A friend recently lost domestic heating, with a fault code showing on the boiler. The repair person visited, and found that the gas supply itself was the issue. The smart meter had shut down, because it depends on an internal battery. The solution requires the energy provider to schedule a complete replacement of the meter.
That would seem reasonable enough, if the devices can achieve the hoped-for ten-year lifetime from their cells, although awkward and wasteful. However, this is the third such meter my friend has had fitted in three years. I imagine this is not an isolated case. That’s a lot of potential WEEE waste.
There would seem to be some obvious design flaws here that could be addressed: A domestic remote energy monitor could warn the consumer of an impending meter battery-low condition. The battery – presumably a 10-year small lithium cell – could be made user-replaceable, ideally of a universal type. An option...