Smart energy meters, should I/shouldn't I?

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icowden

Veteran
Location
Surrey
No way on Gods green earth will we all have a smart meter in 3 years. Aside from all other considerations, it's a logistical impossibility. If 10,000 were installed every day for the next 3 years, including weekends and bank holidays, the country wouldn't be halfway to achieving universal fitment.

So by June 2019 they were at 15m out of 53m or 28%. The deadline has now been pushed back to 2024 and a new supplier obligation comes into place on 1st Jan 2021. An 85% coverage is wanted by the 2024 deadline. Part of the problem was that SMETS1 wasn't fit for purpose (tied to supplier). This was due to the stupidity of the government that made the installation supplier led and not distribution network owned. Earlier adopters such as m'self held out for SMETS2 meters which are not supplier dependent. Sadly Crapita are responsible for the Digital Communications Company that provides the interoperability, so we can only hope they work properly.

To be fair, I have had no issues with mine other than the commissioning process which was delayed over 6 months.

NB - The new licensing obligation means that ALL suppliers can be fined and that milestone reporting is more frequent.
 
My household electrical supply is apparently 3 phase which baffled the smart meter people. Eventually the said no.
 

icowden

Veteran
Location
Surrey
They haven't worked out what they are going to do about households that just can't have a meter. You are one of the glorious exceptions! Was your house formerly used for industry?
 

AndreaJ

Veteran
My boss agreed to have one fitted at work, they couldn’t do it as the mobile phone signal is poor and according to the fitter the meter uses a mobile phone signal to send the data. Can’t have one at home either for the same reason (not that we wanted one).
 

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
... Earlier adopters such as m'self held out for SMETS2 meters which are not supplier dependent. Sadly Crapita are responsible for the Digital Communications Company that provides the interoperability, so we can only hope they work properly.

...
When Eon asked why i didn't want one, I told them that i'd heard too much bad feedback about both 1st and 2nd generation meters, so am holding out for the 3rd generation and depending on the feedback that gets, I might hold out for the 4th gen meter
 

classic33

Leg End Member
I'll ask my shot-guns...…..






They say no :rolleyes:
You talk to your shotguns, and you hear them answer you!
 

icowden

Veteran
Location
Surrey
Just wondering.........are you obliged to let them in to your property?

Why would they be trying to enter your property if you hadn't agreed to have a smart meter?

There is a strange paradox in that the Government has pretty much mandated that every household should have a smart meter by 2024 but hasn't given any provider of Smart Meters the ability to make them compulsory. What they can do (if they so choose), and which is approved by Government is price you out of having a normal meter.

There is no SMETS3 at present. SMETS2 was only introduced because they realised that SMETS1 was just stupid having tied the meters to power providers rather than the power distributor (which is what other countries did - we have a proven track record of looking at successful implementations and then ignoring them).

You can get a smart meter or not. My experience of having one is that they are less exciting than you might think, but no real hassle. Installation was fairly simple. Commissioning got messed up but was eventually sorted out pretty easily. The meter just behaved like a dumb meter while they sorted that out.
 
D

Deleted member 26715

Guest
Had Smart Meters installed in the fathers bungalow 14 days ago as he's no longer living there & selfishly it's one less job for me to do, installation went nice & easy, but the user wifi display wasn't working, guy was a bit cagey about it & claimed it should sort itself out in under 48 hours & they were receiving the readings. That if it hasn't come on by 48 hours contact the supplier, well having contacted the supplier 4 times in the last 14 days via their website, I've not heard anything from them & it still doesn't work. Not too bothered really but in this day & age things ought to work.
 

icowden

Veteran
Location
Surrey
I had the same issue. As long as the meters were commissioned you won't have a problem. There are some things you can do with the unit like resetting it. Also have a look on your supplier website - Bulb had a page on which you could trigger something that would try to solve the problem (not entirely sure what, but it worked in my case).

Also to be fair to the supplier they are likely running their call centre / customer service on a skeleton staff at the moment.
 
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