Energy: SMART Meters

Technology Technology: Chat / Discussions
21

No it was their sub-contractor Lowri-Beck and OVO said that they thought it best to leave it to them!

Not impressed by that but at the moment it suits me to be with OVO.

If I changed provider after the SMART meter was installed it wouldn’t be any use to another provider so that was part of my argument plus the fact that Lowri-Beck replied to my query regarding power for the Smart Meter on the Gas by calmly telling me I had to cough up for this to be sorted!

As I didn’t want or need this silly bit of kit I objected.

OVO didn’t like it but tough on them, it’s my money!

I didn’t answer my questions regarding who finally pays for this ‘free’ SMART Meter either and it’s estimated it’ll all cost about £2Billion so we can guess who will eventually pay for this but I just do not want it. stevmk2

22

Did a bit of digging on the Money Saving Expert site where there was a thread from 2008, apparently a Water Meter measures usage in cubic metres, back then the cheapest unit cost was £1.16p, London £1.60, and South West as high as £4.00p, the mean differential Being £1.87p, plus some small standing charges, so inflation aside a unit was ball park £2.00
An average bath holds 200 litres, so a bath would cost £0.40p, just having my daily bath would cost £12.00 per month

23

Thanks Steve :slight_smile: it suits me to be with OVO for now
and I have heard nothing from them about having a smart meter as yet.
It is my house and I will decide what I do and don’t have in it regardless of who does or doesn’t like it.

The more I read about Smart Meters the less I like the sound of them from a number of angles including health implications,‘dirty electricity’ and privacy :twisted:.

24

Yorkshire Water work on the basis that a bath consumes 80 lit of water , but that is in Yorkshire and we know the Yorkies are a careful breed . I calculate to them only having 100mm of water in their baths . That’s the way to save water, even if you have to splash a lot in order to wet all your bits.

25

I am guilty on two fronts, firstly I fill the bath to the over flow with hot water (uses lots of Gas), then, if I am in a hurry, I pull the plug out and add cold water to cool it down, how wasteful is that, now you can see why I don’t want a meter.

26

Like Meg, I can find ways of keeping my electricity usage down. The water heating up overnight …(Bruce, Economy 7 is a term used by the power companies in that at any time during a 7 hour period of the night they will start up our power to heat the water - it’s never at the same time. Don’t ask me how it work.)

I never use my big oven to cook meals, preferring to use my mini one. I switch off the tv and other boxes when I go to bed. I try not to leave lights on un-necessarily. But I do hate the new fangled power saving light bulbs and still have many of the banned old fashioned ones. I shower a lot, rather than bathe.

My water bill is £7 pm. I had a new meter installed a year or so back, because it had stopped working. And my electricity meter was exchanged for a brand new one just a few weeks ago. (They are 20 years old, though some residents have already changed to new, some had gone over to key meters. Blow that for a game of soldiers…running out of power and then dashing out to get the key recharged!)

When you live alone you can find ways of keeping bills down. My bugbear is the BT phone line. Putting their prices up this December to pay for the Sports. Arrrghhh! There is absolutely no way to bring this cost down. I’m damned if I go to a new supplier as I cannot take out a new contract, not knowing where I’ll be living in a year’s time.

27

‘Smart Meters’ are optional in the UK

Energy and water companies are rolling out Smart Meters in the UK to replace analogue meters. The exact dates keep changing, but be aware that you will be given the choice to have one soon. Please note that these are OPTIONAL. British Gas and others have been informing customers that SMs are mandatory when they are not.
http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/a-reminder-your-rights-in-relation-to-smart-meters/

Approx 3% of the population is thought to be sensitive to the EMFs from 24/7 WiFi involved with Smart Meters, so it is essential that those who have those health issues are not left without utilities, which is one of the reasons the Government ruled we are to have a choice in having these fitted or not. Once fitted, it seems at the moment you will not have the right to have a SM removed, so it is a decision to be taken with care. See above link for more info.

28

Some of us can’t have them you have to have you meter in your property or within a certain distance anyway. Flats with meters out side or down stairs can’t have them we have been told, they still keep sending the offer through so haven’t got the message themselves.

29

Oh that is interesting, I didn’t know that. So they can’t have the whole country ‘wired up’ anyway, which seems to be what the battle is about.

Germany has given up on them altogether, France has put it off for the time being. There are class-action lawsuits going on the US to have them removed - all sorts of fuss out there…

30

Steve, I have refused a smart meter 5 times now! :lol:
They say its to save us money, but its got to be for their own benefit really, as its against the rules for the energy companies to do things to help us. It will be for their OWN benefit somewhere along the line, else they wouldn’t be doing it.

31

[quote=“Jazzi, post: 523413”]
Like Meg, I can find ways of keeping my electricity usage down.

When you live alone you can find ways of keeping bills down. My bugbear is the BT phone line. Putting their prices up this December to pay for the Sports. Arrrghhh! There is absolutely no way to bring this cost down. I’m damned if I go to a new supplier as I cannot take out a new contract, not knowing where I’ll be living in a year’s time.[/QUOTE]

I agree Jazzi. BT also charge for 1571 now as well, and it used to be free.

32

The other morning on BBC they were on about Smart Meters again and the emphasis from the impartial BBC seems to be we should all immediately get Smart Meters.

Their correspondent also went into switching banks as well as insurance for your car and your home regularly too and Credit Cards, to “save money” but really, for me it’s all a complete waste of time my doing that.

I am with two banks because it suits me to use one as my working account.

The main account at Nationwide gets all my money paid into it - over the £10000 mark and therefore just qualifies for a different account where I got interest for 12 months of 5% - infinitely better than my ISA!

