[wizzo227]

Originally Posted by retrotecchie

without smart meters

I challenge anyone with a smart meter to tell me the number of seconds in the past 24 hours which their gas boiler flame has been on for, and the quantity of gas used.
I challenge anyone with a smart meter to tell me how many kWh of electricity went through their kettle last week.

[retrotecchie]

@wizzo227

With or without a smart meter, I bet the number of people who need to know either of those pieces of information or whose life would be negatively impacted by not knowing that information is very small indeed.

I can tell you to the nearest milliwatt hour, how much my electric kettle used last week. I can also tell you how many seconds my oil boiler fired for in the last 24 hours and exactly how much oil I used, but I doubt that you could make any practical use of that information.

[meldrewreborn]

Originally Posted by wizzo227

I challenge anyone with a smart meter to tell me the number of seconds in the past 24 hours which their gas boiler flame has been on for, and the quantity of gas used.
I challenge anyone with a smart meter to tell me how many kWh of electricity went through their kettle last week.

Smart meters (if they are fully functional) are/were intended to illustrate to typical consumers in broad terms what their energy consumption is at pre selected times. Data such as you identify would require additional metering whether a traditional meter or a smart meter was measuring their overall consumption.

I doubt that there are many people who keep records to that degree, but good luck to them if they do. Personally, unless they're writing academic papers, such detail strikes me as being totally unnecessary. Why not create a poll to find out?.

[Andy65]

Hi @PeterT_EONNext, should there be a link in your original post to be able to read said experiences?

[PeterT_EONNext]

Hey @Andy65

These will be weekly video clips as opposed to written experiences that we'll be sharing as the videos become available 🙂

[Michaela90]

@retrotecchie

No smart meter yet. Main fear is that it will malfunction recording wrong usage and having bill spiralling out of control. I am scared of the stories I read about people getting bills of tens of thousands of pounds when smart meter is faulty. And then what? Been a customer of Eon next for a while. Unfortunately in the beginning there was this problem of wrong annual estimate usage of fuels. I did provided them with bills readings annual estimate from previous providers but their answer was their computer (Eon next computer) was right. Never charged more than due, yes, but wrong estimates for my annual usage of gas (and electric) on bill definitely upset me. So very concern what would happen if smart meter is faulty.

Now regarding how I take my readings: very regularly! Send them always on the same date of the month, roughly at the same time. And I always take photos (with date/time stamp) which I keep in order to back up my readings - which are anyway correct and up to date.

If I had a smart meter I would not want it to send reading every 30 minutes. I read one can ask for this to be done, basically send usage once a day (fine by me) . As per my own situation I would consider it as an insult if Eon next or the Government, would send me messages how not to waste electricity and gas. I am very savvy, and extremely tight, hence I take great care in switching off lights or not to putting on the heating needlessly.

Also I am honest and I would have NO interest whatsoever in sending wrong reading to Eonnext. More than gladly I pay for what I am consuming.

Given my situation, I could send daily readings to Eon, just like a smart meter, but I consider that to be a stupid thing to be done.

I recognise that this is a case for me. Majority of the people have other and perhaps better things to do than thinking about the readings: many have only estimated bills. Lots have little children and families, other have meters in awkward places or other people are too old. In their cases the smart meters are very useful, I agree.

So, in conclusion, I can say I track my energy very well.

Smart meters worry me not for the personal data but because they may malfunction Here is one of the many interesting link not so favourable to smart meters I found:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/co...ay-no-get-one/

And finally I would be very interested to know the following: say I have a smart meter installed and it does malfunction and my bill gets into tens of thousand of £. What would Eon next do: freeze the bill and investigate or just simply send me the bailiffs to get their money (as if I have tens of thousand in the bank AND even if I had, I would NOT paying what is would be an appaling and obvious - to me at least! - mistake). Please remember I am only putting forward an hypothetical situation but if some army general is allowed to think about an hypothetical scenario of a war with Russia, while am I not allowed to think a smart meter can go wrong?


Ps: Just read the thread of Joe soap and followed his link: (https://community.eonnext.com/thread...ll=1#post37193) found it very scaring. I would be out of myself if anything like this would happen to me. Sorry, I could not mentally cope.

[retrotecchie]

@Michaela90

The chances of a smart meter 'spiralling out of control' and racking up huge bills is actually no different from a standard meter doing the same. The actual metering elements and measuring components are no different between a conventional meter and a smart meter.

The only difference is the communications. And that is usually what fails with smart meters. Meters, by default send daily readings. You can opt to change that to monthly if all you want is a reading once a month to generate a bill. You can also opt for half hourly readings which are beneficial if you use an app like Bright or Hugo, or if you have an EV or Economy 7 tariff where you are charged different unit rates at different times of day.

