Any downsides to a smart meter?

[Vimes]

Our SMET 2 gas meter stopped providing readings to EDF in June of this year. When I checked it, button B, it showed Locked and would new be for over 1000000 hours, or something. That never changed.
After lots of back and forth they sent an engineer to replace it on the 18th July, but then denied him permission to do the job when he turned up.
Today, 28th August, the arranged visit by another engineer occurred, Morrison on behalf of EDF. He decommissioned the old one.
Commissioned the new and then swapped them over.
He reckoned it is working and should start to display the IHD info within an hour or two.
It isn't doing.

Not sure how long they should take before they should be working.?
Electric meter is sending info every 30 mins

When they work they are most useful. The downside for me is talking to EDF when they don't work....... It is so hard.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

I had my gas meter changed twice. Second time due to the distance between meters and them not communicating.
They replaced it with a dual band meter which I believe uses zigbee and swapped out the comms module on the elec meter.

And I can't even get anything replaced unless its faultyI've been on a list for years for a smartmeter. At least I have a digital meter the other ones in the cupboard belonging to the other flats are analogue thats how old they are. Can anyone get an upgrage? Can they heck. Back when the electricity board was state owned it had a mandate to make sure everyone was connected equally and they had the authorirty to do it the energy companies have neither the interest nor apparently the authority, they're only interested in picking the low hanging fruit if its not straightforward access and a nice fat householder to bill they simply pass on it. Its the same reason I'm on pathetic 36mbps FTTC and the chance of anything better seems remote at this point. Theres even a VM cabinet on the street outside the building its literally ten feet in front of my window but can I or anyone else in these buildings get any connection to it? Can we heck they're only interested in teh householders down the street.

 

[Vimes]

The day after the gas meter change...........not showing on the IHD nor the energy hub.

I am assuming as this is a replacement meter it should just work.?

I'll go for email at this point......

 

[sx_turbo]

I'm still waiting for my octopus meters to start working, 14 days and still nothing

 

[Bluecube]

Email them and keep on at them. My electricity meter took months to be sorted out and I had to keep badgering Octopus. Don't know what happened in the end (maybe an OTA update) but it started working fine one day

 

[RavenLunatic]

I was ‘upgraded’ to a new SMETS 2 dual band Electric and Gas meter due to the old smart Gas meters battery running out last year and the 2G/3G shutdown.

The new one was installed over a month ago and my IHD barely picks up a signal from my Electric meter and nothing from the Gas meter. The IHD just sits there displaying ‘waiting for data’ or ‘data unavailable’.

The original smart Electric and Gas meter (while it still had enough battery charge) worked just fine with the old IHD.

The new one is a complete waste of time.

Scottish Power have since told me it’s a signalling problem, and nothing can be done to fix it, but assured me they are getting electricity readings daily. I checked the app, and it is still showing the reading for July and the last reading was at 00:00 this morning.

So, I am back to manually submitting monthly readings again.

 

[Semple]

I'm still waiting for my octopus meters to start working, 14 days and still nothing

My IHD from Octopus has never worked (going on months now). I wasn't sure if there was an issue with my meters as I was paying a fair bit more than I was getting billed, and when I went onto my account to request a refund it said it couldn't as there was an issue with my meter and to speak to support. Octopus support did perform a smart meter health check and confirmed a week later that they were getting all readings fine.

I actually did pick myself up a home mini and now I just shove the real time data through home assistant.

 

[sx_turbo]

My IHD from Octopus has never worked (going on months now). I wasn't sure if there was an issue with my meters as I was paying a fair bit more than I was getting billed, and when I went onto my account to request a refund it said it couldn't as there was an issue with my meter and to speak to support. Octopus support did perform a smart meter health check and confirmed a week later that they were getting all readings fine.

I actually did pick myself up a home mini and now I just shove the real time data through home assistant.

Great, seems like a waste of time. Thought one of the big plus points of a smart meter was soni could see realtime of energy use and try and adjust what we were using to try and reduce our energy usage and bills.

Having to do an alternative more long winded process surely defeats the objective

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Great, seems like a waste of time. Thought one of the big plus points of a smart meter was soni could see realtime of energy use and try and adjust what we were using to try and reduce our energy usage and bills.

Having to do an alternative more long winded process surely defeats the objective

Maybe a little but the IHDs arent a great way of doing that anyway

By far the best thing about smart meters is enabling smart tariffs

 

[Semple]

Yeah I'm not sure the IHDs do real-time? Do they just average out over the last 30 minutes.

I know octopus promote the Home Mini as a way to view real-time - not sure if that gets updates every 30 seconds or 60 seconds. Gas doesn't have a real-time view.

