British Gas Smart Meters.

el_dazza said:
I know how they work. Nobody is claiming they're perfect, they're new technology after all and anything that uses remote signals is prone to problems. Even today people have issues with a mobile phone signal, how long have they been around for? Bet you have one of those though ;)
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Thanks for admitting some of the recognised problems with this rushed out tech, you know I have a phone as it was mentioned in my post above the one you quoted.

A leak came out in the USA last week that the US regulatory bodies knew decades ago that some emf causes cancer but sat on the info.
 
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Anyone have idea where I can buy a tin foil hat?

When anyone rings you do you yell at them for causing radiation? I remember all the hoo-hah when mobiles became popular and that they caused brain cancer and that turned out to be guff.
 
Smart meter? Got one - never use it... it states the obvious...

Kettle is expensive as is tumble dryer.... It's not rocket science to work out that.

Most interesting I find is the usage of gas/electric per day/week as this isn't measured anywhere really so saves working it out.

I have solar panels so essentially my gas and electric is free due to the money I get back every quarter. :)
 
el_dazza said:
Load limited? Do you mean a usage limit or top-up limit? The capability may be there but in reality it won't ever happen. There is always a reason for disconnection and it won't be the supplier turning it off for a laugh.

They run using GPRS, not wifi or 3/4g or anything to do with an internet connection.

You have e7 bot not storage heaters? That's rare. If it's with BG at the moment it may be worth switching anyway as they're nowhere near the cheapest but generally those that do run on smart meters are cheaper as they require a lot less faffing around. I think BG use what are known as NSS meters (Non-Smet Smart), theirs aren't very good.
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I believe the smart meters have the ability to limit current/load the 'X' kW? As said though, my issue isn't with the suppliers doing it but simply the ability to do so in a device that has any form of network connection.

So GPRS signals, presumably over existing carriers (I doubt the suppliers are setting up their own GPRS networks), so that just adds yet another possibly attack vector.

It's unlikely to be a problem but if you look at the pros and cons, the pro is basically saving me 30s every couple of months to read the meter, and the con is possibly having my electric supply 'hacked' including the possibility of it being remotely shut off.

I can accept the 30s every couple of months...

The house used to have storage heaters (until November last year), now it has GCH but still on the old meter, hence the odd situation. I only bought ~2 months ago and it is on my list to switch to a proper meter/tariff in the next month or so (doing some work first though).
 
I'm honestly not aware of a load limit, i've seen usage on a smart meter of 200kwh/day :eek:

On the credit side ours can be topped up to a maximum of £500 and a maximum single top up of £175. Nobody really needs more than that in one go and I've never seen a balance above £84 when in prepayment mode.

We have never had a smart meter hacked or it's security compromised in any way. People have bypassed the meter (which is extremely difficult to do) but that's of their own accord.

Ours also send a signal on the electric side every 2 minutes and the gas side when the B button is pressed as that doesn't auto refresh the balance however it does send usage info through at 11.30 every night.
 
I work for energy supplier SSE were trying to dish out Smart Meters to pretty every customer. Its displays usage and plus it takes meter reads I do believe every hour so no more estimated inaccurate bills!
 
In no real rush to get one although I did submit my meter reading today and saw the advertisements for them which peaked interest.

I'm in no rush to switch, having put in my reading, my bill is £33 for the last quarter :p

I live alone.
 
TommyV said:
In no real rush to get one although I did submit my meter reading today and saw the advertisements for them which peaked interest.

I'm in no rush to switch, having put in my reading, my bill is £33 for the last quarter :p

I live alone.
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That's cheap! I've just moved into my own flat and dreading my first bill!
 
Just saw this thread and read with interest. Quite funny the references to Signs and "being cut off".

We've had a British Gas Smart Meter for 7 years its one of the first ones I think if I recall it was part of the early BG trial. It has the traffic light system on the bottom and shows several pages of graphs and data. The price per unit is wrong and the engineer told us at the time to ignore it as it was just for a base line. It uses the O2 network for the data transfer. When we changed to Eon they did tell us they cant use the Smart Meter as its tied to the one supplier. We've had several suppliers since and all could not access the data. We went to Sainsburys last year and they are basically British Gas and the Smart Meter is once again used for meter readings automatically.

