Smart meters, less smart companies

prpr said:
It hasn't happened yet. 30th June this year is the newly scheduled date. Everyone with an RTS meter is being compelled to get a 'Smart' one. Let's see how well that goes then...
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They "got" me! So that's one out of umpteen thousand/million. Not sure I was compelled. I didn't challenge the "we need to change your meter" request.
 
EEPhil said:
Approx £9.30 savings (they say) since I entered the scheme (July last year). Not looking promising for the average savings then
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Higher savings can only be made on higher usage. If you are lower than average usage you'll make lower than average savings (but the proposed changes to how standing charges are billed might be to your benefit).
 
Black Hole said:
Higher savings can only be made on higher usage. If you are lower than average usage you'll make lower than average savings (but the proposed changes to how standing charges are billed might be to your benefit).
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Yes, but as I pointed out before, quite often the usage data goes AWOL just at the time the Peak Save is operating or there is confusion over GMT and BST. I've tried complaining. It gets me nowhere and i can do without the aggravation! I shall look into the standing charges when the new tariffs arrive - assuming I'm able to switch to such a tariff. There are often "terms and conditions" which either don't apply or I don't like. I'll run the numbers through a spreadsheet - if and when.
 
Black Hole said:
Higher savings can only be made on higher usage. If you are lower than average usage you'll make lower than average savings (but the proposed changes to how standing charges are billed might be to your benefit).
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I looked into the new EDF reduced standing charge tariff for low users, it is based on the January rate but works out about £8 a month dearer than my 1 year fix that started in October and is only a about £5 less a month than the latest fixed rate.

On a side note Martin Lewis is grilling the CEO of OFGEM tonight on ITV1, it might make for an interesting watch as long as he puts the boot in hard.
 
trog said:
I have not looked into one of those tariffs but how does the peak rate compare to other same any time tariffs ? Is it like the old economy 7 tariff? that used to be cheap for 7 hours at night but the rest of the time you paid a higher rate than a standard tariff and could end up saving nothing and costing more and only really good if you had those old electric storage heaters.
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We use economy 7 to charge electric cars, and if the forecast for sun the next day is low (so we will generate little solar power) top up our battery storage to get us through the next peak period.
Hence we use no daytime electricity at all.
 
prpr said:
So $energy company have just called me (I doubt they read this rubbish on here)! They asked me whether anyone had turned up, I think expecting me to say no.
They offered the £40 straight away without prompting, and asked whether I wanted to re-book now. They said the first available slots were the beginning of March, but I declined to do it on the hoof. What jolly fun.
#Slightly_less_broken_Britain
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Over a year on and nothing more had been heard, until today when they send me an email telling me my meter is now uncertified (er, it's been that for a whole year folks) and to book an appointment to have it changed (it's free - well, I'd bl@@dy well hope so).
The only thing is... they actually changed it (and the gas) for so-called $mart meters last Wednesday, after my prompting about fitting an isolator switch a few weeks ago which they then refused to do.
Not that I've had any meaningful readings off them, just a rather odd 27 hour period for the electricity from the day of installation. They reckon it takes up to two weeks. Let's see. I wonder what would happen if I now booked the meter change from the email...

The IHD is mostly useless. It has very poor range - I tried it about 8m away and nothing. Reduced to 5m via one wall and it just about functions. It does make a reasonable job of being an accurate power meter though as it updates the figure every 10s, and doesn't need any button presses once set.
 
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prpr said:
Everyone with an RTS meter is being compelled to get a 'Smart' one. Let's see how well that goes then...
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Obviously it didn't last year, but allegedly the industry is apparently now happy to progress, which has allowed the R4 LW switch off to proceed next month.
 
RobH1 said:
We had both smart meters (BG) fail and it only came to light when the quarterly bill came in. The readings showed we had used about two month's worth of gas and electricity going by the date the meters failed to send signals.
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I was forced into having a smart electric meter due to the old one being past its use-by date. So they fitted one 3 months ago. It hasn't sent any readings since the day it was fitted. I only found out when I happened to log onto my supplier's website to check my account. Had they bothered doing anything about it? Of course not. I ask them to fix it; since then another month has gone by with them doing nothing. What a complete waste of time.
RobH1 said:
BG took about two weeks to arrange and install new meters. We were pleasantly surprised they wrote off at least one month's usage plus the two weeks and began again from scratch.
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Winner!
 
prpr said:
The IHD is mostly useless. It has very poor range
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Mine's the same. My meters are under the concrete stairs for the flat above. Then the nearest position for the IHD is through two walls - through my upstairs neighbour's downstairs cloakroom. Any further away and the IHD misbehaves.
 
Wildebeest said:
I was forced into having a smart electric meter due to the old one being past its use-by date.
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Is that what they told you, and did you check what they told you was true? I got a letter/email saying my (lecky) meter had past its calibration valid date, so I checked how they would know that and found they didn't – they were just trying it on. My meter does not have an expiry date.
 
My electricity meter will be out of calibration next month (June) and I'm waiting for them to do something about it.

Back in April '24 they emailed me with "Your electricity meter has reached the end of its certification period"and asking me to book a date for its replacement. I corrected them, they replied saying my email was blank but appended parts of it.

It looks like whatever they use to clean and/or display emails gets confused by the '>' blockquote identifier and deletes the quoted text and in the case of my 'blank' email it refused to display anything from the first '>' on. But they use '>' in appended original emails.

It went downhill from there and it still ongoing
 
Black Hole said:
s that what they told you, and did you check what they told you was true? I got a letter/email saying my (lecky) meter had past its calibration valid date, so I checked how they would know that and found they didn't – they were just trying it on. My meter does not have an expiry date.
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It is what they told me. I did check. It was true. And legally my position seemed indefensible so I gave in with bad grace. Whether they had the expiry dates in their records or were just trying it on and got lucky I do not know.
 
I had been getting a lot of grief from EDF about my gas meter being about to be out of date and needing to change it to a smart meter and I kept putting it off until my fixed deal was about to expire and then moved to Outfox energy who do not demand you to go smart and have not mentioned anything about my gas meter having reached its expiry date in the 7 months that I have been with them. Oddly about 2 months ago a youngish Chinese looking guy appeared wanting to read and check my gas meter, I told him I would need to move furniture to get to the meter and it was not convenient now and he will need to book a time in the future, I then realised he had just said he was here on behalf of EDF. I told him I am not with EDF and off he went. I still do not know if it was EDF incompetence or a scammer but I favor it being EDF.
 
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