Hard to squeeze more than pennies out of a service? It's almost as if the delivery of the energy isn't where the costs are.

The entire energy network in the UK is broken (as is water, the railways etc.) and the fat cats at the top know this only too well so they're just following the well-worn and inglorious playbook of blaming the individual consumer for their failings whilst laughing all the way to the bank.

Witness UK Power Networks giving their overseas shareholders vast sums as a result of their monopoly on supply in various areas of the country: £2.4 billion profit in four years. Meanwhile after 20 years they still haven't resolved fundamental problems with the main substation in our village such that this week we yet again experienced a power cut. Their CEO (Basil Scarsella) is just about making do on £2 million+ p.a. in 2018 according to https://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-interview-basil-scarsella-the-man-keeping-your-lights-on-a3864311.html (I hate to think how much he "earns" now) whilst getting one of his minions to tell me that I needed to buy a UPS because the power supply here is so prone to failure.

It's hard to see how smart meters are meant to save money in and of themselves.

People already know that devices use energy...

The real benefit is interesting time of day tariffs, and demand reduction schemes like we had last winter.

Came here to say the same thing: a meter is just that - a device to record or monitor usage. These smart meters do nothing to throttle to power being consumed so there's no innate ability to reduce an energy bill. Okay, a savvy consumer might be more aware of their energy usage and moderate their consumption as a result - but, without doubt, the greatest saving with a smart meter is at the provider's end: they don't need to send someone out to read it.

They seem to have downsides, too. For one, the early versions wouldn't allow switching to a different provider and this slowed down adoption. I also suspect there's also growing concern from the end users that having a meter that allows the cost per KWh to vary on the whim of the provider (sub-hourly, if needs be) might not be such a good deal. How can you reasonably compare different providers when the unit cost leaps up and down regularly (indeed, how can you even be sure you're paying the best or even a correct rate for any particular time of day?)

However, for all their downsides, they offer convenience to the supplier and they're here to stay - and I can well imagine that 'smart water meters' are only a few years away.

Smart water meters are already here - though my water company won't fit a meter at all. They claim the pipe isn't suitable.

With half hourly measurements, and that data being made available to the consumer, it's fairly easy to check that you have been appropriately charged.

The complexity of agile style tariffs is something that really needs automation to deal with - battery systems etc can import that data and automatically schedule their charge/discharge schedule to minimise the price of electricity.

But even old E7/E10 style tariffs can be better managed by smart meters, at least they actually keep decent time.

My tariff requires a smart meter, and I like having the data. I know that I am on the best tariff, partly because of the data I get.

It was always a bit of a guess previously.

The houses in my street have all just had smart water meters fitted, against everyone wishes, because the Thames Valley is classed as a water stressed area. Our water bill has gone up by about 400%. They wrote to use saying that our family uses 9 people's allowance of water.

It beggars belief that the UK could ever have a water shortage. We are small island surrounded by billions of gallons of the stuff and it falls out of the sky almost continuous for 9 month of the year. Some areas get flooded every winter. If there are water shortages, it is entirely due to lack of investment in storage and distribution infrastructure by the privatised water companies.

They've invested heavily in distribution infrastructure... OH, for water? No they've ignored that. They've invested heavily in taking on debt and distributing the cash to shareholders.

Since privatisation in 1989 they've paid £50 billion in dividends, and they now have £56 billion in debt.

Is it only me that expects that £6 billion to appear as dividends soon?

You might want to check for leaks. With 4 of us in the house having a shower each daily plus lots of use of the washing machine etc. our water bill went down when we had a water meter installed...

> With 4 of us in the house having a shower each daily

You are showering too frequently. Its bad for your health. Shower once every couple of days if you have not sweated and during summer when you probably do shower every day do so only for 4-6 mins. 4 mins is a bit fast for me, 6 manageable, but I find if I'm not on the ball I end up taking 15 mins!

it is entirely due to lack of investment in storage and distribution infrastructure by the privatised water companies.

Thames Water have spent the last 30 years trying to build a new reservoir in Oxfordshire, and have been blocked by the NIMBYs at every turn. It isn't entirely the fault of the water companies.

