Didn't they change their masthead to be "Mo'Money for us, no money for you"?

If smart meters actually did save consumers a worthwhile amount of money then people would be queueing up for them. The reason the rollout is going so slowly is that most people don't want them, because it does not benefit them in any way. Quite the opposite as some unlucky people found out when they were forcibly switched to prepay (ie. remotely had their electricity cut off without due process).

The real purpose of these meters is to allow the creation of smart tariffs where the supplier can analyse your usage patterns and change the prices hourly to make the most money out of you. And of course to try and "incentivize" people into changing their usage patterns, which is a bit sinister IMHO.

In the future they will no doubt be used for rationing electricity when the number of electric cars needing to be charged exceeds the grids distribution capacity. And we'll eventually probably get different prices depending on what you are using the electricity for, one price for heating and cooking, another for car charging, another for general use.

Orwell's predictions were right, he was just out by 40 years.

They don't save anything.

Nobody is sitting there deliberately burning through money for no reason, or through ignorance, if it matters to them.

The ones it doesn't matter to, it literally doesn't matter to. They'll continue to do that.

The ones it matters to have already taken all the reasonable steps, are perfectly aware of their energy usage, manage it, purchase accordingly, etc.

The smart meter rollout has nothing to do with customers saving money. It's to do with electricity companies not having to drive around in a van to read your meter any more (remember that happening regularly? Then you're old like me).

Since I had a smart electricity meter and a smart water meter fitted, all that happened is my USAGE stayed absolutely 100% the same (I have data, will travel) but their billing was forced to be far more accurate (the water bill was 10x more than my actual metered usage, the electricity 3x more than the previous resident that they were charging me on the basis of - I presume because of leaks, but also the "charge based on the size of the house", the previous guy had no care because someone else paid the electricity, etc.).

They lost a lot of money - 1st having to fund the smart meter installs in both cases, and the back-end to read them, but 2nd because they shouldn't be able to inaccurately bill me ever again once it's tied into their system properly. And they don't like that.

My bill for this month should be £65. They are trying to bill me nearer £200. And I will do nothing for this month (the account is in credit because their estimates are so atrociously bad even with me giving accurate readings just before the billing period) mostly because their own meter tells me I don't owe that, so that money will come back to me.

But next month if they expect me to pay more than I used, there will be runctions.

Smart metering is a nationalised function that's been privatised to a bunch of companies with an interest in not billing you accurately so they can earn interest off the surplus. That kind of thing should be illegal.

If smart meters were simply half-hourly meters with one-way comms, then they would be a lot cheaper and some of the arguments around enabling consumer choice would make more sense. BUT, they are not - they are also remote disconnect switches. This makes them a lot more expensive, and also makes them a potential target for nation-state cyber-attacks, so why put it in the [1]spec ? (s4.4.3.9 Disable Supply)

I think there are a few reasons (none of them good IMO), one of which is to enable consumer-hostile contracts with energy companies, as an alternative to expensive investment in local distribution infrastructure . For example, you could have a tariff where your maximum "main fuse" rating changes depending on the load at your local substation and on how much you pay. You could have a contract that stipulates that at peak load times, you may not use more than 20A or the meter will open its contacts and switch you off. This is a lot cheaper than installing thousands of new distribution transformers and up-rating underground cabling in every street, which would otherwise be required to support the adoption of EVs and Heat Pumps.

They can pry my Bakolite-encased GEC electro-mechanical meter out of my cold dead hands.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a796c9e40f0b642860d7fa9/smart_meters_equipment_technical_spec_version_2.pdf

"they are also remote disconnect switches"

Which is a fairly pointless "feature" anyway. If you're not paying your bills and there's a reasonable chance of disconnection, just create a makeshift faraday cage over the meter to stop it talking back to the mothership.

That's assuming your meter actually works anyway, mine doesn't,

Well, for one you might get in trouble for that, and for two, there's nothing to stop it disconnecting automatically after a certain time period of no comms, once they have sorted out the more general comms issues

And as i've said in my other posts, "not paying your bills" is not the only reason why your supplier might want to disconnect you.

