Smart Meter
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If you are interested contact them, if not ignore them as they cannot force you to have one. They may hint that you need one but they’ll never put that in writing. It’s your choice. Keep amassing knowledge until you are comfortable with a decision which you choose👍🏻
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Even though EON keep pestering us to have one fitted, and several requests from me as to what is involved and what apart from marketing speak as to you can see what you are using,, they have not come up with anything really positive to make me have them fitted
Most of the reasons they come up with are for their convenience
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They pester everyone hosta, it’s just par for the course nowadays.😁Some folks like to be fully aware of usage, others are more laid back about day to day monitoring. The main thing to be aware of is what can make a difference in terms of consumption of both gas and electric, and making your home and yourself energy efficient.
Topical at the moment here, as my OH gets the shivers very easily since his health scares, so he cannot tolerate being out in the cold and not being active for very long. Fine if he’s cycling or doing manual work, but on a dog stroll, with our very slow moving pooch nowadays, he gets very cold. His sister has bought him an iHeat waistcoat for under his outdoor coats. Brilliant at keeping him warm as it heats his core. Works off a small rechargeable unit that fits in pocket, pennies to recharge. I think someone else (😉) might be borrowing it for gardening🤣
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It is important to remember that it is the power supply companies that maintain the infrastructure that fit meters not energy suppliers. (Energy suppliers may offer better tariffs if you have a Smart meter) As I understand it power supply companies are under an obligation from Government to promote the fitting of Smart Meters. Perhaps worth also remembering that if your meter has to be replace through either a fault or age in will automatically be replaced with a Smart Meter.
David
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Our dumb meter failed and was replaced with another dumb meter because we refused a smart meter for the reasons I gave earlier.🤷🏻♂️
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We have had smart meters for a few years. To answer the OP's questions.
Why do we need one? We don't need one for personal reasons, as if we are at home to regularly read our own meter, we can do that. Simple maths we learned at school enables us to calculate everything else. We had our first smart electric meter (gas smart was not available then) so that we could eliminate estimated bills, and that saved us the grief of getting alarming wrong estimates. Ad soon as gas smart meters were available we pushed to get one installed.
Where is it placed? (Where are they?) They replace the existing gas and electric meters.
Any upset fitting it? It depends on whether your home has an inaccessible meter. Assuming the fitter can get at it, he will simply re-plum, or re wire the new meter in place. About an hour each is typical.
Does it help? It saves you reading your meter, if you don't want to. You can still read the meters if you want to. You can read the remote display if you want to. You don't have to use the remote display if you don't want to. The smart meters will not save you any money, but the ease of monitoring your own consumption may help you.
Eventually, when enough of us have smart meters, smart charging will be used to control the national grid. This will incentivise users to reduce consumption when tariffs are high, and use energy at lower tariff times. Lots of domestic appliances will become smart in the future. Electric car charging will be smart. Peak power requirement of the national grid will be very much less than otherwise - perhaps reducing the peak requirement by about half.
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+1👍🏻, I’ve been with BG, Shell(by another named company), So energy, now back with Shell as Shell. Each have tried to push another smart meter & I’ve rejected the offers. I’m happy with my ‘ex smart but currently dumb’ meter👍🏻
PS-the day I get annoyed at taking a screen shot of my meter reading to send to the energy company I will then realise I’m officially old🤷🏻♂️👍🏻
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It is here & is growing apace Brue-social media, digital assistants, parking vehicles & self driving, email comms, web searches, stores & services, chatbots, streaming services, banking, digital mapping & commuting, Face ID, there is just a few. Industry are jumping in to save money, AI don’t need pay increases🤷🏻♂️
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I’m a fan of smart controls like Hive for heating systems. Nothing better than firing up the heating system and hot water on the way home from a trip so everything is all nice & warm by the time you reach home.
