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Smart Meters for Gas / Electricity - Would you have one installed today?

Jason Wong
Just wondering what the state of smart meters are at the moment. Thinking of mainly the UK market in this regard. The utilities companies are offering to install these in to customer's homes. Would you have have one installed in your home?


Anybody got one installed? Good or bad experience with them?


The one advantage of them is that you don't need to let anybody in to your home to do meter readings (assuming your meters are currently inside the property).

  • 0
    In the UK, it's a complete shambles.  I have repeatedly refused a "smart" electricity meter.  I haven't been offered a smart gas meter, as it wouldn't work anyway.


    The suppliers are still rolling out SMETS-1 meters, which are already obsolete and have many flaws.  The meters are not compatible across suppliers, so if you change suppliers, the smart meter stops working, and you have to go back to reading it manually. The gas meters are battery operated, and don't have enough power to communicate with the supplier.  This means that they have to communicate through the electricity meter instead.  So if you have different gas and electricity suppliers, then it won't work.


    The security features on the SMETS-1 meters are not up to the latest standards.  Bear in mind that one feature of these meters is that they have a remote shut-off feature, so they can disconnect your supply if you don't pay your bills.


    Personally, I have rejected the first-generation smart electricity meters as they are of no use to anyone with a micro-generation system, such as solar panels.  I would like to be paid the correct amount for the electricity I generate, rather than an estimate as at present.  However on the meter I have been offered, this feature has not been tested or calibrated, making it totally useless.
  • 0
    One big issue for me, which they say they will fix, is that the meters are not to a universal standard which means that if an energy supplier fits a smart meter at the present time, there is no guarantee that you will be able to switch energy supplier in the future. There is no guarantee of compatibility across the sector. This is disgraceful in an industry that claims that people should always look at switchig to keep their costs competitive. How did that happen?
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    Ian MacDiarmid:

    One big issue for me, which they say they will fix, is that the meters are not to a universal standard which means that if an energy supplier fits a smart meter at the present time, there is no guarantee that you will be able to switch energy supplier in the future. There is no guarantee of compatibility across the sector. This is disgraceful in an industry that claims that people should always look at switchig to keep their costs competitive. How did that happen?



    It happened because the energy suppliers were told they had to roll out smart meters to most households by 2020.  The only way that they could do that was to grab whatever meters they could lay their hands on, and start persuading customers to take them.  The only meters available were to SMETS-1 standard, which is a general wish-list of features, with no thought to compatibility between meter manufacturers.  If they had waited until SMETS-2 was finalised, and the manufacturers had started manufacturing meters to that standard, then they would have no chance of meeting the target.


    You can still switch suppliers.  But your smart meter will become a dumb meter again.  Your energy monitoring gadget may stop working, and you'll have to work out what magic combination of button presses on the meter displays the correct reading you need to give every quarter to the new supplier.

    https://www.smartenergygb.org/en/smart-future/about-the-rollout

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