Another reason might be "because it is profitable to do so, by way of the balancing mechanism"

Companies cannot disconnect electricity supply willy nilly

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/problems-with-your-energy-supply/if-youve-been-told-your-energy-supply-will-be-disconnected/

There is a reason why - for every £ I have to get "refunded" because of an overpriced Direct Debit I'm forced to have in place that I will never approach on my bill - I put that money back into a solar power system of my own.

I intend to be rid of the electricity as a utility by retirement, and as rid of much of the water utility as I can too (atmospheric water generators, greywater systems, etc.).

Combined with something like Project Kuiper for Internet (NOT Starlink), I will happily be "off-grid" in a decade or so and then they can do what they like.

"why put it in the spec? (s4.4.3.9 Disable Supply)"

err .. that's the GSME chapter, otherwise known as the gas meter! Disabling a gas supply in emergencies seems like a reasonable thing to be able to do.

To be aware of the usage you don't even need a smart meter. There are meters that you can clip on your mains supply and they'll tell you your usage in real time.

I know - I had one, but the UI sucked, so I built my own out of a Hall-effect current clamp, high voltage oscilloscope probe, Digilent Analog Discovery 2, and a Raspberry Pi.

Overkill perhaps - but it lets me see the harmonic distortion on both voltage and current (some nasty flat-topping going on with the voltage), and also estimate the resistance of the mains supply by correlating large load changes (such as my electric shower) with voltage drop.

The minute I hear about them remote disconnecting is the time I will be lining the meter cupboard with tinfoil.

They will at the very least, tax electricity used for charging a car at a higher rate than electricity used for other purposes.

It is already the case that electricity at public charging stations is taxed at 20% vs 5% for home electricity, and it is very clear that the way home chargers are being installed allows this to happen in the future.

Except you can charge an EV (albeit slowly) from a 13A socket - and such electrons are indistinguishable from any other load in the house. I did that whilst my wall charger was temporarily out of action.

True, but the EV itself still knows how much charge it's had and when, so implementing a tax on that would be no more difficult than a tax per mile driven, which has already been implemented elsewhere and mooted for the UK. It (or its charger) could also communicate with the smart meter over the HAN, to corroborate the data and do things like bidirectional charging, where you are offered a discount in exchange for an uncertain state of charge

This is all hypothetical technology though - my car doesn't communicate with the smart meter. It would need a Zigbee radio to do that. Maybe it will happen in the future with newer cars, but then I predict a rather large business for 2.4GHz Zigbee protocol jammers that, er, just happen to be switched on next to cars at night.

Your EVSE talks to both your meter and your EV, that's pretty much all it is for..

If you are on a restricted usage tariff and you put the kettle on while your EV is charging, the meter can send a signal to the effect of "please reduce consumption by 10A or else" and the EVSE will pass that along to the EV, which will oblige. If it does not, then your lights go out.

True, but the EV itself still knows how much charge it's had and when, so implementing a tax on that would be no more difficult than a tax per mile driven, which has already been implemented elsewhere and mooted for the UK.

Road charging is another one of those government solutions looking for a problem, or being wilfully misrepresented. Both ICE and EVs already have a tax per mile driven, ie the price/duty paid per litre of petrol and KWh consumed. The more miles driven, or the bigger/less efficient the 'engine', the more tax paid. But like the way 'smart' meters have been misold, the only rationale is to implement demand manage and introduce differential taxes based on the time of day people drive. So the kind of 'surge' pricing that's currently infesting swathes of the service industry.

Funny as I just received an email from one company that wants to come and read my meter.

Which is quite strange as I had a smart meter installed last month, I can see the data from that in my OVO account, and OVO still haven't managed to bill correctly for that first month and "estimated" the bill despite having a whole page of readings for every day of that month - and the estimate is 3x what I actually used.

Now I have "Morrison Data Services" wanting to read my smart meter (which kind of defeats the point of a smart meter?) unprompted. It appears genuine and they are using the email I provided OVO (I use unique emails for everyone).

