Smart Meters Good Or Bad?...

Obviously, I cant say how it will be in the UK, but here...

After they installed the meters here, peak period higher rates were removed. As regards remotely turning off power for a single household, at least here they cant.

They use the Companies power to operate, in our case that is E-On. Info is transmitted over the mobile phone network, and uses the customer number as the "telephone number."

I personally see no disadvantages whatsoever with them. Since they were fitted, we dont have to allow a man into the house at regular intervals, or have an ugly box containing the meter on the outside of the house. As regards health issues, why worry? We never think about those in regards to those caused by putting a mobile phone to our ears countless times.

 

I think the main problem with a lot of the old fuddy duddys on this thread is that you're confusing " smart meter " with " monitor ".
A meter is a meter NOT a monitor.

 

Meters record the usage but companies monitor that information and utilise it accordingly (e.g. sales, marketing, premium pricing etc.). A smart meter records usage in live time thereby giving more accurate details than currently available. The increased accuracy of that data would enable more in-depth analysis. As with many "good ideas" for making life more efficient it could bring unintended consequences which people are right to have concerns about and wish to discuss.

Yes

This may interest you:

This may also interest you:

Not quite: reducing energy consumption is all part of the Kyoto Protocol. However, this roll out of smart meters is driven under EU legislation which requires 80% of homes to have the meters installed by 2020 but (this is the Central Government Hair Brained bit ) Britain set the bar at 100% of homes, which is going to prove pretty difficult to meet when the current hubs only work in around 70% of properties (and one of the issues is the availability of mobile networks to transmit the data).

 

In the shorter term: to meet the targets
Thinking a bit more long term, it wouldn't be for *you* per se, but for your property.

 

You can choose a woman now?

 

so some houses here are going to have smart meters but have no elecy

Yep

Yep 100% - two homes

 

Thanks for all the answers to my initial question Mr Kandy tried ringing the number on the letter and after he was told he was in a queue for eight minutes hung up and we went off for a nice walk instead.

Shiney I agree with you to some extent about not having things in the house because someone wants you to have it.One reason why we don't have Solar Panels filling our house roof

This is the letter and leaflet that came in the post.I will let him read all the posts on here and might persuade him to hang on a bit before taking the plunge as at the moment there isn't too much information about having them fitted and what people think to them.Perhaps I need to contact our local radio station and see if they can get someone from the energy companies to explain the pros and cons of having them fitted.Or we could always ask Dim for his ideas on them

 

Our existing meter is located in a high level kitchen wall cupboard about 2m above floor level, and by leaning across our dog's crate that's immediately beneath it I can just reach a door knob and shine a torch into the cupboard to see both standard and Economy 7 readings, which we take every week.

A new digital smart meter only displays one reading at a time, so we would have to move dog's crate, get up on some steps and press buttons to toggle between readings, climb back down, put steps away and put dog's crate back underneath.

We know exactly how much electricity all our appliances use and have weekly meter readings going back over 10 years. A 'smart' meter records costs, not consumption in units, so any records it provides are useless for monitoring consumption.

When I explained that to them they agreed it would be of no use to us whatsoever.

 

The Read out can be placed anywhere in the house so there would be no need to go to such lengths to read it.
It is the Read out thing (cannot remember the name) which we have turned off as it bleeps, not the meter in the Electricity box.

 

Dur?