"Some areas get flooded every winter. If there are water shortages, it is entirely due to lack of investment in storage and distribution infrastructure by the privatised water companies."

Unfortunately the companies cant get the planning permission to build the necessary reservoirs to store the water people need

Why would monopoly water companies waste profits on building large expensive infrastructure projects? Planning permission? You joker.

@AC

"Why would monopoly water companies waste profits on building large expensive infrastructure projects? Planning permission? You joker."

Dont let the facts hurt your feelings. The water companies have tried and applied. Not their fault if they are not allowed to.

Apologies for the guardian link but……

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/28/thames-water-ordered-to-fix-leaks-before-pumping-millions-of-litres-from-rivers

630 million litres a day lost just by Thames water.

That’s over half the powder mill reservoir lost every day, or the 31k mega litre (me neither) Bewl reservoir every 50 days.

https://www.southernwater.co.uk/water-for-life/reservoir-levels

Just stop the leaks then they won’t need permission for more reservoirs.

It would help if they lost less water in the network.

> and it falls out of the sky almost continuous for 9 month of the year.

It hasnt dont that for a very long time and likely wont ever again.

Where is all this rain then? Didnt have hardly a drop last winter! It was dry for months,but overcast.

I was skeptical about smart meters, but after moving into a place that has them, I appreciate them a bit more. Manually reading a meter and entering the readings is really not something that belongs in this day and age. When energy prices went up, I really did find it useful to be able to go over my usage graphs and figure out where I could make some savings. And surge pricing will have it's upsides when it comes in; smoothing out demand is good for reducing the use of peaker plants and this carbon emissions, and actually give people a chance to save money by doing things when prices are low, so I don't have a problem with it, really.

> Manually reading a meter and entering the readings is really not something that belongs in this day and age

Quite the opposite. We need more of that sort of thing!

By reading your own meter, you will be aware of issues before they become serious. It is nothing more than a 5 minjob anyway, again why the rush?

If you "just let it do it" are you also not chedcking your bank statements? Do you keep tally of the amount of money you spend at the sandwich van every day at work so you can train yourself to stop spending so much for so little or do you just wave the contactless card and "let it just do it".

When was the last time you check the bank statements, or do you just let stuff come out? Checked the pension is being paid into? Checked the firealarm or do you think that too should be automatic. Maybe you have a smart one.. do you kow it works?

Do you check all appliances are off before leaving the house? Especially those with liion batteries that might be charging? When I leave the house, alsmost everything is off at the wall or unplugged, especially stuff that charges (well not my NiMH cherger, those batteries are safe and need a full uninterrupted charge).

So you will happily let the smart meter read and bill you without any checking. Months, years go by and the letter comes through the post (you still have a letterbox dont you?) demanding you pay for the GIGAWATTS you used last month. You phone the power company, knowing that they will laugh with you at how silly the system has been, only they tell you tgo pay up. You cant believe it, you tell them how riduculous a notion it is that your household could have used gigawatts in a few months, totally crazy. They continue to tell you to pay up, the lights are turned off as they disconnect you remotely. Bailifs arrive, court date agreed for non-payment trial. Without power you have to borrow the neighbours PC and printer to try and print of statemenst and unsage information you never bothered to check on, you have lost the login details as you just "let it do it" and after 5 years of never signing up fully the system has gotten in a twist. Support lets you on eventually, and you start printing.

To your horrow you see that the meter was fine till it slowy started reading higher and higher, only nobody caught it as no sod was checking it. The information sent to the little display somehow was out of step with the billing information, the display showed your current usage but the meter was billing more and more actual usage. After several months of not checking it the meter started reading insane usage figures, clearly to you its developed a major fault. But its up to you to convince them, the power company that the moneis owed are not real. YOU are the one at fault, a scrounger, a theif. YOU must go to court and prove it.

It's getting cold outside and winter is coming, the kids are compalining of damp on the walls. No power, no lights, nothing till you get cleared of a dept that you know you shouldnt have.

Sound familiar?

