

Why would anyone trust their information to it if they didn't have to?!?!?

give it

a couple more years and there'll be plenty of tales of

"The smart meter said I used 100 quids of electrickery, the supplier adjusted the direct debit to match, the bank rejected the debit as there was only £50 in the account, therefore the supplier automatically switched off the power..... all this took less than 3 seconds and we're left sitting in the dark"

Thats the real reason for smart meters, because at the moment you have to do expensive things such as going to court for a warrent and getting people in to cut off the power for non payment....

Missing smart meter tech

The one bit they did miss was the ability for a smart meter to pull power from the cheapest provider at any given time. That would have sold it to the public..

Q: "Who do I sign up with?"

A: "Doesn't matter mate. The meter will go find the cheapest itself"

Q: How do I pay the bill?"

A: "Doesn't matter mate. You'll only owe the minimum rate possible. Let the providers sort it out. It's a bloody smart meter after all innit?"

..he thinks to himself as he exits cloud-cuckoo land with a thwack.

[note] Never feed a stray thwack. They make terrible pets.

"for you and I" FFS!

I'd like to read this article to reinforce my prejudice, but I can't get past the sub-headline.

For god's sake, is it too much to ask that a professional writer has at least a minimal understanding of grammar? "for you and I"...? Really?

This is the result of a failed desire to be seen as educated - emulating Queen-speak. Unfortunately the Queen does have a proper education and would never make this gross error.

"My husband and I went to the beach. The crowds saw my husband and I on the beach."

I think not. The simple test is to remove the other party, in which case the second sentence above would become "The crowds saw I on the beach." The Queen is not a Rastafarian, and I doubt that the writer is, so the sub-headline is garbage. As is the English of the author.

Rant mode off...

Twice I've been scheduled to get a smart meter fitted. Both times no-one showed up. Not surprised the rollout is so far behind schedule.

Sack Siemens.

New flat, new supplier, they offer to change Pre Pay meter to "smart" meter.

I went with it as I wanted a day off anyway, and they offered me credit against my electric for doing so (plus, I could top-up from my phone rather than having to mess about with keys).

They asked all kinds of details about the meter (it's YOUR meter... you check it regularly because I get the emails every few months... why do you not know?!). Including whether I had storage heaters (Yes) or dual-rate meter (Yes).

Woman from Siemens turned up on my day off. Saw the storage heaters. Said "I've not got the right meter". Disappeared never to be seen again. A year on, no follow-up. But I still keep getting the same spam email about "Would I like a smart meter?"

Sure, compensate me for a lost day off, plus the other day to actually do the job this time, and I'll think about it.

I've refused to install a smart meter numerous times and glad I did. The benefits looked good but when I realised I am giving power away and knowing how remote connected devices can be hacked I refused to believe in the official message. I have also stopped many others in installing them.

Smart meter benefits are for the provider gaining remote control of power to your house.

I have a newbuild shoebox. My smart meters where installed when the house was built. No electric or gas company will sign me up to a smart tariff without replacing the smart meters with there own smart meters. The irony is the smart meters they want to fit are the same makes/models of what is already installed.

Before I read the article...

The first thing that entered my head was only Crapita is capable of such biblical incompetence?

Smart meters different uses different markets

Different markets (or grids, power system operators) have different reasons for installing Smart Meters (SM). Different markets use different advertising pitches.

If the customers in one market are going to believe a saving power pitch the SM will be sold as a power saving device.

If the customers want the system to be more stable then it will be marketed as helping with that.

If the customers will accept the costs to lower CO2 emissions, it will be marketed as doing so.

When we as end consumers from around the world talk about SM those different sales pitches can be seen in the comments.

So I'll ask to consider why are sales pitches needed?A; Because these devices were never wanted or needed by the end user of electricity. If they were not forced by legislation it would remain a niche market, might not even be allowed in some markets.

What lead to you having a SM I do not know but I saw a bit of how it happened in one market.

The Utility, the power company, noticed the over the decades power consumption of household was increasing, obvious as the size of the services for each home were increasing. In itself that is a very good thing, standard of living and energy use is directly related, and it meant more money for the power companies.

But in the 80's and 90's another change was the increased use of VARS and production of Harmonics from households that previously were almost 100% resistive loads.

That added costs, none of which the end user could be made to understand and if most users did understand would cause problems for the Power suppliers and the industry. The main reason for grids to exist is to power industry, they are the largest users, they have the most money and influence.

Those big users use their big consumption and big money to get the best deal for them. When it comes to individual consumers, they have to look to politicians and regulators for protection, and the 20th century shows how well that model has worked for us.