My wife loves it as she can see what usage we have done week/month/year. I find it quite handy as it saves you going outside to the meter cupboards for the readings and also when we leave the upstairs electric shower on in the main bathroom it shows the red traffic light so I know when my wife has forgot to switch it off!
 
el_dazza said:
I'm honestly not aware of a load limit, i've seen usage on a smart meter of 200kwh/day :eek:

On the credit side ours can be topped up to a maximum of £500 and a maximum single top up of £175. Nobody really needs more than that in one go and I've never seen a balance above £84 when in prepayment mode.

We have never had a smart meter hacked or it's security compromised in any way. People have bypassed the meter (which is extremely difficult to do) but that's of their own accord.

Ours also send a signal on the electric side every 2 minutes and the gas side when the B button is pressed as that doesn't auto refresh the balance however it does send usage info through at 11.30 every night.
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Yet? :p

It may never happen, and if I felt there was a significant benefit to having a smart meter then yeah why not accept the risks.

But there isn't a huge benefit with smart meters, so it's a lot more risk for very little reward.

Hence, if possible, I'll stick with a conventional meter, but I would rather a smart meter to my current pre-pay/e7 meter, so depends what's available.
 
varkanoid said:
My wife loves it as she can see what usage we have done week/month/year. I find it quite handy as it saves you going outside to the meter cupboards for the readings and also when we leave the upstairs electric shower on in the main bathroom it shows the red traffic light so I know when my wife has forgot to switch it off!
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Who steps out of the shower and walks away leaving it on? :confused:
 
I've got pre pay meters for both Gas and Electricity in my house (already there when I moved in) getting them removed seemed a lot of hassle so reluctantly I gave it a go.
I thought they would be a complete pain in the rear initially, but, having used them for a year I actually prefer them now.
I find that I'm much more energy conscious now due to seeing the numbers tick down and I often find myself checking the meter to see for example how much it costs me to run the washer for an hour or how much the meter drops by after 3 - 4 hours of gaming, it's interesting to see tbh.
I find topping up every other week as I do to be simple, I either use my local shop when I'm there or, after British Gas sent me the USB top up dongle things (and a lot of initial faff getting the site to work!) I just top up on line from home.

I much prefer it now and find the lack of my former huge quarterly bill no loss whatsoever.
 
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LeeUK said:
Who steps out of the shower and walks away leaving it on? :confused:
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It has a pull cord on/off switch to turn on/off the electricty to the shower. So you turn the shower off but it still has electricty going to it to heat the water. So you use the pull cord to turn of the electricty.
 
thep02 said:
I knew they'd caused fires but didn't know it was thousands:eek:

http://www.activistpost.com/2015/07/thousands-of-smart-meter-fires-new.html
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Does that site actually have any proof or is it just "sources".

You'd think that thousands of fires caused by the meters would get some real press, especially as typically the fire department investigations tend to spell out where they think fires started and are public record.
So unless the fire departments are all under the thumb it's unlikely that they, the insurance companies, the government etc are all hiding it.
 
varkanoid said:
My wife loves it as she can see what usage we have done week/month/year. I find it quite handy as it saves you going outside to the meter cupboards for the readings and also when we leave the upstairs electric shower on in the main bathroom it shows the red traffic light so I know when my wife has forgot to switch it off!
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Ha, when we first got ours installed we were going around testing every item to see how much it used :o. It's great to be able to check the monthly bar chart to see if any changes you made have paid off.
 
varkanoid said:
It has a pull cord on/off switch to turn on/off the electricty to the shower. So you turn the shower off but it still has electricty going to it to heat the water. So you use the pull cord to turn of the electricty.
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Yes mine has a pull cord too to isolate the electricity going to the shower. If the shower is turned off at the shower, then it is not heating water regardless whether the pull cord is on or off.
 
Loved it when I had one in my old flat, I became somewhat obsessed with finding what was on to keep usage low. I guess it was no bad thing, as a penniless student I could easily save a few quid here and there and it certainly mounted up over time.

I'd happily have another fitted, it was a great tool for graph geeks like myself.
 
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