From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Billpayers will be forced to foot the cost of upgrading seven million smart meters which will become obsolete in less than 10 years, the spending watchdog has warned.
In a damning report highlighting a number of failures in the smart meter roll out, the The Public Accounts Committee said seven million smart meters would need to be replaced before the 2G and 3G networks they use are switched off in 2033.
It warned that the financial burden of replacing the redundant smart meter hubs will be ultimately borne by energy bill payers and could be “very significant”, exceeding previous estimates.
The report went on to say that demand for the smart devices, designed to help consumers monitor their energy use and cut bills, had dried up. It said many customers were turning against the devices over fears they allow suppliers to remotely switch them to more expensive prepayment plans.
Smart meters were also said to be most likely to benefit rich, old men who own their own houses, the report said, while low-income renters are at risk of being “left behind” because blocks of flats pose a headache for installers to fit the devices.
It comes as the net zero scheme, which aims for 80pc of homes to have a smart meter by 2025, lags far behind official targets, with millions of the smart devices not working properly.
Ministers are also facing growing questions about its purported money-saving benefits to households, with Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, saying the evidence of whether smart meters in fact benefited consumers was “unclear”.
She said: “Smart meters have serious reputational obstacles to overcome with the public. Our inquiry has found that consumers’ enthusiasm for adopting one has been understandably harmed by recent shocking reports of forced installations.”
H/T energywise
I have an old bog standard meter. It’s at least 40 or 50 years old and shows no sign of ever giving up the ghost.
I won’t be giving it up – it works
The cost of manually reading meters is huge and not mentioned for comparison. Overall, much higher than occasional replacement when comms tech goes out of date.
Customers provide the readings.
That costs them nothing
If you dont mind working for them. But they still read connections and disconnections.
It seems you have no knowledge of how the UKs systems operate.
If they did not do connections and disconnections… can you guess?
Well I lived there for a while but I’m not sure what you mean. If the customer doesn’t supply readings then its an estimated reading. But eventually its manually read and then trued up. Either you owe them money or they owe you money.
I don’t know anybody who goes with an estimate. That isn’t smart.
Each to their own. Suffice to say manual readings happen by actual meter readers and are a significant cost to the provider.
Nonsense. They’re saving money employing fewer people
It’s online…:
Fewer, sure, but not none. The thing about reading meters is that you need to be near the meter to read it. And despite what you think, manual reading still occurs and still needs to be covered by the provider.
“The thing about reading meters is that you need to be near the meter to read it”
The meters (gas and electricity) are in my house. Same as every other house or apartment.
I’m not sure what you are driving at.
If a meter needs to be read in Durness then do you think someone based in Glasgow will be doing it?
The meters (gas and electricity) are in my house. Same as every other house or apartment.
Every house or apartment.
Your friend in Durness does the reading. Surely you understand that?
Otherwise they get an estimated bill.
“Your friend in Durness does the reading. Surely you understand that?”
I dont think you understand what their business’ responsibility is. If and when they need to read a meter, then they need to provide someone to do that.
You just tell us what you think with no evidence of diddly squat. That doesn’t cut it at all.
Tell us about this “business’ responsibility”, do.
No need to read a gas meter in Durness, or large areas of the UK. This is why heat pumps in rural ares of the UK would cost a fortune for the grid to support and the householders to instal.
Areas without mains gas in UK
Different in different countries.
It’s doubtful someone based in Inverness would be reading the electricity meters in Durness. Nobody would be reading gas meters in Durness, .
Very old: Man with clipboard reads numbers and writes the numbers on paper. He brings sheets of paper to an office where bills are made.
Old: Man walks or drives around neighborhoods reafing meters with a short range radio. He uploads data at an office where bills are made.
Recent: Meter calls office where bills are made to report numbers.
There are hundreds of different power companies in USA and they tend to move at their own speed. Most of the equipment is fully depreciated, some of it has run that way for decades. The industry is over a century old.
The UK never went through your Old stage. “Smart” meters communicate by text over the mobile phone networks – which are not ubiquitous in coverage either in dense cities or more rural locations. Also prone to failure. Older 2G and 3G mobile phone networks are shutting to allow frequencies to be re-purposed. Meter readers were given electronic handsets – basically PDAs with dedicated software – with which to record their readings. In theory they were supposed to download estimates for the meters on their round that would act as a check that they typed in the reading correctly. Didn’t always work, but then neither do the smart meters.
