Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Electric smart meters

I think you are absolutely right Paul, the metering unit that contains the SIM talks to the customer head unit to evaluate their consumption now I come to think about it.

Rich, you are absolutely correct about supermarket check outs collecting info. Every week we get offers from Tesco ( other, better supermarkets are available ) which try to tempt the Memsahib back with £10 off an £80 bill or something like that and it is directly targeted at the actual items that she bought previously.

Your whole lifestyle is contained in your credit card and cell phone down to the minute!!!

I resisted for a few years after a very painful experience with first generation smart electric meter, which saw my bill go from £90 to £350 a month. I ended up leaving that supplier as the only way to resolve the billing issues ( to which I got a full refund after dragging the CEO into the discussion). I have solar PV installed for the last 9 yrs and was hesitant when approached by current provider to switch over to smart meters. After a lot of surfing various forums and user groups, the consensus was that the incumbent was installing 2nd Gen meters and those with Solar PV had no problems. I invested in a small monitoring computer (EmonPI a raspberry pi derivitive) which monitors both my solar output and my intake from the grid and ran this for about 6months comparing the data with that of the solar and grid meters. I found it to be remarkably accurate with only a small difference between them, not great enough to get bent out of shape.

So I bit the bullet and went ahead with the smart meters, a year later no problems and the checks between the monitors is within the same tolerances as previously observed. Solar is not interfering or being miss interpreted and I no longer get estimated readings for Gas & Electric. The solar is still a manual reading supplied by me every quarter via the website!
The bottom line is that you can check if your current supplier has any known issues with Solar installations and there smart meter offerings. Including sim coverage for their chosen network.

I have spent the last 30yrs working in IT systems and have had experience in setting up billing systems for energy companies. With this background I'm comfortable with how these systems and services work and nothing has changed from the customer perspective other than manual metering only occurs once a year as a means of checking that the systems are reporting correctly and have not been interfered with.

Rgds
Lumpy

As promised, the E-ON man came, spent a while looking around, heard what I told him about previous visits and confirmed again that the Smart meter will not work so at least I can continue on my new tariff without fear of reversion to a more expensive rate

Glad you have come to an amicable arrangement Reg , I find them very fair in any dealings I've had with them.

We are with E-ON with a smart meter with £46 per month direct debit so £552 p.a. and I'm happy with that, we've been with them since 2012 and they come up with the best deal every time for our pattern of usage.
Of course living down here on the English Riviera we usually only get about 5 frosty mornings and the weather certainly is mild.

We pay nearly the same for water down here we have the most expensive water in the country, must be due to the fact it's always piddling down and they haven't found a way to catch it it came in at £535 for 2019.

Oil is our heating source which is around £800 p.a. for a 3 bedroom house it seems pretty thermally efficient for a 41 year old house we have cavity wall insulation and the normal loft insulation and that's it.

If I consider the running costs are getting high I'll look into panels but quite frankly there are many a nice house wrecked aesthetically with these things hanging on the roof around our area so no thanks for the time being. I'd look into air heat source pump options before panels.

Rich, same here re E-ON. A good company that perhaps just need a few more listening ears. Our water costs are minimal as our run off all goes into the ground so we are not charged for it. At the last check, we were paying £24 a month.

I got home yesterday to a freezing cold house due to no gas supply. I called out an engineer who very quickly found that (for the second time) the gas meter had failed due to water ingress (it lives outside in a meter cupboard). He said he replaces a lot of meters for that reason, coastal areas are particularly susceptible apparently.

However, he also told me the most common fault now is failing internal batteries. Electric smart meters are - unsurprisingly - powered from the supply but the electronics in gas ones use a battery. The first gen gas meters are now running out of power and as the internal batteries are nonreplaceable the meters have to be swapped out. Of course when the electronics fail the supply is shut off!

On the plus side, the engineer from SGN was with me in two hours but it's taking a lot longer than that to get the house back up to temperature.

That's a bit poor to say the least, our smart water meter apparently generates it's own power for the smartrikery with the impellor in the flow, easy !

You'd have thought the flow of gas could be harnessed to do the same