Smart Meter Installation – thoughts please?

I have smart meters installed in my HMO,s as the tenants have have a monthly fuel allowance, and they have no excuse to check the fuel usage. It also means the fuel companies should get the meter readings, so don't have estimated bills. I have had problems with the energy companies not getting the readings, but that is now sorted. The first Smart meters were useless, as the engineer explained that they only worked for the company that supplied the fuel, and not compatible with other suppliers, NOT very Smart. They should of made the meters compatible with all suppliers, as the latest version. If they save you fuel is doubtful, but as least you can track usage. As we pay monthly DD, if we have a large credit we ask for refund, as the monitor usage they shouldn't built up excessive credit, but that probably suits them.

A CEO from one of the big five suppliers admitted that although they are fitted free the real cost of them (approx £350) is paid by the customer via bills. The only use they are is to the supplier who need less staff to read them.

I believe that there are 2 types of Smart meter some are prepaid and others you get a monthly bill.
I think you can only get standard rates of gas and electricity with key and prepaid smart meters whilst you get discounted rates if you get a bill.
Most Smart meters are not compatible with Economy 7

Reply to the comment left by at 10/04/2021 - 11:17
Absolutely right, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so it is with this in mind I do not object to those who steal electricity, good luck to them to get some of their money back, because these big corporations shake hands with Government officials and get back handers, and charge us like you said 350 for a piece of plastic turd with an electronics board, not worth in my view more than about £20 to mass produce in China.

Equally the good thing about smart meters is that if you are smart, you can hack into them and change firmware and make them under read , many ways to hack them, including changing number of pulses per kilowatt per minute, or simply add or subtract sums before transmitting data, for a bowl of rice and noodles, and throw in a bat, you could gt any Chines software engineer to hack these meters from a fish market in Wuhan, look they managed to hack the entire world with Corona Virus, all the credit goes to them! get smart and get smart meters and reduce your bills by almost 90%.

Well actually, there is nothing to fear from smart meters, you can check them easily by running a 1kilo watt heater for about 15 minutes and see if it has registered under 250 watts or 0.25 kilo watt on the reading, or even run it for a full hour exact with all other appliances switched off it should not have registered more than 1 kilo watt hour .

I cannot edit my above comment, but if utility companies are private companies, what incentive is there for Government how they meter energy? why is the Government so keen on getting all 26 million homes smart metered? kick backs??? may be may be not, and we end up paying for them obviously I said there is no such thing as a free lunch, does it save money? obviously not unless you can see from your remote display how much energy you were using at any given time, it may open your eyes wider and you might want to look around what was consuming so much power, oh the wife has the oven on, and washing machine is cycling hot wash, microwave is popping pop corns, your son or daughter has switched on a 1.2kw hair dryer ! so it may make you aware of where and how much energy is each device using so that you can change habits, like me I don't flush my toilet each time I go for a piss, I am saving guess what, I am saving water, I am saving this planet, water also needs energy to be processed and pumped, so why waste, don't need to flush toilet each time you pass water, open taps little, fit water restrictors , yes tell tenants as well that they can't use as much water as they like, we have to save this planet for our future breeds.

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 10/04/2021 - 14:34
Smart meters (electricity) deliver 3 benefits to the nation and the consumesr and they all work together
1) Consumer become aware of their rconsumption - stats show we do reduce consumption from this awareness
2) The leccy companies can provide more sophisticated peak/offpeak tariffs for the consumers (Octopus is a leader in this). These tariffs will encourage EV charging at night, and cause consumers to the easily moved loads to cheaper periods (eg washing machine on a timer).
3) The Power grid must be designed to cope with "peak demand". Because of (1) and (2) these peaks can be significantly reduced/smoothed. This means that we need to build fewer power stations and grid management is much easier (fewer grid failures, easier to predict loading, more competitive pricing etc ). This will map to lower power prices for the consumer.

Valid points Geoff. However,

" This will map to lower power prices for the consumer."

did you forget the word "theoretically"?! Or "should" instead of "will"?!

That reminds me when once Utility companies done away with Standing Charges, instead they introduced two tier price tariffs, and started to claim we do not charge standing charge, ..... so who were they fooling? like I said there is and never has been free lunch, when they stopped standing charge they introduced a higher price tariff for the first few hundred units of energy before the rest of the consumption was charged at a lower rate, it was another way to brainwash us that there was no standing charge.

Then came this Economy 7 Electricity meters, and guess what they didn't really want you to benefit from this reduced night time tariff, so they upped the standing charge to a ridiculous amount negating the benefit of cheaper night time tariff!

The only way you can get cheap electricity is by stealing it, depends how much you have stolen, it may work out cheaper despite going in for a few months and getting a criminal record, yes if you steal electricity you get that ! but if you steal rent from a landlord you don't get criminalised but your landlord does if he evicts you because you were stealing his rent ! You live in a world where we have to see what options are more economical, and choose the best one.

Can anyone tell me if 'electric' smart meters can be used for duel Tarrifs?

Reply to the comment left by LaLo at 11/04/2021 - 12:08
Yes,I have dual tariff electricity through Octopus-see my message yesterday.