Water meters - how does the business case work? Water company gets less income as your bill is lower yet pays out more for the capital cost of a new meter and fitting.  Why would any business do that unless there was an upside to them?  OK so I might "use" a bit less (actually i send almost all of what I "use" back to them) but not significantly for their investment decisions.

Not yet but see "water meter" fitting history

Water meters - how does the business case work?

Partly as demand increases (as the population increases) it gets increasingly expensive to provide the extra water. They can supply what they do now from the existing reservoirs etc. at a given cost, but building new infrastructure is very expensive and would raise the per unit cost for everyone. Cheaper to persuade existing customers to use less, leaving spare capacity for new customers, while avoiding the need to drown any more valleys. Overall income still increases.

  - Andy.

If the DNO/DSO/MO pester you to have a smart meter fitted you should insist on a double pole isolator be fitted to comply with the EAWR1989 at there cost.

Worth mentioning when you think your main cutout/service fuse was last replaced.

Check out section 12 B

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1989/635/regulation/12/made

you should insist on a double pole isolator be fitted to comply with the EAWR1989 at there cost.

You can try, but I suspect the answer will be what it's always been - safe isolation can be achieved by getting an authorized person to withdraw the cut-out fuse. Arguably the situation isn't that different from some large sites when a means of isolation might be in a locked switch room.

Personally I'm all in favour of the suppliers terminating their equipment with isolatable and accessible (not sealed) terminals - not only would be it be far more convenient and efficient from the customer's electrician's point of view, it probably makes overall economic/environmental sense too - it doesn't take very many trips for a bloke in a diesel powered DNO van to justify a £15 isolator. The bean counters only work inside their own little silos and don't see it that way unfortunately.

For the moment I think the best we can do is install an isolator ourselves at the first convenient opportunity and get the DNO/supplier out just the once to connect it in.

   - Andy.

It's a shame that more people from DNO/DSO/MO are not on this forum and entering into these engineering forum debates to make the systems better for all involved.  I am sure that this will only get worse as the Part P qualified or even those who are not qualified start to enter into the management structure for these large companies and start to make the decissions we have to obide by.  . 

It might be better if more the management actually had any idea what they were managing, I'm not sure that part P comes anywhere near it. There are some superb technical people working in the DNOs, but they are often hard for the customer's sparks to reach, and in some cases when you get to talk to them privately there seems to be a feeling  of  'lions led by donkeys' when it comes to company policy.
Those who put boots on and go out and look at stuff know what needs doing, in terms of isolators, fuse policy, street cable upgrades etc but often the bean counters have the upper hand. It is not helped by the way that the money flow from customer to DNO is interrupted by the metering company, who collect the bills but have no interest in charging enough to support long term network maintenance. Yes it drives the price on the day down, but rather like the private water companies, it comes at a cost.

Mike.