One benefit of meter readers is that they can readily spot when meters are being bypassed. A physical presence has advantages.
What’s online and how did it get there?
Net, smart meters cost retailers. There’s a specific allowance for that cost in OFGEM’s billing calculations for the price cap.
Very fewTTTM – only around 2% of meter readings are gathered manually by supplier agents and after long spells of estimated bills
A bit over 2% which is millions of readings per year and importantly they’re not conveniently geographically grouped. Also that’s standard readings, not readings for disconnections and reconnections.
The cost is actually quite small, just as the cost of having an Amazon delivery is small when they go from house to house. Installing smart meters doesn’t result in a cost saving – they are costly items, in any case many of the older ones don’t work because they were proprietary and locked to a particular retailer. Some simply fail to deliver readings to the network – which also has to be paid for. So far, over £20bn has been spent on smart meters: that pays an awful lot of meter reader wages.
I have known a few people who never sent meter readings in the past, just kept paying the suppliers estimated (usually over estimated) bills – I always try to educate them as I drop on them – always send a monthly meter reading in, stop the suppliers profiteering through vexatious estimations
We were getting that here in Australia. Lucky if you had the meter physically read 2ce a year, mainly just “estimates” … I’d imagine estimated to suit their cash flow requirements.
The majority no longer check meter readings on householder changes etc – they just carry on from previous readings, or send you an estimated (inflated) bill if you don’t send them in yourself
5 seconds a month. Truly a terrible burden.
Not for me. Mine are under the stairs and I really mean that – you get down on your hands and knees with your shoulders squeezed in to your sides then you have to shuffle forwards about 2 metres until you can see the meters – which are, of course, helpfully turned away. Even the meter readers that come out use a long mirror on an extendible pole and a torch. I must have got the work experience lad put mine in when they were first installed – other houses of the same design have a small cabinet in the living room but not me!
It really doesn’t help that I’m claustrophobic.
Ever thought of copying the meter readers?
Some consumers falsely declaring readings cheats honest customers. If you think the power company is going to cheat you, buy your own power monitor for a couple of hundred bucks. Any meter they want to install that reads correctly, is low maintenance and low cost, and causes less work for me (and them) is just not a problem. I assume they want sell me electricity, so they don’t want to cut me off or control my demand from their black helicopters. They just want enough data to NOT have to expand infrastructure for EV charging on your city block unless they have to, which ends up saving the consumer unnecessary expense down the road.
Common sense finally. They’re running a slow, boring stable business that supports lifetime jobs in a volatile economy.
Energy retailing is not a boring stable business. It’s a roller coaster, dealing with regulation and very volatile wholesale prices.
However, these meters are smart. Which means that they can remotely switch off supply without going through due process first – there has been a big scandal over that in recent months – and switch customers onto expensive prepayment tariffs that force them to be up to date with standing charges before they will allow a single Watt to flow. The more recent ones are enabled for things like the “Demand Flexibility Service” a.k.a. paying you a bribe for accepting a power cut, and also report usage with half hour detail, which raises issues of data privacy.
Learn
And I can read my current meter and tell Scottish Power on the telephone what the reading is, so no cost apart from paying the wages of the guy who answers the phone.
I don’t even have to ring mine in – all done on-line. I’ve been contacted several times about having a smart meter and nobody has been able to answer my point that my gas meter is completely mechanical so does not need an electricity supply, yet in order to reduce power usage, I need a new device that does need one.
Smart meters are for their benefit, not yours, avoid them like the plague
Hear, hear.
What is the downside?
They are for the benefit of those who wish to impose net zero. Not really for the benefit of energy retailers, which is why they are formally tasked and monitored on smart meter installations.
From July 2021, suppliers must comply with a new regulatory framework for the rollout as confirmed by BEIS on 18 June 2020. The framework will set binding annual installation targets for all suppliers in the market and will run until mid-2025. Failure to achieve the annual installation targets will be a breach of a supplier’s licence.
The new Energy Act contains provisions for the government to enforce smart meter installation, if necessary by breaking and entering properties. This is about being able to control your supply from central computers.
If I were Big Brother what would I make mandatory.
Like they are in Canada.
Where did you get that idea? No smart meters here and no mandatory requirement.