The 12 months was up in January but I still get a small interest amount as I used to long ago.

Apparently, according to the BBC, I should be switching to another bank to avail myself of their offers, quite possibly on a par with those I have been receiving BUT my circumstances now and / or in the near future mean that my holding in my main account will drop like a stone very shortly as I have large amounts to pay out soon.

I actually calculated it all from one particular reference point and found that the difference to me until June of this year, when my major expense for 2015 becomes payable, is about £0.67!

To me it’s simply not worth the hassle of changing banks, especially when I do not have any confidence whatsoever in the main High Street banks and I will not use a bank that doesn’t have a branch that I can go into because I am deaf so contact is an issue.

Credit Cards is another area where I am constantly being bombarded to switch but I use one credit card most of the time, purely to buy petrol because I get a discount by using my ASDA Credit Card, which incidentally I pay-off in full every month so why would I need to switch to another provider?!

One last thing I thought rather odd was when one of the studio presenters asked what the benefits were to keep switching and the correspondent said the banks / energy companies / insurers could abuse our trust and loyalty but is that really the case or is the BBC the Government’s propaganda “mouthpiece” now, regardless of whether it’s left or right-leaning?

I say that because so many people insist that the BBC is a left-wing organisation.

I worked for the BBC for ten years and back then it wasn’t but it’s more complicated than that. stevmk2

33

Well thats odd Steve because when I was listening to the BBC the other day they were advising people to accept the offers of a smart meter with caution because they are tied to the installing company so if you change suppliers the meter may well be useless.

It was also stated that the meters will not save as much as it was originally suggested so it may not be financially viable to spend billions fitting them in every home.

34

That’s exactly right Meg.

It’s also clear from what you say that political direction within the BBC seems to be entirely dependent on the editing team or the producer / director, which is indeed odd within the BBC.

I caught the end of a piece-to-camera on Thursday morning on the BBC News channel by the way. stevmk2

35

They must have asked me about half a dozen times to let them install a smart meter here, they pestered me by phone, and letters. I refused every time. This was a year or 18 months ago, and at the time of writing, I haven’t heard anymore recently. (Probably will now :lol:)

All their talk about it being better for us is rubbish. Why would they spend money on it if was better for US? It will be better for THEM in the end. For a start, they can sack all their meter readers and save on their wages!

36

Yup, Government has legislated that they are to be OPTIONAL. Doesn’t seem to have got thru to the suppliers, probably because they’re offered cash incentives to get them installed.

Germany has given up on them altogether, think France is about to as well.

37

Bumping this up - it seems there is a campaign of outright lying by the authorities who are supposed to be informing us re Smart Meters. Just to reiterate, Smart Meters are OPTIONAL not MANDATORY in the UK!!
+++++++
At 09:47 on March 7, 2015, the Communications Director for Smart Energy GB — the government body tasked with “ensuring customers understand smart meters” – appeared on the BBC One Breakfast show and told viewers that every home in the UK would need to have a smart meter fitted by 2020 – a colossal untruth.

The following transcript was recently obtained by Stop Smart Meters! UK directly from the BBC complaints desk and shows the exchange between Smart Energy GB’s Claire Maugham and presenter Charlie Stayt:

[Time stamp 09:47, 7 March 2015]:

CHARLIE STAYT: How do you get one [a smart meter]?

CLAIRE MAUGHAM: They are being installed by energy suppliers and they are being installed at no extra cost to the consumer.

CHARLIE STAYT: So, you just call up your supplier and say “I’d like one” and they are obliged to give it to you?

CLAIRE MAUGHAM: You need to contact your supplier. Some of them have already started installing them and there are already one million of them out there, but they have to install them in 100% of homes by 2020. {emphasis added]

As we have repeatedly revealed throughout our campaign against the now “widely hated” smart meter roll-out, energy companies are commonly lying to customers in order to dupe them into thinking that smart meters are obligatory, when in fact smart meters are voluntary; a fact confirmed by the Government as well as by consumer group Which?.

Now we have evidence of where energy firms are getting their misleading ammunition – from the government-created body tasked with “helping customers to understand smart meters”. The body whose communications director, Claire Maugham, is prepared to go on national television and make the same provably false claims as the industry whose dirty work she is doing.

The need to expose the facts about the smart meter programme – which the Institute of Directors recently blasted as being “unwanted by consumers, devoid of credibility and mind-blowingly expensive” – is today more pressing than ever. Not only is the readiness to lie about smart meters endemic within the energy industry but now, seemingly, state-sanctioned.

Stop Smart Meters! UK is urgently calling for this programme to be terminated, for Claire Maugham to issue a public apology and for the BBC to issue a full retraction and correction to Maugham’s misinformation.

Stop Smart Meters! UK is a grassroot campaign raising awareness about how 'smart’ meters affect our health, privacy, safety, security and utility bills.

Original link to this story: stopsmartmeters.org.uk/smart-energy-gb-c...n-bbc-one-breakfast/

38

My electricity bill has gone up since I have run 2 servers that is for sure! My main server has 4 processors, 2 power supplies, and about 10 high powered fans, along with 4 hard drives: my other server has 2 processors, 1 power supply, not as many fans but also 4 hard drives. Both are on 24 hours a day!

Woe is me …

Mind you they are making me lots of dosh :smiley: .

39

I run two NASs one with 4 drives ( x 3TB) and one with two (x2TB) they are on from 9am to 1am plus a UPS but can’t say I have noticed a big increase in my power bill. They only have one fan each though

40

I have decided to say yes to a smart meter and see their faces when they try to fit it, I have lost count of number of letters and calls saying we should try one and me saying we can’t we are in a flat. Well now let them try I decided so they are coming on Tuesday :wink: