General Chat

Per RtR “granular control”
Back in the 60’s. It was interesting to be in the control room of the power station on a Saturday when the FA Cup Final was being played. Or Wednesdays for a replay? All (or most) stations had a big ‘megawatt meter’ on the wall. At half-time one could see hand on the dial move. All those electric kettles being switched on for a brew.

There is nothing that the suppliers can do if you switch on your kettle, etc. So they need to operate the distribution system as best they can. The more accurate their knowledge of demand is, the better they can operate.
No point in getting too technical – so just consider that kettle. Sometimes does it seem to be a tad ‘slow’? If so, it’s probably because the voltage has been dropped a bit. That drop may be just in one area, or indeed national.

Per RtR “uncontrolled increase”
We live in a house built in the 1930’s. So the electricity cables in the street (and to each house) are upwards of 90 years old. I don’t know what their maximum current capacity is. Nobody has an all-electric car. But when folk start buying them, and getting ‘charging points’ fitted, will those cables be overloaded?

Inky thank you for the information. Food for thought ;-)

We had a smart meter installed by one supplier but after we changed to another, better tariff, it didn't work. The meter stood on the worktop in the kitchen, the light changing from green to amber to red according to consumption. We found it useful as it made us think about what appliances, lights etc were turned on. It was up to us to turn off any excess consumption or be prepared to pay the bill.

We are in the midst of changing supplier again and are hoping the new one will give us a smart meter.

A smart meter also stopped us having to dive into the back of the garage to read the gas meter and go round into the next road to read the electric one.

We don't change supplier and have gas delivered we have energy saving bulbs so no need for a smart meter and won't have one anyway.

Re:Inky's last paragraph..reminds me of our wartime 50 year old houses in London dockland 3 up 3 down as separate dwellings, downstairs had a scullery with copper boiler...each room had a light bulb, and the "living" room also had a 5 amp socket.
we were lucky , other roads still had gas..
at times the supplied voltage dropped to 180 volts from 200...

OH! upstairs had a landing outside toilet

downstairs it was completely outside

I presume, by 'phone protocols', you don't mean phone signals.
It actually uses wireless signals based on mobile phone networks to communicate with your supplier.
This has problems, because many households in rural areas with a poor mobile phone signal are unable to get a smart meter.
In fact, 30% of households/buildings can't have a smart meter

Thick walls, properties in blocks of flats and areas with poor mobile signal can all cause problems that stop the meters from working.

Potential customers are being told they are on the wrong type of energy tariff or their meter is in the wrong place. Some suppliers are refusing smart meters to households with solar panels or which use the Economy 7 tariff, where you pay a different rate for power used at night and in the day, because some types of meter only work properly with regular power tariffs.

Ironically, meters can also go haywire if households use energy-saving light bulbs or dimmer switches because they can't record the different type of current used., which can result in bills up to 6 times higher than they should be.

As for electric cars, we may have more charging points than fuel stations, but it takes 10 minutes to refuel a petrol/diesel vehicle, but the majority of public electric car chargers are 'fast' chargers and these take 20 to 30 minutes to charge.

July 2019 A British Gas chap came to service our boiler and wanted to arrange to instal a smart meter. We were happy to have one but I told the chap that I would only accept a second generation meter (SMETS2). This man, a British Gas engineer, had no idea what I was talking about and had to check with his boss, which didn’t inspire much confidence. We went ahead on the basis that they would fit a second generation meter.

I can see no reason not to have a meter. It hasn’t changed our general usage but once or twice has alerted me to the fact that something we were not using had been left running. As for it taking jobs from meter readers all I can say is: what meter readers? In the six and a half years we lived here before we had the smart meter we had seen a meter reader twice. Most of the time we got an email request to read the meters ourselves and send the readings to the company, so we were doing their work for them.

Until it is compulsory whether or not to have a meter it must be everyone ‘s personal choice but think back to the introduction of water meters. Lots of people were against them and we were going to have unwashed people in dirty clothes because they couldn’t afford the water. Now you rarely hear anyone mention them because they have proved to actually work quite well. I suspect it will be the same with Smart meters.

May I ask whether, if you are dual fuel, only one smart meter is fitted?

That is what I'm hoping .... if it ever happens.

I’ve not looked to see whether there are one or two meters as ours are housed outside but I would expect there to only be one. There is only one “device” in the house which registers gas and electricity.

The article says:
"There are several versions. As I'm in a rural area of Devon with relatively poor signals, this Toshiba unit is a Mesh Network device. It connects to an external aerial via the wire marked with a green arrow."

"Relatively poor signals" - so some signal, then. As the article is by a smart meter installer, of course it will be positive!!
My brother, in deepest Somerset STILL hasn't got even a landline - let alone the phone signal and internet he was promised over 2 years ago!
Not much chance of his getting a smart meter, either then!

The article quoted by RTR (as I mentioned earlier - by a smartmeter installer) also obviously doesn't mention the other problems people can have.