Funny there is one on the outside of my house and I was not given a choice.
Not much use for them though I don’t own a single smart device other than this computer. My phone has wires and a dial. Made by northern Telecom about 60 years ago.
Attempts by power companies to use their wire networks as data networks have had terrible results due to equipment like transformers. People self report more detailed personal info on web applications than meter readings could allow. Water and gas meters are battery powered with no recharge capability so they’re out of the game except a few radio pulses a day.
Even after 30 years a new cell phone costs.. what?!
They don’t use their wire networks. It’s done via mobile phone networks – and because they are going to turn off older networks in favour of giving the frequency to 5G and other uses of spectrum, the older metrs will no longer be able to communicate and have to be replaced. Older meters had fewer functions built in. Essentially ALL current smart meters will have to be replaced so they can control your appliances and whether you may have an electric shower etc.
Which is what Parliament has just done.
Some day “the guy who answers the phone” might be automated.
98% of meter readings are now manually input by consumers, over the phone, or online (smart meter owners have theirs done automatically, sometimes, if it’s working ok) – meter readings is not a huge cost to suppliers, it’s even a discount to them as they do not employ the numbers they used to, doing that – although it’s still buried in your standing charge as a freebie to them
“meter readings is not a huge cost to suppliers”
I’m sure it runs well into the millions of pounds per annum for the average supplier to employ the meter readers. Probably tens of millions of pounds.
I’ve done numerous searches and there is a big fat net zero for meter reading costs to the UK electricity industry.
The largest company, Octopus, has this to say…
“If you’ve got a traditional analogue energy meter (not a smart one), you’ll need to send in regular meter readings so we can work out how much energy you’re using. Smart meters remove the need for meter readings (they send readings to us automatically – register your interest in a smart meter and we’ll be in touch when engineers are available in your area)”
https://octopus.energy/blog/how-to-read-your-meter/
It doesn’t even register on their radar.
Have you some evidence or a link?
It seems you’re doubting meter readers even exist in the UK. For example
https://web-content.scottishpower.co.uk/files/pdf/visiting_your_premise.pdf
3.1 Why We May Want to Visit You
To read your meter and check it is working properly and safely
3.2 Who Will Visit You
Meter readers.
They exist, but you do need to get a sense of reality, it’s a non factor in their costs.
As a ScottishPower customer, you can help us to help you by:
• Paying your energy bill on time or ensuring that your prepayment meter remains in credit.
• Providing accurate meter readings to us
https://web-content.scottishpower.co.uk/files/pdf/visiting_your_premise.pdf
Everything is online these days, you know….
“They exist, but you do need to get a sense of reality,”
One of us needs to, yes. For example Scottish Power had a revenue of 8.4B pounds in 2022. And you think expenses for meter readers were what…. 100k pounds?
You have been asked for some evidence and you haven’t provided any on costs of meter reading to the industry, or even to a company. Nada.
It’s not too late to do that….
The fact is, companies dont break down their operational expenses for public consumption because that would give their opposition far too much information.
There are job ads for meter readers if you look. Its a real role and a real expense for their business. But I cant convince you so you can go ahead and believe what you want.
The fact is you have nothing at all.
We got there in the end.
The fact is that companies have to report on their expenditures to OFGEM who decide on the price cap based on those submissions. They make an explicit allowance for smart meter costs.
The Smart Metering Net Cost Change (SMNCC) allowance captures the change in smart metering costs since 2017. The SMNCC allowance comprises a ‘pass-through’ element covering industry charges relating to smart metering and a ‘non-pass-through’ element covering suppliers’ own smart metering costs. We update the ‘pass through’ element as part of the six-monthly price cap update. We use a forward-looking modelled approach to set the non-pass-through element ex ante for future cap periods.
A quick estimate is that a meter reader should manage 100 readings a day, or say 25,000 a year, so even with wages and overhead and an annual reading you are looking at £2 per customer. They probably pay a lot more than that in network charges if they are taking 48 readings a day, let alone any other costs.
“A quick estimate is that a meter reader should manage 100 readings a day”
That might be true in somewhere like Australia where a reading round is carefully constructed to maximise reads but in the UK where there are no clear “reading rounds” per se, and instead the readings are more or less by exception then I’d say your assumption is invalid.