I am a bit 'anti' smart meters, but not for the reason you are concerned about. My issues are reliability, communication problems, the fact that the data is handled by a government appointed billpayer funded quango and that the ability for a consumer to directly access data from the meter is rather limited.

For me, there is nothing a smart meter can 'bring to the table' for me that I can't do myself by reading my own meter and keeping my own spreadsheet.

[Mailman]

Originally Posted by Michaela90

And finally I would be very interested to know the following: say I have a smart meter installed and it does malfunction and my bill gets into tens of thousand of £. What would Eon next do: freeze the bill and investigate or just simply send me the bailiffs to get their money (as if I have tens of thousand in the bank AND even if I had, I would NOT paying what is would be an appaling and obvious - to me at least! - mistake). Please remember I am only putting forward an hypothetical situation......

The same thing can happen to an ordinary meter.

As I have smart meters in my home, I do track (for myself) daily usage amounts (via the IHD) so can see very quickly whether usage has 'stuck' or is not being recorded at all. Not happened in the 2.5 years I've been using them. But to go with your hypothetical I would be able to spot something amiss (e.g. meter battery gone dead, meter not advancing etc) within 24 hours and do something about it. No way would Eon Next would be able to rack up tens of 000's of debt.

[WizzyWigg]

Originally Posted by Michaela90

@retrotecchie

No smart meter yet. Main fear is that it will malfunction recording wrong usage and having bill spiralling out of control. I am scared of the stories I read about people getting bills of tens of thousands of pounds when smart meter is faulty. And then what? Been a customer of Eon next for a while. Unfortunately in the beginning there was this problem of wrong annual estimate usage of fuels. I did provided them with bills readings annual estimate from previous providers but their answer was their computer (Eon next computer) was right. Never charged more than due, yes, but wrong estimates for my annual usage of gas (and electric) on bill definitely upset me. So very concern what would happen if smart meter is faulty.

Now regarding how I take my readings: very regularly! Send them always on the same date of the month, roughly at the same time. And I always take photos (with date/time stamp) which I keep in order to back up my readings - which are anyway correct and up to date.

If I had a smart meter I would not want it to send reading every 30 minutes. I read one can ask for this to be done, basically send usage once a day (fine by me) . As per my own situation I would consider it as an insult if Eon next or the Government, would send me messages how not to waste electricity and gas. I am very savvy, and extremely tight, hence I take great care in switching off lights or not to putting on the heating needlessly.

Also I am honest and I would have NO interest whatsoever in sending wrong reading to Eonnext. More than gladly I pay for what I am consuming.

Given my situation, I could send daily readings to Eon, just like a smart meter, but I consider that to be a stupid thing to be done.

I recognise that this is a case for me. Majority of the people have other and perhaps better things to do than thinking about the readings: many have only estimated bills. Lots have little children and families, other have meters in awkward places or other people are too old. In their cases the smart meters are very useful, I agree.

So, in conclusion, I can say I track my energy very well.

Smart meters worry me not for the personal data but because they may malfunction Here is one of the many interesting link not so favourable to smart meters I found:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/co...ay-no-get-one/

And finally I would be very interested to know the following: say I have a smart meter installed and it does malfunction and my bill gets into tens of thousand of £. What would Eon next do: freeze the bill and investigate or just simply send me the bailiffs to get their money (as if I have tens of thousand in the bank AND even if I had, I would NOT paying what is would be an appaling and obvious - to me at least! - mistake). Please remember I am only putting forward an hypothetical situation but if some army general is allowed to think about an hypothetical scenario of a war with Russia, while am I not allowed to think a smart meter can go wrong?


Ps: Just read the thread of Joe soap and followed his link: (https://community.eonnext.com/thread...ll=1#post37193) found it very scaring. I would be out of myself if anything like this would happen to me. Sorry, I could not mentally cope.

You might be interested there is a documentary on Channel 5 Wednesday 31st of January at 8:00pm,
"Smart Meters: Should You Get One?" .

[JoeSoap]

Originally Posted by Michaela90

... Ps: Just read the thread of Joe soap and followed his link: (https://community.eonnext.com/thread...ll=1#post37193) found it very scaring. I would be out of myself if anything like this would happen to me. Sorry, I could not mentally cope.

Hopefully I can put your mind at ease a bit by saying that at no point have I found anything scary about my smart meters, even during the problems I had that you linked to. All types of meters can have issues and with smart meters generally the worst that happens over and above what can happen to traditional meters is that they lose their smartness and revert to being non-smart. It's a nuisance more than anything.

I still like my smart meters and have them set to half-hourly as I like the benefits of being able to monitor my usage through the Bright app and I also like to participate in the energy shift events. Thankfully, as it is, we have a choice in the matter and can choose what we're comfortable with.