I wouldn't mind but for 2 years after moving in, I tried to get OVO / SSE to remove my ancient radio teleswitch meter (on a three-rate meter including storage heating system) and replace with something vaguely modern (I ripped out all the storage heating day one and consider it pointless for my use). They were singularly uninterested in doing so until last month despite the fact that the radio tower that runs that system is about to die / be decommissioned permanently.

Then suddenly, it was "urgent" they get in to do it all.

They've now done that and it works - I can see accurate readings on my account. Oh, if you exclude the fact that they still have the heating meter on the account that I don't actually have any more.

What they don't do is actually use the numbers they're recording for billing me. Which will turn into an argument in another 3 weeks because that's their "8 week" deadline for how long it takes for the smart meter to actually work, according to them. The chat-help-lady was quite unhelpful about that and wouldn't do anything about a 3x bill until that 8 week after installation is up, despite confirming the latest daily readings to me.

I see a return to my Sunday "write a letter of complaint" hobby in my future.

I don't object to the principle of smart meters, but once fitted this is an IT project and data errors, mis-billing, manual re-reads, etc. shouldn't be happening and should be easily correctable as you LITERALLY HAVE A DEVICE SENDING YOU DATA DIRECTLY.

When this settles, I actually plan to move to another provider, but that's a pain in the butt while you still have a 3-rate meter on your account and when I was a horrible non-standard package anyway. With a SMETSv2 meter and a plain tariff, I can leave these people behind in the 80's where they belong.

Your problem is right there, OVO. I've heard so many horror stories of their appalling customer service I'd never consider them as an energy supplier whatever golden carrots they dangled in front of me.

The worst one I heard was due to OVO making an administrative error and having a locksmith force entry into a property that wasn't even using OVO as their supplier and installing a pay as you go meter. The unfortunate occupants couldn't even use the meter as they weren't the "named" customer OVO believed lived there so OVO refused at every touch and turn to talk to the real occupants of the property, leaving them without any energy at all. As I recall the ombudsman got involved and OVO was very heavily criticised.

"As I recall the ombudsman got involved and OVO was very heavily criticised."

And thats part of the problem right there. They should have been heavily find, AND forced to pay heavy punitive compensation.

The whole story is even worse; this happened AFTER bailiffs had attended on a prior occasion to fit a meter, in turn weeks after Rachael Holgate had been trying for weeks to inform SSE/OVO that they were not her supplier. But SSE/OVO refused to discuss it with her as she was not a customer... When the media contact OVO, their response was

"We’re very sorry to Mrs Holgate for the inconvenience caused. We’re attempting to reach Mrs Holgate to apologise and provide a resolution". You'd be forgiven for thinking that surely they would have an address and phone number...

Its about time we had real watchdogs, with teeth, and chief execs recruiter from a consumer background and not an industry background.

OVO for the last 24 months has continued to bill someone at my address who does not live there, as far as I can tell does not live there, and they have the wrong MPAN anyway. I keep getting increasingly aggressive bills for a "John" whose MPAN actually codes for some meter somewhere in Manchester. Needless to say my emails to them have been ignored to this day... whatever, not my problem.

I don't want to cause you worry, but it might become your problem when they send bailiffs round to see John, who "lives at" (checks notes).. your address.

Perhaps, though that would require them to issue a CCJ against someone who doesn't, and has never lived at the address claimed, so we'll see what happens! At this point there's nothing I can do besides complain to Ofgem who are famously useless with this kind of thing so I'm just waiting to see how long it takes an actual human to realise they've probably mixed up the address somewhere.

and once it's goes legal, you can put in a counter claim against OVO

They are literally the only place that supported the "Superdeal" three-rate radio teleswitch meter tariff that I inherited with that property.

That's now dead and I'm on a smart meter with Economy 10. Still not great, but at least standardised, portable and vaguely useable.

Once I have the account sorted to reflect reality (8 weeks max, I'm told) then I will migrate to Octopus or similar.

I tried to get OVO / SSE to remove my ancient radio teleswitch meter (on a three-rate meter including storage heating system) and replace with something vaguely modern (I ripped out all the storage heating day one and consider it pointless for my use).

Ah, well, that demonstrates a combination of technofetishism with disjointed government policy. So those ancient radio teleswitches were a simple solution to demand management. Very simple toneburst flipped some relays to send power to cheap resistive heating elements. Convenient way to sink surplus energy during off-peak times. Now, we have the same problem, ie what to do when electricity supply exceeds demand. Currently windmill operators get paid millions in 'constraint' payments, or chase billions to install 'grid scale' energy storage systems like large batteries.

But storage heaters do exactly the same thing. If only there was a way to selectively turn those on & off, so instead of spaffing those millions in constraint payments, people with storage heaters could just get free/cheap electricity instead. Problem is that although homes with storage heating have already decarbonised, there has been disincentives to recognising storage heating as being 'green'. So fewer homes have energy storage, and a lot of new homes don't have the space to fit a cheap, simple hot water cylinder. Unless of course you've got a 'green' home, in which case using solar for heating makes a lot of sense, because storage heating is far, far cheaper to install and maintain than more compex solutions like heat pumps.

"Now, we have the same problem, ie what to do when electricity supply exceeds demand. Currently windmill operators get paid millions in 'constraint' payments"

The problem we have now, for the most part is a constraint in the transmission network between the generator and the consumer. So asking the consumer to 'waste' some free electricity doesn't help at all. In fact it makes things worse.

The problem we have now, for the most part is a constraint in the transmission network between the generator and the consumer. So asking the consumer to 'waste' some free electricity doesn't help at all. In fact it makes things worse.

That depends I guess. Problem is government insanity and efforts to decarbonise heating and transportation are shifting the entire demand model. So solutions like good'ol Economy7 to sink off-peak energy could still sink surpluses. But as you say, the profile is being shifted to make what was once off-peak demand peak with people wanting heating and charging their EVs. Energy wouldn't be 'wasted', especially if it's something simple like heating water. If I've got hot water, I don't really care what time of day it's heated, other than the cost under the current pricing model.

Biggest challenge I guess would be how responsive the comms could be between 'smart' meters and grid management, along with creating a 'fair' system. Octopus already has some creative tariffs to incentivise or penalise their customers. Biggest advantage to the consumer though is cost & simplicity. Hot water, radiators and a pump is a whole lot cheaper than alternatives like combi boilers and heat pumps.. But then installers and servicing companies wouldn't make as much money.

All UK smart meters have a remote disconnect facility that allows the consumer electricity supply to be turned off. This facility is mandated by the government. The smart meters would be cheaper to produce is there was just a wire link instead of the relay.

UK governments realize that there will be times when there will insufficient electricity supply (eg a cold calm winters night) as the UK has become too dependent on non-constant generation (principally wind) and the electricity demand is expected to rise due to heat pumps and EV charging. The smart meters remote disconnect will allow the government to ensure that only the "non-important" people shiver in the cold while they and their friends are comfortable.

Unless I am forced, I will not have my meter replaced by one of these smart meters.

Icon for what should happen to lying politicians (about 99.99% of them) ======>

It isn't the government that wants 'smart' meters, but parasites like Crapita. More on that in the article about how much they're adding to our energy bills, and also here-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq52382zd1no

Energy smart meter issues creating north-south divide

The cost of installing smart meters across Great Britain is estimated to be £13.5bn, according to the government. There are 36 million such devices in England, Wales and Scotland - but recent government figures show 3.5 million of them are not working properly.

So.. that's £375 per meter, and £1.3bn to replace the faulty meters. Oh, and another large chunk of cash to replace the old meters that rely on GSM. But then the Bbc gets a bit.. weird-

As a rule of thumb, smart meters in the northern region designed to connect to the radio signal have two small indicator lights on the communications hub, fitted to the top of the smart meter. The hubs fitted to smart meters in central and southern regions, receiving the cellular signal, usually have five of these indicator lights.

Err.. right. So the 'north-south divide' is poor northerners being deprived of 3 LEDs? Puzzled why the Bbc makes a point of the disparity in LEDs, other than perhaps what happens when arts grads try to do tech stories.

But I've also been pondering the usefulness of meter readers. There's been a spate of house explosions, and I've been wondering if those have been due to people fitting meter bypasses to their gas supplies because of the extortionately high gas prices. One advantage of meter readers is they may be able to detect people running bypasses before the fire service does.

It isn't the government that wants 'smart' meters

Government wants whatever they are paid to want. Corruption is rife

I assume the reason the Beeb mentions the LEDs is so that the plebs can identify which one they have..

Indeed - we will still need meter readers (more like meter police), even moreso with the high prices and remote disconnects, it is becoming ever more tempting to bypass the meter for some. That and the data communication seems to be one thing that the "DCC" struggles with.

Unless I am forced, I will not have my meter replaced by one of these smart meters.

You will be forced.

We are being forced to take a smart meter because our older "dumb" meter is reaching EOL, and we are not being given an alternative. I'm not a happy bunny on that subject, but there does not appear to be any choice in the matter.

Oh there is a choice. The regulations (here: https://smartenergycodecompany.co.uk/the-smart-energy-code/ but they're a weighty old document set) specifically allow you to refuse to have one. It will make your energy supplier Very Unhappy because nasty Ofgem will come and talk to them about it but you are allowed to refuse to have a smart meter fitted.

Not that I think it's a good idea to refuse. There is an awful lot posted in forums by people who have very little understanding have how smart meters, the SEC or the energy industry in general work and generally get quite shoutily wrong.

> Not that I think it's a good idea to refuse. There is an awful lot posted in forums by people who have very little understanding have how smart meters, the SEC or the energy industry in general work and generally get quite shoutily wrong.

I wonder if you are talking about anyone on this forum, mr coward?

If so can you please fill in what you think we (or perhaps I?) have got so shoutily wrong about these things? I certainly understand "how the meters work" (as an electronics/firmware engineer who has seen the insides of them and read the spec) and I have had a good amount of exposure to the energy industry... So that leaves the Smart Energy Code, perhaps?

Forgive me for being skeptical about governments and industries setting out codes and then actually abiding by them...

Ms Coward m'dear. Ms Coward.

You'll be forced by the backdoor, by eventually there being no tariffs available for non-smart meter customers. Or the few remaining will be twice the price.

At first, yes. Then the remaining holdouts will be forced "by the front door", so to speak.

The smart meters remote disconnect will allow the government to ensure that only the "non-important" people shiver in the cold while they and their friends are comfortable.

And the Democrats are going to take your guns, Elvis was taken by aliens, crop circles are real, and Qanon will soon start unveiling pedophiles. You think the government is cooking this up in some hare brained plan to oppress you? What would they get out of it? How does making "non-important" people cold benefit them? And the *government* are doing it? Not energy companies, you're specifically calling out government to go after you and make you cold...

Its far easier to just continue with dumb meters and charge poor people lots of money for energy - rich people don't worry about the electricity bill. Why disconnect people when you can either persuade them to voluntarily self-disconnect themselves to avoid huge bills, or get themselves in to big debts?

I applaud all these smart meter refusniks for their passion, but they haven't thought it through - they don't want a smart meter so they can't be overcharged or disconnected, but pretty soon tariffs will go from rewarding people who shift their usage with time of use tariffs, to penalising those who remain on non time of use tariffs.

I mean - that will happen regardless, the unit price for non time of use tariffs depends on the predicted usage of those customers, and the cost of obtaining it. If the only people left on non time of use tariffs are strident "I will use energy between 4-8pm as I goddamn please" people, that energy is going to be super expensive to obtain and non time of use tariffs will become correspondingly expensive. In essence, people on time of use tariffs will pay the fair cost for their energy, and people on the non time of use tariffs will pay for expensive energy for people who refuse to time shift.

More power to you, stick it to the man by paying over the odds for electricity.

"All UK smart meters have a remote disconnect facility" Where is it? 4.4.3.9 and 5.5.3.9 are "HAN Interface Commands" i.e. commands originating in the home, not anywhere remote!

I get where you're coming from but that's not what that that text means. The HAN interface is the radio interface within the home as opposed to the keypad on the meter. A supplier can turn of the energy supply by sending a SR7.2 service request to the device.

In reality that functionality is locked behind serious RBAC and ahs never been used. Outside of an emergency it's unlikely it would ever be used.

Rosie

"Back in 2012, the government created a legal obligation for energy suppliers to make sure they completed the rollout of smart meters by the end of 2019. Subsequently, it pushed back the deadline three times, first to the end of 2020, then 2024, and then 2025. As of February 2023, the government launched a consultation on plans to have smart meters installed in 80 percent of homes and 73 percent of small businesses by the end of 2025."

They should, by now, realise that there's a substantial customer resistance, that they've got about as far as they're getting, that it was a Bad Idea and they might as well quit while they're behind.

I suppose what stops this from dawning on them is that it looks just like so many other HMG projects - behind schedule and over budget - that they think that with time and budget it will get there in the end if they really want it.

What I find irreconcilable is the fact that the Government is putting hard-deadlines to the electricity suppliers to get smart meters installed, but they are still saying to customers that they can refuse having a smart meter installed. How is this supposed to work?

If a smart meter only did what they state the customer benefits are, i.e. provide accurate readings remotely, I would be all for having them installed. But there seem to be so many hidden agendas, like remote disconnect, forced capacity rationing, remote conversion to pre-pay, and seriously bad rectification of any errors that the supplier makes that impact the energy supply, that I will resist having smart meters being fitted to my house for as long as I can.

I've already had the "When can we do the smart meter installation you've booked" lie, when I have not booked one, the "Your meter has reached end of life", when they won't tell me what the end of life date actually is (which they have to do by law), and probably several more where as soon as they mention "smart meter" I say "no thank you", and just hang up.

I am waiting for the ultimate "we will have to cut the electricity to your house if you don't have a new meter fitted", which they already have the power to do, but not yet exercised.

We also see in the various tariffs that the cheaper ones require you to have a smart meter, and if you really don't want one, you end up paying more for your energy.

What really gets me is that I have seen talk of a new generation of smart meter that they want to switch to which will grade and switch individual circuits or appliances in your house so that the supply company can choose which of the devices you have they can turn off when they need to shed load at periods of insufficient supply (and probably so that they can charge different devices at different tariffs, such as higher prices for charging your EV to compensate for the loss of road fuel duty). And this is before they've completed the roll out of SMETS2 meters! If that is really on the cards, and not a conspiracy theory, they should pause the current roll out until they have worked out what the real end-goal is meant to be.

I think they are waiting for a critical mass of installed smart meters before they make them mandatory. It's actually pretty hard for them to forcibly cut people off when they still number in their millions.

The idea of having secondary or auxiliary loads is already in the SMETS2 [1]spec (5.4.10). So they will still be SMETS2 meters, just of, er, a different type...

That kind of proves my point that Smart Meters _will_ be used for load shaping (if not full blown load shedding) because they can avoid the need for load shedding (which is done at substation level and is highly inconvenient for important customers like businesses) by switching off customers who don't, er, matter.

(having auxiliary loads that they COULD disconnect first may in theory be a good thing for you IF these loads are genuinely auxiliary and not important to you, but in practice that's unlikely as if so you would already have switched them off!)

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a796c9e40f0b642860d7fa9/smart_meters_equipment_technical_spec_version_2.pdf

...as soon as they mention "smart meter" I say "no thank you", and just hang up.

Thank God, I was starting to think that I was the only person repeatedly saying no to these infernal contraptions.

I don't want a smart meter for a number of reasons.

1) I don't trust them.

2) I don't trust the energy companies and stories here only reinforce that.