I’d say you have no basis for your claim. Meter reading in the UK is now infrequent, but there are still plenty of meters that don’t transmit their readings that have to be read. There is no reason to organise that in a disorganised way. Many of the meters that need reading will be in blocks of flats etc. where the time between readings will be no more than 2-3 minutes. 20-30 an hour. 100 a day is well within reach.
More Elf’nSafety nonsense! The excuse for almost everything!
Meters are supposed to be read every 2 years at least, IIRC.
In that Utopian world where nobody has a job who will pay the bill ?
Smart meters have already cost over £20bn. That pays a lot of wages.
In UK maybe. Not true in USA.
The endlessly rising ‘Standing Charge’ was supposed to cover the cost of reading the meters.
Back in the days when meters were read, and customers billed, once every 3 months.
What exactly is the urgency that they need to be read every 30 seconds (or less) nowadays?
The UK Utility Companies (all foreign = European-owned) patently don’t trust their customers so why should customers trust the suppliers……
“What exactly is the urgency”
They want control, and they want it yesterday.
I wouldn’t have a problem with a ‘smart’ meter sending the figures once a day. But if it does it every 3 or 4 seconds it is there to control what I am doing.
What if it manages peak loading by deferring your hot water service boost by half an hour?
Do you have a right to energy whenever you want it? Or do you have a responsibility to the community to ensure continuity of supply for all?
“manages peak loading”
Net Zero is all about managing shortages, not providing more capacity 24/7
Without fossil fuels we are finished. Some seem to welcome that.
The need to manage peak loading exists no matter what the energy source is.
We used to put human flourishing first and I’m sure that even you you know that.
Now it’s Gaia first.
Yes, it’s called dispatchable generation.
In the case of electricity the company fuse does that.
Tim
You’re right that there’s a cost to meter reading but there’s also a cost to the infrastructure and management of information technology, which may not be all that much less than the ‘old school’ methods. I suspect that smart meters are net cheaper after everything is factored in and amortized. But it’s irrelevant.
The real issue is the desire to ‘supply follow’ by shedding load in response to unreliable non-dispatchable supply. Consumers don’t have the responsibility to ensure continuity of supply, the grid operators do. That’s why dispatchable supply is necessary. Ok in the extreme if some industry overstressed the grid with sudden peaks of demand, there might be a reasonable case to be made that they should be limited. No such case can apply at the household scale.
Well said.
Reading cost isn’t irrelevant when you consider that the number of meters in a western country is on the order of the number of people in a country. The company exists neither for humanity nor Gaia but for profits and losses. If one tool shifts expected return just a little then it becomes relevant.
If it saved cost it would not be subject to regulation requiring smart meter rollout. Retailers would have had no trouble sharing the cost saving with consumers to provide an incentive.
Smart meters are more costly than the old ways. It’s why they had to cajole the industry into installing them by giving them an allowance in price caps and by fining retailers who failed to install their quota for the year.
Modern civilization absolutely depends on having power when you need it. When there is loss of power you are subject to chaos, accidents, and deaths. Count your blessings if people successfully plow through a power outage, but there is still disruption and loss of productivity.
In the past there were serious fines in the US for electrical providers who could not provide sufficient power during normal operations thar result in an outage. The costs of having a sufficient reserve for heavy consumption are built into the base rates.
Changing the requirement from zero-tolerance for insufficient power production to managing expected insufficient production is a huge step backwards and will cause significant problems.
That really isn’t a problem for a gas boiler: system linepack comfortably handles demand surges.
Check that. I don’t know uk meters, but in usa that’s a bi “nuh-uh”. Meter manufacturers would love to sell that feature and so would partner wireless carriers. It would be super expensive.
Every 3 seconds =
20x a minute =
1200 times an hour =
28,800 times a day PER meter
If the power company has 1 million customers then you’re gathering and storing trillions of numbers. It the computer age trillions of numbers can be handled, but they would be paying for all of it and the programmers to make it all work. Your power company is not a big tech company like Facebook or Twitter.
Mangled by autocorrect, but hopefully that mess can be decoded. e.g. “wireless cameras” should have been “wireless carriers”..
It’s every 30 mins, but still ~4,368 data points per quarter instead of 1 is quite an increase in data requirements.
We have a smart meter, me.