Should do, that actually happened to some people after getting a smart meter. They are not proven, they are made cheap, they were (the SMETS2 ones) a national security risk BY DESIGN till MI5 stepped in and fixed them. Woking in IT, that gives me the heebie jeebies. I used to be a software tester and when MI5 step in to save the national grid from attack, I take note. Maybe I''l have one when SMETS3 comes out, till them I'll use the PROVEN and FUNCTIONAL dumb meter I still have, it is an asset and so many peopel believ athat which is why only 57% have moved over.

I know what my meter says, I read it every month.

But in this day and age, youd like to be oblivious.

Quite.

I'm more aware of my energy usage than most people - I record it every month on a spreadsheet straight from the (dumb) meter, have done for years, I label ALL my appliances with their draw (average, not maximum), and I know exactly how much is running all the time.

For 5 years I lived in a rented flat and in the last year eventually coaxed a smart meter out of them (after two failed installs because Siemens apparently don't know what storage heaters are). But that was to stop me having to TOP UP the pre-pay meter by cash in a shop (the shop refused cards and was the only one nearby... none of the large supermarkets will let you top up!). With a smart meter, I was able to top-up by app.

But I never referred to the smart meter for energy usage, I know what I'm using already. And it was an all-electric house.

Then I bought a house last year and moved in. Again... all electric. Again, old meter with storage heaters and three different tariffs. I asked for a smart meter. "Not in your area yet".

But equally they wanted to charge me on the basis of 3500KWh / year for a tiny house with one person. Er... no. I know exactly what my usage is, thanks. I don't care what the previous guy used (for a start, I removed 1.5KW of light bulbs in the first day and replaced them with brighter LEDs for less than 100W total), I know my total usage because I track it and I know what I run and when. 3500KWh is about three times too much. They're still "confused" how I'm constantly over-paying them and not using much electricity, even over the cold winter, and they owe me about three months electricity payments at the moment, but I'll let them do the maths when it comes up to an entire year and get some nice Christmas presents with that money.

Even when I submit the actual dated photos of my meter on all three tariffs, they still can't correct the bills or estimates properly. If you think I'm lying, send a guy out to check!

I did the same with water... moved in and demanded a water meter. They had to dig up my drive to do so. I don't know what the previous guy was doing but it literally cost one-tenth of their "estimate" (based on council tax banding from the 90's for the property, apparently) once the meter was recording my actual usage. The first meter reading they asked me for was literally 0. Less than 1 cubic meter - 1000 litres of water. They didn't believe me and I saw a guy come out and check the meter they'd installed the month before on my cameras.

The way that smart meters save money for consumers is because you get away from "estimates" and terrible metering policies, they can't profit from the interest on your held credit that they KNOW is wrong but refuse to do anything about. So you pay less, pay only what you're using and don't have to have it constantly be wrong. They don't save energy at all, unless you're really dumb and are just burning electric without a care in the world and then the problem is not the meter.

And the other factor is: Every bit of electricity I use, I use for a purpose. I don't just burn money for the sake of it. I need light to see, to heat my home, to run my appliances, etc. There's no "cutting back" available to me. I run what I need, and I work for a living to pay for some modern conveniences on top. Even "shifting" my usage doesn't help... I am not going to run my A+ efficiency washer- dryer at night without me being awake, and I don't care how good my smoke alarms are, it's not going to happen. I'm not going to delay dinner just to help an under-provisioned network that I'm paying for. And I'm not going to turn my heating down from its 20C-in-the-living-room and above-dew-point-everywhere-else bare minimum that is the only heating I ever use (and have only for about 2 months of the year or so?).

I want a smart meter, but it has nothing to do with measuring usage or saving money. It's to do with holding the electricity companies accountable for their supply and stopping them profiting off interest on funds they demand that I pay in advance even though I know I will be refunded them months later.

And if I wanted to measure usage, I'd pay an electrician to fit a meter in the fusebox - you can literally just buy a DIN-rail block that can do everything a smart meter does for you, even bluetooth the data to your phone directly, and it just fits in a standard fusebox. They're about £50.

