Smart meters - good or bad.

[Fore Left]

I had one installed two weeks ago. Engineer wouldn't leave an in home display and Shell won't send me one as the meter "isn't communicating with the central servers every day".

Makes it a complete waste of time.

[Arnold Cunningham]

Well that’s BS isn’t it. Shell need to sort themselves out.
I can see usage by the half hour for yesterday on both the octopus website.

[InfoRetrieval]

Condi said:

captain.scarlet said:

1. I've found that despite having smart meters at my current property, I still need to submit periodic meter readings in order to keep my estimates accurate, just like I did with the traditional meters.

2. Traditional meters are easier to read and the information is always on display in a legible manner. It's so simple: you look at your meter and there are the numbers. You've the first handful of digits and then the red 'end' digits. You always know and are certain of what the reading is..

Your experience is by no means typical, and I don't fully understand who is asking you to submit meter readings. If it's your energy company I would enquire as to why they need them, because the smart meter will send them actual readings within 7 days at most, and usually within 48 hours. I've never heard of an energy company asking for estimated readings for smart meter customers.

As for traditional meters being easy to read and understand, they're not, not at all. The disks rotate different ways and a huge amount of admin is caused because people can't read them, or read them as if they all rotate clockwise, whereas 2 of the 5 rotate anticlockwise. If the meter is read wrongly, even once, it can take many hours to rectify, especially if the customer has changed suppliers. For what it's worth between delivery and final settlement of the bill can take 3 YEARS! If everyone had a smart meter this would be reduced hugely, with associated cost savings which ultimately get passed to the end customer.

I think captain.scarlet means "traditional" to mean "non-smart". You do realise that most non-smart meters aren't the old "dial" type, right? They just have a row of numbers, like the old car odometers (or in the case of my non-smart electricity meter a digital display that shows only the meter reading, no buttons to press)

[33q]

We have a Smart meter. I use the In Home Unit and the Loop app and download the data on CSV.

…..or rather we did! About 2 weeks ago we had a short power outage and since then we have had no data on the IHU or CSV files or any Loop data. Connection to the DCC has failed. EDF don’t seem to care so raised a complaint. The meters themselves record still so manual readings are still possible.

Switching to Octopus next week as their E7 tariff even at deemed rates fits our usage better by about £9 per month and there are no penalties to switch again if things change.

[captain.scarlet]

InfoRetrieval said:

Condi said:

captain.scarlet said:

1. I've found that despite having smart meters at my current property, I still need to submit periodic meter readings in order to keep my estimates accurate, just like I did with the traditional meters.

2. Traditional meters are easier to read and the information is always on display in a legible manner. It's so simple: you look at your meter and there are the numbers. You've the first handful of digits and then the red 'end' digits. You always know and are certain of what the reading is..

Your experience is by no means typical, and I don't fully understand who is asking you to submit meter readings. If it's your energy company I would enquire as to why they need them, because the smart meter will send them actual readings within 7 days at most, and usually within 48 hours. I've never heard of an energy company asking for estimated readings for smart meter customers.

As for traditional meters being easy to read and understand, they're not, not at all. The disks rotate different ways and a huge amount of admin is caused because people can't read them, or read them as if they all rotate clockwise, whereas 2 of the 5 rotate anticlockwise. If the meter is read wrongly, even once, it can take many hours to rectify, especially if the customer has changed suppliers. For what it's worth between delivery and final settlement of the bill can take 3 YEARS! If everyone had a smart meter this would be reduced hugely, with associated cost savings which ultimately get passed to the end customer.

I think captain.scarlet means "traditional" to mean "non-smart". You do realise that most non-smart meters aren't the old "dial" type, right? They just have a row of numbers, like the old car odometers (or in the case of my non-smart electricity meter a digital display that shows only the meter reading, no buttons to press)

I should've been clearer. Yes I meant the older milometer type of reading, not the ones with the arrows. I was referring to to the rotating disc underneath that spins at varying speeds depending on your consumption.

The previous owner of the property was with Scottish Power and my current provider is British Gas. I've been asked to submit meter readings on several occasions by them, albeit in messages in my online account.

I have no idea what make or model of meter I currently have, but I do wonder whether there is a meter with a specific single button to display the main kwh reading you need (and are likely to only ever be bothered about) in such circumstances.

[55palfers]

According to this article, it appears non-payers "could" be move to pre-payment only via their Smart Meter and without their consent.

https://www.hl.co.uk/news/2022/8/12/smart-meter-us...

[Blown2CV]

some people are totally freaked out by them... the logical ones see it as a way for the provider to justify paying more. The illogical ones get hysterical over being spied upon.

[Blown2CV]

i believe that many or all of people who are experiencing these headline-grabbing massive price increases (like £1000 a month etc), it's down to their own management of their direct debit and underpayments, estimated readings etc., not really down the the supplied 'shafting them', as they like to claim. If your cost usage is going up and up, and you're not monitoring your usage then yea you are likely to get in the st. Yes prices are going up for everyone and yes it probably is shady, but you can also fk yourself quite easily too. Smart meters at least take some of that problem away.