I submit my monthly readings for both gas and electricity. Likewise for our solar panel generation numbers. Certainly the latter has to be checked every 24 months. Not sure about the former, I suspect there’s a similar arrangement. To stop fraud/theft.
The road to hell is paved with the word ‘Smart’.
And if all those manually reading meter jobs are lost who pays the bill? These were/are perfect jobs for young unemployed as a first job. And all those millions of new meters have to be installed by someone. How will we pay for stuff if nobody has a job? More money printing?
“How will we pay for stuff if nobody has a job?”
I agree. The nature of working is changing for sure. Weirdly folks here dont want people to be employed in the renewable energy industry though. To most here implementing renewable energy is all just “cost” rather than employment.
Because all employment is cost. Jobs don’t exist to feed our kids. Jobs exist to produce value in excess of the costs. We agree to take a job because the pay adds value for us in perceived excess of the cost in effort and inconvenience.
Ruinables don’t add value, they destroy value. Society ends up with more cost and less dependable power, which in some cases can be inconvenient but in others could be deadly.
It’s all in the pursuit of a fantasy that rather than being an extra dividend of benefit, the CO2 emissions are causing a problem. There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY to justify these wasteful expenditures!
Amazing that one seems to need to start by explaining capitalism- I wonder whether you’ll be called a socialist later in this thread.
Sorry Tim there is no such thing as renewable energy. It should properly be called un-reliable energy or non dispatchable energy. The only things unreliable energy does is destabilize the grid, cause more fossil fuel to be burnt and cause your power bill to increase. It is a giant waste of effort and money.We will be better off without it.
Maybe we should get rid of heavy equipment and use shovels, or even spoons for that matter.
h/t Milton Friedman
An argument for doing things inefficiently to keep people busy? In an Internet news aggregator’s comment section? Why not rewrite that on paper, put it in an envelope and mail a hand written copy to every potential reader?
Me too. I keep getting letters from Scottish Power telling me that my meter is more than 15 years old and might become dangerous so I need to have it replaced by a smart one.
Nae chance.
My electrician tells me there is nothing wrong with the present one.
If only most things worked as well as an old meter!
Correct, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it
Our residential meter failed this past winter during the “cold bomb” in the USA. It was an ordinary mechanical meter with spinning dial with some sort of radio upgrade that allows it to be read from a special receiver in close proximity.
The good thing is that if the meter breaks it stops spinning/metering but you still have power.
It was replaced with some sort of new meter that is fully electronic but nothing like the “smart meters” I see in the UK.
I asked what would happen in a similar situation (meter “breaks”). I was told it is designed to be failsafe and should continue to deliver power.
That’s true in usa.
Me too Strat – as a professional Electrical Engineer with 40+ years in the energy / power generation & distribution sectors, I just love having those discussions with supplier admins, the ones with net zero electrical engineering competence – they don’t contact me anymore, not sure why?!
They don’t like people who know things.
Holy fug – get some sunshine panels and ride it backwards while you still can…
Ok, but where do I get the sunshine?
The meter is intended to tell the power company what to rite on a bill. “Works for you” and “works for them” isn’t the same thing.
I thought we were against socialism? I electricity generation a usiess?
All the above info is precisely why I have so far ignored all the blandishments of the power companies to install a “Smart” meter. I suppose the day will come where they will want total control of your usage and will insist on Smart Meters being installed as a condition of supply
Currently, in law, they cannot force you to have smart meters – even if they have to change your old analog meter to a new one due to some mech fault, you can request a new dumb meter (smart meter with the comms hub etc removed)
The law is changing. Installation is about to become compulsory if they demand it.
Because we are putting additions on the house and installing a 24 KW generator the gas company is coming out to put a new meter on. I have already paid for the new gas pipe lines to be run under the house and there is a 1″ stub end ready to receive the new meter. The work for installing 1″ gas line for the meter, and generator and a 3/4″ stub end that will go into the new attached garage cost me $1,200. The cost of rerouting the underground gas line and moving and installing a new higher capacity gas meter is ZERO to me.
Gas company comes out to do the work next week. The contractor breaks ground Nov. 1st to add on a new 12′ x 19′ four season sunroom off the existing living room and an attached insulated two car garage that is 30′ wide by 24′ deep with two doors. There will be a covered 10′ x 30′ concrete apron on the front of the garage.