Combined, individual consumers are a huge part of the grid, the largest by miles of conductors and connections so when that load began to change power companies started looking at what can be done to pass on extra hard to explain costs.

And they were trying to do that when our economy was shrinking, real wages falling, no one wanted to spend money on infrastructure, and of course the less people know about how we finance electrical infrastructure the better.

At roughly the same time other parts of the industry had issues to address. Billing is always looking for angles to generate more profit and they came up with great ideas, like connection fees, transmission fees, particularly effective and needed in deregulated markets. When billing first heard about SM they knew right away it was for them.

Special interest groups (many more of those involved than people know) saw that SM meant more information, more control for them and that means more money and political power for them. Lots of early promoters of SM there.

Politicians love taxes! Taxes are the governments food and there can never be enough. When SM were offered as a "solution" to electrical grid issues governments the "potential" for tax revenue seem only limited by the "resistance" of the goose to being plucked (to mix mets). Making it even more attractive was the suggestion that soon people would have electric cars.

So there was no one reason for SM showing up in residences around the world, there were many.

Having an idea with wide spread support among everyone but end users helps explain why there are so many myths and variations surrounding their use. We are being fed whatever line works on us.

Rest assured SM were never introduced to help customers. They will not save you money, BTW it isn't about saving power or electricity, nothing ever is. It is only ever about saving money, making money, not spending money. As some in the industry like to remind co-workers, we are not in the electrical business, we are in the money business.

That is another thing the industry does not want people to consider. It isn't about electricity or carbon or whatever people think, it is only about money. The industry and it's actions gets easier to understand when it is looked at as a money generating machine.

Electricity is in many ways just a distraction. Like wanting people to look at the per kWh charge on the bill rather than calculate the per kWh delivered. Notice you have to calculate that yourself, yet that and the money due, is the only numbers you really care about.

It is the foundation of our society, it's growth has allowed our growth, energy is everything and the industries supplying it are some of the most sophisticated we have. And that sophistication isn't just at the engineering end of the business.

Business Analyst Needed

My experience with Mpower and Arrow Energy (Names have been changed to protect the "innocent"):

Supplied by Mpower - They insist on fitting smartmeter.

Nice bloke from Lowri-Beck comes and installs new gas and Electric meters.

Smartmeter works well - nice !!

Fixed price tarrif ends, Mpower hikes bill - Change to Arrow Energy.

5 days after changeover Smartmeter loses tarrif information but still displays energy in KWH.

5 days after that smartmeter loses connection with meters and the becomes expensive useless POS.

When God invented the word "F*ckwit" he surely had this lot in mind .

I moved into a flat with a Pay As You Go gas and electricity meter, which charge far higher rates for the poor people who choose them than normal payment meters. I asked Scottish Power to swap to a regular meter but couldn't as they wanted to charge me £80 a meter They also charged a monthly service charge whether or not I used any energy. I'd been homeless so I never used the gas at all and used next to no electricity, just for a kettle, microwave, charging batteries, and lights I replaced with LEDs. The 'nominal' service charges were now my biggest expense, so I swapped to a provider that charged slightly more per unit but without any service charges.

I was then phoned by the new provider urging me to let them install a smart meter. I knew I'd get no benefit from it but also no real risk to me so I agreed just out of gratitude. I regretted that when I got the appointment letter stating if I wasn't in on the appointed date then they'd fine me £10,000 - totally illegal I know, but an unfriendly and intimidatory measure. I was tempted to miss the appointment out of spite but I went ahead just so I don't have to let them in ever again. I use the small display over the toilet so I can pee accurately in the middle of the night without turning on a light. - they should mention that use in their advertising.

This system is great!

If you will be needing to instigate rolling black-outs easily, in the near future.

I had a Smart Meter installed by Scottish Power I assume it must be a SMETS1 meter, since after moved to another provider and they told me that the meter could not be used on their service. So had to go back to giving meter readings every month.

Installing SMETS1 smart meters that only work with one provider is just a massive waste of money, as they will end up getting binned when they finally get replaced with SMETS2 meters.

The biggest security risk...

is risk to my supply when some fat-fingered Herbert at my supplier (or possibly another supplier) disconnects my supply for no good reason (or when they fuck up the billing, which wouldn't be the first time that's happened.)

What is this nonsense all about?

According to the Gov.uk website right now;

"Smart meters put consumers in control of their energy use, allowing them to adopt ... will be no need for your energy supplier to visit your home to read your meter in future. ... But there is no legal obligation on you to have one."

Seems very clear, surely? So who says that UK homes need them?