[Arnold Cunningham]

I’m actually making a point of over paying a fair bit now just so it fees a bit less painful in a few months time. Not too much, trying to have about a month in credit.

[FourGears]

Had ours installed today via Octopus. All very painless.

I just need to find user manuals now of the meters to see what can be viewed in the menus.

They also supplied a Geo Trio II thing which is supposed to tell you how much you are using. Currently it is plugged doing sweet FA and has only picked up the Gas meter. Presumably because the electric meter is outside backing on to the consumer unit and the signal cant get through.

So that will probably end up in the bin.

SWMBO helpfully said, how much is that cosing being plugged in. Just turn stuff off.

I fear she has a point

[OutInTheShed]

FourGears said:

Had ours installed today via Octopus. All very painless.

I just need to find user manuals now of the meters to see what can be viewed in the menus.

They also supplied a Geo Trio II thing which is supposed to tell you how much you are using. Currently it is plugged doing sweet FA and has only picked up the Gas meter. Presumably because the electric meter is outside backing on to the consumer unit and the signal cant get through.

So that will probably end up in the bin.

SWMBO helpfully said, how much is that cosing being plugged in. Just turn stuff off.

I fear she has a point

Is the Geo trio the 'in home display'?

I'm with Octopus and considering getting a smart meter fitted.

So, without he IHD working, can you look at your meter readings via the octopus app or website in more or less real time?

Some years ago we had an empty house up for sale 50 miles away and I used to look on the Octopus website to check the house was ticking over.

It does say on their website, the IHD may take a few days to get its act together, it needs to be updated with the tariff and stuff.
https://octopus.energy/blog/smart-meter-screen-use...

[LordGrover]

I'm waiting for my Octopus home mini to replace old IHD

https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/

[FourGears]

OutInTheShed said:

Is the Geo trio the 'in home display'?

I'm with Octopus and considering getting a smart meter fitted.

So, without he IHD working, can you look at your meter readings via the octopus app or website in more or less real time?

Some years ago we had an empty house up for sale 50 miles away and I used to look on the Octopus website to check the house was ticking over.

It does say on their website, the IHD may take a few days to get its act together, it needs to be updated with the tariff and stuff.
https://octopus.energy/blog/smart-meter-screen-use...

Yes In Home Display .

Crikey a few days to self learn orbwhatever it is doing - that is rubbish really, should be plug and play.

I think in real time as I have chosen the update every 30 minutes. An Octopus Blog says it can take up to 14 days before the app and account are fully connected.

[Condi]

The IHD things are useful for about a week, then mine got put in a draw and never plugged in again. You can get hourly/daily/weekly/monthly data from the suppliers website if you need to, and the biggest advantage of a smart meter is not having to send readings, plus access to time of use tariffs. Otherwise it's quite simple, the more things you have turned on, the more power you use! To save money, turn stuff off!

[Riff Raff]

FourGears said:

I think in real time as I have chosen the update every 30 minutes. An Octopus Blog says it can take up to 14 days before the app and account are fully connected.

Think yourself lucky you weren't forcibly migrated from Avro. It took about 3 months to get everything up and running, even though we had the smart meters and IHD already fitted.

Edited to add, it wasn't octopus's fault - it was all due to the administrator of Avro.

Having said that, the octopus set up, for us anyway, is painless and seems to be bulletproof. Usage history on their website is quite useful, and should let us figure out whether turning the thermostat and boiler flow temperatures down saves money, and if it does, how much.

[FourGears]

Riff Raff said:

whether turning the thermostat and boiler flow temperatures down saves money, and if it does, how much.

I need to read up on this as have seen it mentioned a few times now

[James6112]

Very pleased with mine & the info it provides (EDF)

I had to raise a complaint to get it working, after being fobbed off a few times.
Then I couldn’t get an electric bill. After being fobbed off I raised a complaint to get that fixed!

Now it’s all good..

Gives a lot of info, eg Septembers usage-



Small numbers as 18p electric, 3p gas until May 23

Edited by James6112 on Monday 10th October 19:37

[OutInTheShed]

FourGears said:

Yes In Home Display .

Crikey a few days to self learn orbwhatever it is doing - that is rubbish really, should be plug and play.

I think in real time as I have chosen the update every 30 minutes. An Octopus Blog says it can take up to 14 days before the app and account are fully connected.

To be fair, the IHD has to chat with the meter, the meter has to chat with head office via some convoluted route, it's not proper 2 way like the internet.
It has to get your tariff etc.

In the old days 'smart water meters' only communicated every couple of weeks or something.

[TheLurker]

Do all the new smart meters work through the 3rd party apps like Hugo etc?

[Condi]

TheLurker said:

Do all the new smart meters work through the 3rd party apps like Hugo etc?

Yes, but not at the same granularity as the IHD. Hugo gets the data from the central database at maximum half hourly resolution, whereas the IHD gets it every couple of seconds from the meter.