Fact is, I'm now spending my "savings" from the above on putting in solar panels and a battery bank and - no - I'm not going to feed them back to the grid. You build your own infrastructure. I'm doing it to provide independence from the electricity grid, and have it run all the easy "leech" loads (like computer equipment and CCTV cameras) that run all the time but don't pull much power. When the power goes out, I plug in low-power bulbs and my laptop into the solar, I've done it several times and it works great, and the kit I have can run the fridge or freezer in an extended outage (but never quite got that long an outage to justify pulling out their plugs and moving them).

I'd love to have a smart meter. But the fact is that I'm far more interested in why the electricity companies HAVEN'T managed or cared to roll them out yet. The answer is that people will start demanding to be paid only for what they've used, especially in tough times like recently.

You need to get a better supplier then...

Octopus generally get good reviews, and I've found them to be pretty good.

[1]Referral bonuses are actually paid, you can choose your own payment date and payment value on the website.

They also have tariffs which work really well for people with PV/battery systems.

[1] https://share.octopus.energy/free-beach-116

Aside from the hoot you undoubtedly are at parties, good rant!

If I may pull you up about one thing: everything I have read about washer/dryers stated they have absolutely awful energy efficiency. The cheapest separate washer and dryer will save you a ton of electricity and actually wash and dry your clothes.

Yes, I often found myself in the kitchen at parties, too.

| People already know that devices use energy...

A surprisingly large number of people don't know the difference in energy consumption between the tumble dryer and the little red light on the front of the telly when its on standby. But even if you do know the difference, if you need clean, dry clothes for work/school tomorrow what are you supposed to do? Its a fairly facile argument and in no way justifies billions of expenditure.

The real reason for smart meters is so that variable tariffs can be foisted on us. Think UBer surge pricing. Want a cup of tea when you come home at 5pm? That'll be a tenner thanks to boil the kettle because its 'peak' time. Personally I don't mind, I pretty much time shift all my big loads, but I doubt if the discount at quiet times will cancel out the premium at busy times.

And if that doesn't stop the grid going into melt down due to all the extra load from EV's and HP's then the remote kill switch will. Maybe if those billions had been spent on extra generating capacity and reinforcing the grid??? But that's big boy stuff compared to sending out a guy in a white van with a bunch of little boxes and a screwdriver.

We are World Leaders...

The grid won't go into meltdown from EVs and HPs - as those running the grid consistently keep telling people.

The discount rate can easily be enough to save more than the peak rate will cost; and the more people who manage to time shift the better - lowering the peak usage is one very important target here.

"The grid won't go into meltdown from EVs and HPs - as those running the grid consistently keep telling people."

Same people telling us they also need billions of upgrades to cope?

They reckon the fast charger network will cost a billion...

Besides which a billion is pocket change on national infrastructure... it's what National Highways spend on maintaining less than five thousand miles of roads.

"if you need clean, dry clothes for work/school tomorrow what are you supposed to do"

Sure everyone suspects/knows that their tumble dryer uses a lot of power but it's a bit more visceral when your smart meter turns red and tells you that you're currently burning through electricity at £1/hour. Hopefully that'll encourage people to dry their clothes overnight instead of at 5pm

"but I doubt if the discount at quiet times will cancel out the premium at busy times"

I have a smart off peak tariff from Octopus and the discount at quiet times more than cancels out the premium at busy times. My last bill shows an average unit rate of 17.72p/kWh which is considerably below the single rate on their default tariff of 30.72p/kWh.

To understand smart meters you need to understand one thing. The benefit is for the energy company not the consumer. Smart meters allow energy companies to reduce costs, get detailed usage info and fine tune tariffs. The consumer gets a free box that is basically useless in its avowed function to save energy costs.

What would make the difference would if I by law should have free access to the historic data so I could use it to plan and analyse my energy usage. I have a app that sort of does this and it was only by looking at historical pattern I found ,50% of my usage was my teenage daughter in the shower. A problem we shifted by sending her to uni.

But the app does not show solar cell output, not can I combine it with other data sources. If we all were allowed free access, services could be made on our data and we would control how it benefits us.

As it is, energy companies get the benefit and we get a plastic toy with a few leds

@hammarbtyp

"As it is, energy companies get the benefit and we get a plastic toy with a few leds"

If it was true that it was to the benefit of the energy companies I doubt we would have issues of the government being the ones complaining about the slow roll out. This is government pushing the off switch after spending our energy budget on toys. We dont have enough energy, start turning people off.

"It's hard to see how smart meters are meant to save money in and of themselves."

They aren't - that's just the story that was told when forcing them on people. What they are really for is data collection and to allow individual premises to be cut off by the supplier / government.

Not everyone, I found my mum was turning off things like the kettle which used zero power, then was complaining of being able to use hair straighteners.

Asked why, she was thinking having a cuppa or using hair straighteners would cost over £1 every time or something silly.

I ended up getting her a plugin power thing and showed it cost pennies to boil the kettle. Things like the fridge cost the most but thats essential to keep on, things like turning off her old midi hifi system, yes that was fine.

Afterwards I could tell she felt silly, found out she read about it on social media (Friend shared something which paniced her circle of friends so they all believed it, thankfully noone had brought a plugin power saver as FaceBook seems to have adverts for them) and saw some videos which backed it up.

Having recently got an EV, and being on an energy deal that ends in September I went looking for options for a split tariff (which would require me to get one of the cursed smart meters).

For the dubious pleasure of paying 33% more for my daytime 'leccy they will let me get a somewhat discounted night time rate. But if you weigh up the difference between their normal tariff and the split one it was just £15 a year. And this for one of the most extreme use cases of charging up a massive Lithium battery.

I'm pretty unconvinced.

I have lost count of the number of times I have had to tell my dual fuel supplier to piss off, as I will only consent to them being installed if it doesn't add to my bills and that I can first audit the code to check what data is being monitored, what is sent and whether they then analyse that data for privacy invading reasons (for example calculating how many cups of tea I make a day and what tv programs I may watch.)

Audit what code?

Do you need to audit the processor design as well, and the compiler code, and how do you verify that the firmware is the code you saw, or was compiled using the compiler you saw....

They get half hourly usage data (if you approve that data sharing) - this allows them to bill you.

It is not so much the code but how & where the data is used.

It is uploaded many times a day - that means that the supplier can see when usage suddenly drops and so deduce that you are away. All it then takes is a sysadmin under financial pressure to run a script and share who is on holiday with his made Burglar Bill.

The ability to delay readings being uploaded by 2 weeks would make me feel much happier.

There is an element of truth to this. I say truth - there is a real risk of this from happening. It's probably even happening now.

You're reliant on the energy company having the discipline to silo their admins so that one admin can't access the bill data and the customer meter details. We've seen time and again that companies are fucking woeful at protecting customer data. So it may not even need to be an admin, it could be a temp on the customer service desk who could get this information.

The problem is, the energy companies have to ask their customer's a minimum of once a year about smart meter installation. The minimum is set by the government, and I say minimum because Scottish Power would ring me every month about having one. Bulb, latterly Octopus, were once a year more or less. The people ringing you aren't even really working for the energy company I don't think, they're subcontracted to make the call. So they can't realistically give you the assurance that the above can't happen.

I will only consent to them being installed if it doesn't add to my bills

I hate to break it to you but you're already paying for the smart meter rollout. May at least get one installed and get some, albeit small, benefit. You're also fully entitled to only allow your supplier to take readings monthly.

The government and energy companies can pretend to be doing something, while not actually finding a cheaper energy source

Even though I've told my supplier that I have no intention of getting a smart meter, I still regularly get post, email and texts urging me to do so. The latest one is to tell me that my meter uses the 198kHz Radio 4 auxiliary signal to switch my meter (not true, it has a self-contained timer), so they have to change it as that swiching signal is disappearing (true). We shall see. I can see the govt just forcing the leccy companies to use the switch in these meters for load shedding when panic sets in. We saw a government panicking during the pandemic and the sight and the consequences weren't pretty!

I actually have such a meter. I googled it out of interest and then went down the rabbit hole of that signal.

Given that I knew quite a bit about things like the MSF signal, I'm surprised that I didn't know it even existed!