I am also converting from 100 amp service to 200 amp service and having the incoming power and cable lines put under ground. I wish it was as easy to get that done as it has been for the gas lines but after 3 months since I started on it I am still waiting on a date when the utility will do that work!
We are almost at the very end of the line for the utility that provides our electrical service and so far this year we have lost power 6 times! Most of the time for only 2-3 hours but once for over 12 hours. I’m getting too old to deal with that crap. So the generator will be large enough for us to continue life as normal when we lose power.
Finally, I will have a covered and heated area to do my standard maintenance work on my vehicles and mowers. My 1 1/2 car detached garage is full of all kinds of stuff and I am sick of having 12-15,000 dollars worth of tools, equipment, and materials in the garage while I leave $40,000 worth in vehicles parked in the drive in the weather.
The old detached garage will have new doors and windows installed and be insulated and heated and become a workshop with storage. That’s my DIY project for next summer.
I’m going to have to call Generac. I don’t have a gas line out here so it will have to be propane. It looks like I’m going to need a Generac home generator (made in America) as Biden, and his insane climate alarmist policies are continuing to degrade our electrical grids.
I’m here in oil and gas-rich Oklahoma, where you would expect we would have plenty of energy but we are connected to the Southwest Power Pool, and the SPP said not long ago that the risk of blackouts and brownouts was now higher because 2.3 percent of conventional power generation had been retired in the SPP.
I looked at all the brands and it came down to Kohler or GENERAC, settled on GENERAC because they are the most common type out there and thus more people are familiar with servicing them.
I would rather have an old Onan generator. My 45 year old 6.5 Kw Onan will be working long after I’m dead.
With 200 amp service are you considering an EV? 🙂
No, but I am already running 220 for stove, water heater, and well pump and now am adding on more load with a split duct electric heating and A/C unit for the new sunroom, and have a couple of power tools that run 220. Plus an increase in the use of 110 for the new additions.
Smart meters were also said to be most likely to benefit rich, old men who own their own houses,
Why that group, in particular? Three of my near neighbours are elderly women who own their own homes. No idea if they have smart meters but, if they do, why should I (an old man who owns his own house) be benefitting more than them?
And what benefit, anyway?
“Why that group, in particular?”
To get clicks. A lot of what’s said in “news” these days is primarily to make people click on it. Usually in anger.
I’d guess “rich, old men who own their own houses” own more dividend stocks.
Well, not ours – we don’t and won’t have one.
Here in Wokeachusetts- my home meter is not, I think, a smart meter. Maybe it is but I doubt it. It doesn’t have to be manually read. It has WiFi I think- so I think a truck drives down the road and gets the signal with the reading. If anyone understands this better than I do, please let me know. This meter was installed, I think, at least a few decades ago.
It’s not a smart meter in the smart sense Joseph – yours sounds like it has a Bluetooth type comms capability that your meter reading guy hooks up to outside (saves him getting out to read them manually – I have a water meter with that capability)
Smart meters SMETS1&2 use the phone GSM / Wi-Fi networks to connect your meter direct to your supplier – this comms is 2 way so they can alter your meter settings/tariffs etc auto on the fly – those are the ones causing all the havoc
Sounds correct for late 1990’s early 2000’s. There is no official definition for “Smart Meter”. The type of meter you describe was an intermediate step toward meters that self reported readings.
Yet another dumb misleading post about smart meters. The utilities have a 100% right to determine how their product is metered. All meters will be converted to smart meters – get over it.
And smart meters have exactly nothing, zero, zip, nada to do with net zero. No utility has the right to convert anyone’s power contract to one they do not want as long as they pay their power bills, and if they don’t pay their bill then their power gets turned off, regardless if a smart or dumb meter.
I swear, this is another WUWT post pandering to the anti-tech luddites who apparently swarm here – despite such dumb thinking having zero, zip, nada nothing to do with climate science.
Yet another dumb misleading post about smart meters. The utilities have a 100% right to determine how their product is metered.
In which jurisdiction, Duane? Bongo Bongo land?
“Are smart meters compulsory: do you have to have a smart meter by law?
No, smart meters are not compulsory. ”
https://www.smartenergygb.org/about-smart-meters/myth-busting-smart-meter-problems/do-i-have-to-get-a-smart-meter
“Smart meters are NOT mandatory… unless yours is faulty or at the end of its life”
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/can-i-be-forced-to-have-a-smart-meter/
Where does this illusion of yours unfold?