3) I live in a radio shadow, we have very poor connectivity with no choice with mobile 'phone networks and everyone here is hooked up to satellite TV through force majeure. Despite this I was told last time they tried to get me to install a smart meter "Oh, our maps say that you have a good connection," I was too polite to tell her to come and see for herself.

Which is where the distrust of the meters comes from. I won't take the risk of the meter failing and then being sent an estimated reading. Climbing on a ladder and reading the meters by hand is a small price to pay for getting my real use through to the energy company.

I went looking for actual figures on how much energy they are saving, which they would know for sure by now. To me it seems very simple. You look at the energy used by a household in the year before having a smart meter compared to the year after having a smart meter. No one is collecting those figures and I strongly suspect it is because they don't want to know the real numbers. What they are doing is comparing average smart meter households with average non-smart meter households. Much easier to fudge those figures. What is an average household? One bunch of statistics I did find was:

"Supplier A shows electricity consumption reductions of 3.70%. Supplier B, Supplier C, and Supplier D show 1.12%" From this they concluded "The pooled estimates are -3.43% for electricity". Creative mathematics.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64831d59103ca60013039c7a/energy-supplier-review-of-smart-meter-energy-consumption-impacts.pdf

They are trying so hard to find a saving of 3% from having a smart meter but it just doesn't exist. 3% would be pathetic anyway, given what has been spent. There are no savings because people already know that electricity costs money and have already made their lifestyle choices. A smart display, languishing in the drawer of oven manuals and washing machine restraining bolts, is doing nothing.

Other commenters have mentioned the real reason for smart meters is remote disconnection. Don't forget remotely switching the meter to pre-pay without a court order (or even notifying you first, in some shocking cases).

Smart meters could have been a benefit to consumers. Octopus run events where you can get paid to reduce your energy consumption at certain times, which is only possible with smart meters. Instead they created machines with features that no sane person would want. They've lied constantly about the benefits and allowed Crapita to steal from us all. Pretty normal for a UK gov project.

The idea behind smart meter energy savings isn't the overall kWh's reducing (indeed they are expected to increase as EVs and heat pumps come online), but smart tariffs encouraging usage in 'quieter' periods of the day when there's excess wind or solar for instance.

Octopus via the Agile tariff has already about 500k customers, and their various other 'smart' tariffs have another 1.5 million. This is a sizeable force on the grid, so much so that if you pay attention to the UK grid frequency, you can see when all of the EVs switch on and off on tariffs like Octopus Go.

You might not like tariffs like this but you're effectively going to be paying more to operate on a non-half-hourly meter as your usage will be assumed to meet one of the standard Ofgem curves. Based on my internal metrics, my electricity bill is down about 30% from what it would be compared to operating on a standard tariff. I do have an EV - so I've compared to something like Economy7 with the car charging in the cheap overnight period - but even on days without an EV I'm able to shift things like my dishwasher, tumble dryer, etc to overnight slots where I get cheap leccy. The next step is to add a home battery to arbitrage further on this cheaper electricity.

the regulator said it remains concerned that DCC has become over-reliant on the use of external consultants, including for roles that are primarily business-as-usual and undertaken regularly.

The regulator has misunderstanding of the economy. The reason companies have to use consultants is because these skills are not available for employment. The fact that the roles might seem BAU and undertaken regularly is irrelevant. This is always only singled out when resource is provided by small business - if it is supplied by big consultancy, then it is "kosher".

To re-iterate what others have said, the remote disconnect functionality was presented as "demand management" many years ago. I distinctly remember reading about this... on El Reg.

Packaged, as I recall, a "safety measure" to allow "rolling reconnection" to the grid following a major incident, such that 20million properties all coming back on-line at once, after a grid failure, didnt cause a further grid failure. There was also a report? that stated it allowed selective disconnetion, on an individual or area-wide basis, such that rolling power restrictions could be enacted if (when) demand exceeded supply, a not remote possibility as at the time iirc we were within 2% of grid capacity.