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Brue
Can I ask what you are unsure of with regard to Hive? It seems that most of us with it almost equate it to the best thing since sliced bread
Since we had it, its been a revelation. Particularly useful for those of use that nip off for a few days as Hive allows us to control our heating remotely. I must admit I have not gone beyond the central heating but Hive does have a wider use if you wish to expand the system into lights and cameras.David
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Alexa is excellent for notifications, alarms finding/playing music & radio stns👍🏻
AI will continue to dominate our lives. Talking to a chatbot is soul destroying mind, you get on a loop that never goes anywhere, 3 from 10 must try harder☹️0 -
The best thing since sliced bread for me is a camera door bell. Alerted whenever the bell rings and you can see and chat to whoever it is from the comfort of your sun bed in Spain or wherever! Image and sound quality is remarkably good.
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To me, many of these 'gadgets' seem to be a very expensive way of flicking a switch. Taking Hive as an example, how long does it actually take to get a bit of warmth in the house if one has been away for a few days and come home and switch the CH on? Not long at all in reality. We leave our CH set at about 10º if we go away. This prevents any risk of frost damage but it very rarely switches on. Similarly with the hot water. Within a very short period it is back up to full temperature once switched on again. The house is well insulated so doesn't cool off to any major degree. During the summer months when most of us have our trips away the CH is probably fully switched off in any case.
I'm not a Luddite by any means, but I do consider carefully the benefits of buying any technology before I jump in. For many people, unfortunately, it is a case of The Emperor's New Clothes, believing anything that they are told. Oh, the power of advertising.
My niece and her mother are gadget mad but the number of times she tells us "Oh I don't use that any more" when I ask about gadgets they have bought.
Cars are the same. I bet there is no-one on here that uses all the in-built gadgets and systems that modern vehicles offer - but we've paid for them.
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It's really personal choice David and not feeling pressured into something I don't need or want. We could go down the Hive route by other means but it doesn't interest me.
There are all sorts of things out there which we can choose to organise our lives if needed. Hive is just an example not a necessity.
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Nothing to do with advertising, but experience. Arriving home at 1am in winter when the heating has been on frost mode for several weeks isn’t pleasant compared to the alternative. If the technology is there and it can improve the quality of your life, why reject it? Hive is expensive, but there are cheaper options just as good. Tend to agree about cars though, but couldn’t live without my auto windscreen wipers.😉
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We had our Linky meter fitted last year all done in 10 minutes you can read on the meter yourself or by an app which OH does and no issues, nearly everybody here has one if you do not want one as OH says carrot and stick is that you will not be able to get special rates etc, we were in our friends village last year and they pointed out one old house where the meter box is on the one side and it was covered in chains and locks with notices saying do not want one as the Linky meter will give off radiation, I thought I had taken a photo but could not find it so will check with our friends to see if they have one, there have been a few cases of folk padlocking their meter.
OH does not like hive and he says re the 2 factor authorisation is usually a security feature to stop anybody getting at your ie. heating system etc and turning on when you do not want it on, As you know he is a gadget man ex IT and Electronics.
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My biggest concern with smart-meters is the possible inaccuracy of them. I'm doing a daily check at the moment reading the gas cost and actual kWh and the same with the electric. If I then look at the weekly cumulative costs and usage they bear no resemblance to the figures if I add up the daily figures myself. Which is correct, the daily figures or the weekly ones? I suspect it is the daily figures but it would be nice if it was the weekly figures that are correct as they are much, much lower. What have the electric / gas company been billing me against?
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What have the electric / gas company been billing me against?
It will be the actual meter reading, as sent by your meter, at the end of the charging period, minus the figure at the start. Just as it was when readings were sent manually or read by the meter readers. The costs shown on the display are a guide, I don’t think the intention is that you add them up. Ours also shows a monthly figure that seems accurate.
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I had similar issues years ago, I contacted the customer support, I finally got an answer weeks later & after numerous further requests for info. Apparently the figures were correct, what was not correct was the fact I was in credit not debit. They were increasing my monthly debit but not making the connection with the mistake. Eventually I got my overcharge back. I will no longer entertain BG as a fuel supplier. Put your questions to them(energy supplier) JM, keep at em use ofgem once you’ve exhausted their grievance procedure👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻
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Thanks, Rocky. I'm keeping detailed figures for the next three weeks as minimum and may continue through March when I can see what the monthly numbers are showing as well as the days and weeks. After that, if not before, I'll be on to EDF for an explanation.