Saying all meters will be smart meters is like saying all humans will carry a cell phone. It might not be 100 percent true but it gets you most of the way there. Ultimately compulsory won’t matter. We will die and be replaced by a generation with other things to worry about.
Like whether they have electricity at all…
The real problem in this case is advancing technology. If you put a device out that relies on a network, sooner than later the network won’t support the device because it is being superseded by a better, faster protocol. I installed a home wireless security system running a 3G connection. Well 3G is long gone and so I had to upgrade.
However if smart meters are pushed out due to an agenda instead of a business requirement knowing the network they are designed around will be obsolete fairly soon, I have an issue. Unless it can be shown that the smart meter has a ROI that is positive, it is an added unnecessary cost simply to satisfy someone’s wishes. The cost of gathering the metered data isn’t inconsequential, so if the life of a meter is long enough to reduce this cost, no problem. If it doesn’t reduce this cost, problem.
The utilities in the UK must comply with whatever OFGEM demands. They have no independent right to determine how metering is done.
Smart metering is regarded as an essential enabler for net zero.
The Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan, developed by the government and Ofgem in coordination with the energy sector, sets out a vision, analysis and suite of policies to drive a net zero energy system. Smart technologies and flexibility are essential to integrating low carbon power, heat and transport onto the system.
The Plan has 4 key areas of focus:
It has been the case in the UK that a retailer has to get a court order if it wishes to cut supply, and there a number of provisions supposedly preventing them from cutting off potentially vulnerable customers without due process. Smart meters have allowed them to bypass those provisions, which has been a major scandal that has resulted in corrective regulation.
Perhaps one day you will research before spouting.
Government gets involved in something and inevitably screws things up.
The less government the better, in all things.
They can’t even maintain roads here in the U.S. but the Feds think they can micromanage the right technology and product mix of consumer products like automobiles.
Hell, I’d like to buy some incandescent light bulbs for my basement but the government is in my way of doing so.
“can’t even maintain roads here in the U.S. “
Some roads in South West London could be used for lunar training….
Hmmm those holes don’t sound rather small. Do we know how many such holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall?
I love to…
Then turn them on…!
I wish that the U.S. government had confined its gain of function research to roadways.
Tennessee Valley Authority
The UK has set the tone for chargers:
All home installed UK electric vehicle chargers are required to be separately metered and send this information to a Smart meter data communications network. Potentially, this UK legislation allows the electricity used for charging EVs to be charged and taxed at a higher rate than domestic electricity. Obviously, the EV electricity users are the ones that will be paying to upgrade and maintain the grid.
In addition, in the UK, new chargers in the home and workplace now automatically switch off in peak times to avoid potential blackouts. New UK chargers are pre-set to not function during 9-hours of peak loads, from 8am to 11am (3-hours), and 4pm to 10pm (6-hours).
Ha ha haha ha ha ha haha haha ha ha ha. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
And some people think that EVs are an advancement on ICE!
Before I got a true “smart meter”, the meter would transmit the readings locally and someone in a car or truck would drive through the neighborhoods with a receiver and get the readings. Before that the meter readers would come on my property, fight the dog and get the readings.
I don’t know what network my meter is on currently but if they have to upgrade or change it out they will and I’ll pay for it. I won’t have a choice and in the grand scheme of me getting took by politicians it will be a relatively small item.
Doesn’t matter whether your meter is upgraded or not, we’ll all be paying for the upgrades whether we like it or not.
If these meters are really so smart, why not have a bypass switch which would prevent the supplier from being able to do anything other than “read the meter”? Wouldn’t everybody wish to have personal control rather than trust an unknown “Head Office” wallah?
Apply the same logic to other services – e.g. Netflix.
The most dangerous part of a smart meter is the remote shutoff switch. If you do’t pay for electricity you eventually won’t get any and you won’t see a human come to shut you off. It is a feature that matters a lot where the 2nd amendment applies.
Rooftop solar curtailment sure curtails the enthusiasm for smart meters for the individual homeowner although when you have a 6kW inverter system that can produce over 40kWhrs on an optimal sunny day and only 1.8kWhrs on a miserable wet one you understand the communal need-
Has rooftop PV in South Australia recently been curtailed with these low points for demand? – WattClarity
That sort of variabilty is of course almost 100% correlated across a city like Adelaide so rooftop solar owners know deep down the climate changers are in fantasyland with their unreliables and net-zero. It’s gross zero every night stoopids!