But that signal has just been extended by another year, I believe. I would quite like to change out that antiquated kit, if for no other reason than to ditch my three-tariff nonsense that I inherited from the previous owner. Last time I asked for a smart meter, they said it wasn't available in my area yet. Which is ridiculous when we're years overdue for the entire country.

That signal is already used for load-shifting, it's why it exists, basically.

But if you want independence, and you're a home owner, just start investing in your own solar and batteries. Any vaguely-decent sized house can generate enough to run the house nowadays, even in the UK. That's what I'm doing.

There is a point I envisage where I will decide whether it's worth telling the grid to just cut me off. I'll get a few years of energy independence under my belt, and see what the cost is to maintain a grid connection for a bare minimum as backup, but I can honestly see a point where I won't need the grid at all.

And around that same time, electric cars will mean I don't need to pay a fuel station or charging point either. Sure, something else will suck up those funds, I have no doubt, but being able to power your house and your car without anyone else involved is a pretty good step to teaching electricity companies what it means to actually supply a service of value, and to have competition.

We have a pretty standard 4.5kWp PV installation here. Family of four with teenagers, we use around 12kWh per day, averaged over a whole year. We generate 13kWh per day, averaged over a whole year.

Now if we had a 90% efficient storage system that could store 2,000 kWh for six months, we'd be self-sufficient in electricity.

I have a Smart Meter now, as I moved in to a new build house that had one already.

However in my old flat I used to get emails from my utilities company regularly with pcitures of 80s/90s brick mobile phones saying "you wouldn't use a phone like this anymore, why do you use a meter from the same era?" as if that is in any way a valid comparison.

I suspect the Government has other things on it's mind though, at least today anyway.....

Speaking as someone who's got gas and electric smart meters, I'm not that impressed. Our smart gas meter only works as a dumb meter because it's broken, has never worked as a smart meter despite visits from engineers who agreed it was faulty, and the energy company who installed it refused to replace it after nagging us for months to get a smart meter installed. (And the ombudsman backed them up, saying they didn't have to give us a working one until 2025... but going by the article, I suspect that's an optimistic date.)

The smart electric meter is good, but mainly because it allows us to export excess solar generation into the grid and get paid for it. (We were having solar panels installed, and had to get a smart meter installed, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.)

I know someone in the reverse of your situation. Their 'smart' gas meter is fine, but the electric meter is borked and nobody knows why.

4 years later I am just as confident that they will not meet the rollout date. Quick - change the goalposts!

So many problems with this scheme, many as described in the article. I think most folks by now will have either direct or indirect (bad) experience so it's not going to get quicker.

I know personally folks who have been cut off by their own meter (software error - network oops) and many where the smart meters have gone dumb. I am just waiting for the network hack to take out a whole load in one go.

Meanwhile we are paying for this in our bills, like it or not.

privatised utilities are a money grubbing exercise for private investors. The 'customer' (you and I) certainly doesn't come first, and unless a Govt. chooses to grab the situation by the balls, and squeeze, the 'private utility entities' will always put profits, shareholders' dividends, and upper management's pay cheques in the front of the queue. Otherwise, the needs of citizens and society as a whole will always be addressed only in as far as the serve the interests of that troika.

It's 'human nature', innit.

Notionally 'Governments' are there to keep 'human nature' down to a dull background noise, mitigating it's excesses, and ensuring the welfare of all and the needs of the vulnerable are served properly and to the good.

Yes?

Notionally. From the citizen point of view.

From the view of Boris Johnson, you're only good to be knifed in the back, tortured until you give up your banking details, then have your body stuffed under teh sofa while Johnson and his ilk empty your accounts and go party with some Russian oligarchs.

But, apart from that, yeah, you're right.

I don't see the cost saving angle.

As a consumer, the rate offered for smart meter is same as for my existing meter, so no benefit

From a supplier angle, I already have to take my own meter readings and send them in to the supplier via their app, so it's not saving them any admin costs. If anything it's costing them more for supplying the smart meter in the first place

Get a better supplier then.

Get a better supplier then.

By "better" do you mean "cheaper"? I don't know of any suppliers who cover my area and offer a discounted rate for having a smart meter