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SteveL. The figures are vastly different between the days and week's figures. The daily usage for combined gas and electric is between about £3.00 and £3.75. The figure shown for the 'week' after 5 days is only £11.00. If the 5 daily figures are added together it should be £16.87 or thereabouts. The displayed kWh figures are even more unbelievable, out, by my calculation, by about 250 kWh. The worrying part is that these apparent 'errors' are not consistent. Something is wrong. If I had the display set to show just the weekly usage I could easily be led into a false sense of security - or are the weekly figures the correct ones.?
It comes down to, what is the point of having a display showing incorrect figures? Pointless in my opinion.
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John
I don't think I would have opted for the Hive system as a stand alone purchase. However as we were changing to a Combi boiler and relocating it to a different position, the Hive system made perfect sense and has proved invaluable during the nearly three years we have had it. You have got to have some sort of control system so why not Hive and it has the advantage that I have access to my heating where ever I am.
I don't quite recognise the situation you mention in your first paragraph. Whenever we have returned to a cold house it has always taken it hours to get up to temperature, and I like to think we have a reasonably well insulated house. With our new system we increase the thermostat temperature when we leave the site and the house is nice and warm when we get back, couldn't be easier. I can also keep an eye on the house temperature whilst we are away and can adjust the schedule and temperature as required.
On your point about accuracy. As far as the actual meters are concerned how would we know unless we either got very low or high bills which were out of line with the historical information we have from our old bills? I can't see there would be a difference between the new and old meters? As technology develops you would hope the newer meters would be spot on. The internal display is something different. As Steve says its really more of a means of identifying when energy usage changes and what appliances are on at the time causing that change. Some will be interested in that and others not. I sometimes wonder at what point the daily standing charge is added, even if it is to the daily usage?
David
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We are in Luddite mode here. Our brand new, bluetoothed controlled, all singing, all dancing boiler developed a fault yesterday. We have hot water, but no central heating😡 Checked most things we could out, but no obvious problems, not airlocked, water circulating, etc.. So we think either it’s something in boiler, or signal unit is at fault. Engineer coming out tomorrow. Meantime, we ramped up the stove on tick over overnight, got the little oil filled heater out of MH for bedroom, and are fine. House overall is a liveable 17c, that’s just stove keeping things warm. Toasty in room with stove. Tech is wonderful, when it works. But when it don’t, give me Luddite for reliability🤣 And, think of the gas savings🤗
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TDA
What sort of boiler is it? If its a Combi boiler my first suspicion would be whether there was enough pressure in the system? On our previous boiler it had a live feed, via a header tank, in the loft from the mains. The Combi is a sealed system but does need topping up from time to time. Hope you get it sorted PDQ.
David
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Thanks DK. The pressure system was our first port of call, as it does, very occasionally, need a top up. It’s known here as “F1” as that’s the code that comes up, so topping up was first thing we did. It’s all a bit strange to be honest, as the thermostat display has the boiler ignited, and yes, it does ignite, but the central heating isn’t getting warm. So, is it the pump inside the boiler, we just don’t know. Reluctant to play with it beyond checking the obvious, as it has a ten year warranty on it, so we shall just let the engineer do his stuff.
It’s proven to be an interesting dilemma though, as the house is actually no colder with the stove lit, then when we use the central heating. Normally we don’t light the stove until we sit down in evening. But with doors closed to rooms we are not actually using today, and putting little oil filled radiator in bedroom for a couple of hours before bed, and leaving it on low overnight, with stove on tick over overnight, the house is fine without any other heating. So, it’s made us think a bit🤔 Use stove more, use CH a lot less. We are fortunate to have lots of clean burn wood available, and don’t mind budgeting for smokeless through year. So we know exactly what our heating costs, as it’s paid up front, or foraged for free. Admittedly, there is a bit of work involved in wood prep, but that keeps us fit and we both enjoy the novelty. Would be different of course if it was something we couldn’t do.
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Getting back on track, think i'll stay as I am for the time being. Without a Smart Meter.
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Reading an article today it seems most smart meters are on the same frequency as the UKs early warning system radars
And all properties on the Yorkshire Moors where Fylingdales is situated cannot now have one fitted,,that is just the start
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