Dumb idea to use “smart meters” (a laughable marketing phrase!) whose programming and/or Internet interface software has to be manually replaced ever 5-10 years.
But it’s not at all surprising that ignorant governmental and utility company bureaucrats who signed up to “smart meters” simply bought a pig in a poke.
(ref: https://grammarist.com/idiom/pig-in-a-poke/ )
Computers cost thousands of dollars, last only a few years, crash all the time so they lose your work and take up space in the house? No way the home computer market will ever amount to anything (sarc from 1980).
A difference here might be that purchasing/upgrading home computers was, and always has been, completely voluntary whereas, as the very first sentence in the above article states: “Billpayers will be forced to foot the cost of upgrading seven million smart meters . . .”
The first computer I actually owned was a Sinclair ZX81 which IIRC cost £50 (but at worst it was £99). It fed a portable B&W TV that I already had as a monitor, and I could record programmes and data onto my portable cassette player that I used also for music. I acquired a 16k RAM pack for it, which allowed me to run a 50 row linear programme.
Smart meters have been on mission creep ever since they were first proposed. The intention now is that they will control many of the appliances in your home – at least when they design a model that works.
If a utility were to use a smart meter to interrupt power usage to manage load, how would the signal be sent? Seems they are using cellular networks, not signaling through their grid.
I am wondering what the effect would be if someone built a faraday cage around the smart meter.
Smart Meters do use cellular (GSM) and Wi-Fi networks to connect direct to the supplier – hence why a lot of SMETS1 meters are having to be upgraded as the 3G they were designed to communicate via is being switched off by the telecoms industry in preference for 4G/5G comms
if you put the smart meter in a faraday cage, you would shield it from transmit & receive comms – it basically becomes a dumb meter
All true. Some power districts will make acts of sabotage expensive. You own the socket, they own the meter.
You don’t need to touch the meter. They will need a law making it illegal to interfere with the cellular signal.
In Fahrenheit 451 the purpose of firemen was to start fires at any home containing a library of books. It is not hard to see that meter readers will in future be tasked with removing all Faraday cages. Possibly even using the 451F flamethrowers for best effect… but it might have to be say 600C to melt aluminium.
A removable cage around one would be very easy to construct using any of several Faraday cage products sold on Amazon. No need to permanently install one. Use it only when they announce a planned blackout. They are going to have to make such announcements to give people warning to switch to alternate power for medical devices and refrigerated food storage, among other reasons. Not your fault if you don’t lose power because of a glitch in software of the meter…
I find it interesting that the UK smart meters use the soon-to-be deprecated 2G/3G cellular network for data transmission. In 2007, the local power utility installed Elster brand smart meters here. It’s my understanding that these meters use a frequency hopping spread spectrum transceiver operating in the unlicensed ISM Band (902 MHz – 928 MHz). No cellular network is required.
As an electricity consumer, I’d like that to be translated into normal understandable English!
Sorry, my inner techno-geek took over for a few minutes. 😉
The UK smart meters are becoming obsolete because they use an old cellular network (2G / 3G) to send the power usage readings to the utility. The meters can’t be upgraded, so they must be replaced.
We’re commenting about 20 years late because the industry in question, suppliers, customers, all participants, were not “built for speed.
OFCOM has it covered:
http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/spectrum/fat.html
One click on my desktop and I can see what i’m using and the cost.
2023-10-21T22:19:18+0200 1128
1128 watts @ 0.12 = 0.95 KR/Hour inc.VAT,Delivery and tax.
My Smart meter was installed 6/7 years ago. I very rarely use the display unit as my energy consumption is already as low as it can be (single occupancy, 1 bedroom house). The display unit was working earlier this year but since June it fails to ‘connect to the network’. Thats the message it displays on the screen.
As an electronic engineer (retired) I asked the installer how the Gas Meter works (as there is no electricity supply to it). He said that there is a battery in the Gas Meter which will last 10 years! So as well as updating all these meters due to the discontinuance of 2G/3G networks, these batteries will also have to be replaced. I wonder if the display unit failure in my meter is due to this battery having already run out?