Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 27 replies
  • Subscribers 32 subscribers
  • Views 3843 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Smart meter diatribe

Legh Richardson
What does the panel think about this?

Smart meter scam?


I'm interested in a professional qualified view as this character is pretty ruthless regarding the energy suppliers


Legh
  • 0

    Quelle arnaque !



    Apart from seemingly not really understanding VA and power factor, I think what he's really trying to say is that the smart meter is enforcing the limit at something like 39.1A (which more closely matches the agreed limit) rather than the 45A the old circuit breaker supposedly tripped at - i.e. he's lost a bit of unofficial leeway.


    One interesting comment was that French smart meters use power line communications rather than radio.


      - Andy.
  • 0
    Legh, I thought that I had posed a simple question. I lack recent direct experience of Electrical supply work in either France or the USA, or the time to critique these. Especially as Aliens have just landed outside as I write and being denied the right to bear arms, I'm going to have to rush out and fight them off with a Garden Fork. ?
  • 0
    Ok, lets load the cannon up with some more grape shot

    Here's a couple of examples of customer frustrations dealing with slightly different concerns regarding smart meters

    The first is from that well known electrical supply company in the mid west USA....you may say what's American smart meters got to do with the UK well it is still the control and flow of electrical current, albeit at 60Hz and at a transmission voltage of somewhere between 580 and 660KV

    Long winded discussion between a couple of mid west chaps


    Moving on and closer to home this one deals with the roll out of smart meters in France and maximum demand in domestic properties

    Quelle arnaque !

    ,

    I'd be interested in your views and why there is so much denial about the smart meter issue.


    Legh
  • 0

    Andrew Jewsbury:

    Oh dear. Where to start?


    "Biggest swindle ever perpetrated on the general public" -

       - Andy.




    Nice try but global warming wins hands down when it comes to the biggest swindle on the general public.lol

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Isn't the biggest problem with Smart Meters is that they don't tell you it's paid for through an increased standing charge?

  • 0
    My supplier recently asked to fit a Smart Meter and I said - no thank you. 


    I just couldn’t see how this would offer any benefit to me at this time, given the inconvenience of installation and the increased risk of some problem or other. I hope that I wasn’t swayed by any hype , since my earlier career was spent in the electrical power industry, including being intimate with the transition from electromechnical induction protective relays to solid state (e.g. P&B Golds). I also impulse purchased a few years ago in the supermarket an “OWL” which via a small clip-on CT, fed a display of power used etc.  I thought that it might interest my other half, but she thought that I was just trying to “penny pinch” and that the display didn’t match the ornaments, so at the first opportunity it was banished from sight.

    Did I make the wrong call to decline the smart meter?          

  • 0
    Lol,......well I'm sure nobody within the supply companies would want that fact to be advertised, If SMETS 2 were made obligatory under some government dictate to roll out a digital future then we would never know the truth, perhaps similar to that of building houses under 400kV power lines, radiation from mobile phone masts; getting the manufacturers to own up to the health risks associated with smoking or even the historical argument between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla .

    Actually, I'm not an advocate of conspiracy but when a lobbying group such as WHICH takes up the cause then you ask yourself what's going on here?


    Legh

  • 0

    Why should insurance companies be concerned one wonders and possibily implies that we have a new digital asbestos in the wings !



    The moment the 'no win no fee' claim companies realised that the suppliers have taken out insurance, there would be adverts all over the press and daytime TV.  "Had a new smart meter fitted?  Feeling unwell?  You could have a claim!".  At any given time, there will be many hundreds of thousands of people across the country feeling poorly for some reason or another.  if only a small proportion of them can be convinced that the smart meter did it, then there could be thousands of insurance claims put in.


    PPI claims are coming to an end soon.  The ambulance chasers need something new to move into.
  • 0

    Simon Barker:




    Legh Richardson:

    [...]

    I wonder why insurance companies do not offer cover when requests from prospective clients cite health reasons as their objection to the installation of smart meters? 

    [...]

     



    But who would pay for that insurance?


    The customers won't want to.  Why would you want to pay for insurance for something that somebody else wants to do?  It costs nothing to just refuse the meter.


    The electricity suppliers and meter manufacturers won't want to.  They will argue that the meters meet all regulatory safety requirements.  Taking out insurance is just inviting anyone who feels poorly after a smart meter is installed to put in a claim for lots of money.
     


     




    Lol,.... This chap may well be spinning a yarn, as well as previous concerns by WHICH. That's why I'm interested.

    He stated that Insurance companies were unable to offer indemnity to the large energy suppliers where customers refused to have smart meters fitted on the grounds of ill health. Presumably, this assumes that a refusal under health ground and where it may well become obligatory to have smart meters fitted in the future would penalize the insurance companies were it to be shown that the 'digital noise' eminateing from the smart meters screwed up vulnerable peoples health.


    Why should insurance companies be concerned one wonders and possibily implies that we have a new digital asbestos in the wings !


    Legh

  • 0

    Andrew Jewsbury:




    Now, I do think that data mining is a real possibility that would benefit the larger suppliers. We know it happens in many other areas digitally, Cambridge Analytica for one, so why not sophisticated software able to decipher the blips of electronic noise generated from the many examples of 'IOT' ?





    Presumably someone would have to hack the smart meter itself and replace its software to get access to the 'raw noise' - otherwise pretty much the only interesting data available would be the kWh totals for each half-hour for the last 13 months.


      - Andy.

     




    Well, I would imagine that Its not difficult to develop software to listern into the 'starts and stops' and design  We really don't know how secure this stuff is and be assured that nobody would let on it it was a load of old crock.


    Legh

Community Rules & Guidelines