 

[Minstadave]

Yeah I'm not sure the IHDs do real-time? Do they just average out over the last 30 minutes.

I know octopus promote the Home Mini as a way to view real-time - not sure if that gets updates every 30 seconds or 60 seconds. Gas doesn't have a real-time view.

No IHDs are real time but don't store info. The Octopus app is 30 mins windows.

 

[200sols]

Octopus app with the mini is live data.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

My experience with IHDs is they are regularly polled maybe every 3 secs or something.
Octopus/supplier online data is 30 mins as thats the smart meter sending its data
Mini is basically real time as well.

Most people I know just dump the IHD into a drawer. They generally don't work correctly when you change supplier anyway.
Maybe for real time usage but not cost. Although some suppliers have got better at getting them working again.

 

[Vimes]

My EDF IHD is back up and working, and I use an Android app as well.

All good now, again. New SMET 2 gas meter fitted and, after so much contact a link was finally established and all is good. Both the gas and electricity are set to give 30 min readings.

Long may it continue............

 

[darael]

My EDF IHD is back up and working, and I use an Android app as well.

All good now, again. New SMET 2 gas meter fitted and, after so much contact a link was finally established and all is good. Both the gas and electricity are set to give 30 min readings.

Long may it continue............

Indeed, long may it continue. But with my own experience with EDF installing new SMETS2 gas and electric meters and the gas meter sometimes not showing on the IHD for 6 months at a time, I remain sceptical. I must admit though, the gas meter has been showing on the IHD for what must be a good 6 months now. But I had to badger EDF constantly for a over a year before it started working out the blue, with them seeming despondent about my situation and outlook most of the time.

 

[Vimes]

Indeed, long may it continue. But with my own experience with EDF installing new SMETS2 gas and electric meters and the gas meter sometimes not showing on the IHD for 6 months at a time, I remain sceptical. I must admit though, the gas meter has been showing on the IHD for what must be a good 6 months now. But I had to badger EDF constantly for a over a year before it started working out the blue, with them seeming despondent about my situation and outlook most of the time.

Very much agree that you really need to out a great deal of effort in with EDF to get things moving.

I'm not sure tho how much better any other supplier would be.?

 

[BigBoy]

Our SMET 2 gas meter stopped providing readings to EDF in June of this year. When I checked it, button B, it showed Locked and would new be for over 1000000 hours, or something. That never changed.
After lots of back and forth they sent an engineer to replace it on the 18th July, but then denied him permission to do the job when he turned up.
Today, 28th August, the arranged visit by another engineer occurred, Morrison on behalf of EDF. He decommissioned the old one.
Commissioned the new and then swapped them over.
He reckoned it is working and should start to display the IHD info within an hour or two.
It isn't doing.

Not sure how long they should take before they should be working.?
Electric meter is sending info every 30 mins

When they work they are most useful. The downside for me is talking to EDF when they don't work....... It is so hard.

Send me a PM with your account number or MPAN I will see what I can do.

(EDF employee specialist in back end systems, not customer facing )

 

[Vimes]

Send me a PM with your account number or MPAN I will see what I can do.

(EDF employee specialist in back end systems, not customer facing )

Thanks, a few posts down from that one and I mentioned that we are now up and running.....

Spoiler

Yesterday morning I used the same email address that I was given a few years back, a member of the CEO-Team provided it to me. More out of desperation due to the ongoing circumstances. A senior manager range me later in the afternoon, if I understood that noted team is no longer present in its structure but my email got flagged for her to read.
She was able to get us up and running in the time between sending the mail and her ringing me.
The journey from the initial breakdown to the resolve was less than ideal. That was acknowledged.

I very much appreciate your offer of help, up to the point of this being resolved a total of 3 different people had been assigned, two of them going AWOL during the process.

Again, many thanks for your offer. It does mean a lot and is encouraging to read, when I had previously felt that it was being constantly driven through my emails and phone calls.

A Landis GYR+ meter was fitted and not replaced with another EDMI one, for the gas.

At least this time I had not been connected to any "back office team" in India. That can make communications difficult for me.

 

[MartinPrince]

My 3 year EDF contract is coming to an end and I'm thinking of going to the Octopus tracker tariff. Do I get EDF to fit a smart meter before the contract ends or best to let Octopus fit it?

 

[Vimes]

My 3 year EDF contract is coming to an end and I'm thinking of going to the Octopus tracker tariff. Do I get EDF to fit a smart meter before the contract ends or best to let Octopus fit it?

Good luck getting EDF to fit it. Not that it should be an issue, but it could take some time, to not only fit to but then be up and running. Why don't you just leave that to Octopus..?
Maybe I'm wrong but once you flip to Octopus you will get another IHD anyway.