I have so far refused to accept one and so far, been successful. But I fear that when an old ‘dumb’ meter reaches end of life, they may well be entitled to replace it with a smart one, your only option being to do without the gas or electric supply. :(
I will flatley refuse to have any meter with smart capability enable or not.
You have to be a bit careful here - they are entitled to replace the meter (it doesn't belong to you) but they can't insist that its replacement is a smart meter.
You have to be a bit careful here - they are entitled to replace the meter (it doesn't belong to you) but they can't insist that its replacement is a smart meter.Pretty much this, with a slight twist. You have absolutely no right to refuse them to change the meter. It belongs to the supplier. Suppliers have targets to change meters and they may terminate your supply if you refuse a meter change.
You also can't refuse a smart meter. You can however insist the smart meter that they install is turned into a "dumb" meter
Which have a pretty good article on this.
https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/do-i-have-to-accept-a-smart-meter
they will probably offer to install a 'dumb' meter or set up a smart meter to work in 'dumb' mode
My wife will always do as she always has and use things as she wants. Since having a water meter we have had the water company asking why we use more water than a four person household (there are only two of us) and I explained they should ask my wife who would be very short with them.
One of the problems with metering is that you discourage yourself from using it. I remember the kids coming home from playdates with their friends saying the granny had told them not to flush the loo. ???
If they somehow angle a way of having them fitted I'll have to move to another supplier, Bulb for example who don't yet use them.Bulb's current plan is to roll out 2nd gen meters from mid 2018.
b*cat is still waiting for his un-metered electricity supply. :-\ISTR we were promised the paperless office too! :no:
b*cat remembers from the time when HM QE2 opened Calder Hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Calder_Hall_nuclear_power_station). :)
A politician of the day said: "Electricity production . . . It will be so cheap it won't be worth metering!" ::)
b*cat is still waiting for his un-metered electricity supply. :-\
It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter ....
Artificial-leaf technology converts carbon dioxide to fuels and more
...
Recently, one group has demonstrated that it is possible to combine water splitting and CO2 conversion into fuels in one system with high efficiency. In a June 2016 issue of Science, Daniel G. Nocera and Pamela A. Silver, both at Harvard University, and their colleagues reported on an approach to making liquid fuel (specifically fusel alcohols) that far exceeds a natural leaf’s conversion of carbon dioxide to carbohydrates. A plant uses just 1 percent of the energy it receives from the sun to make glucose, whereas the artificial system achieved roughly 10 percent efficiency in converting carbon dioxide to fuel, the equivalent of pulling 180 grams of carbon dioxide from the air per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated.
The investigators paired inorganic, solar water-splitting technology (designed to use only biocompatible materials and to avoid creating toxic compounds) with microbes specially engineered to produce fuel, all in a single container. Remarkably, these metabolically engineered bacteria generated a wide variety of fuels and other chemical products even at low CO2 concentrations. The approach is ready for scaling up to the extent that the catalysts already contain cheap, readily obtainable metals. But investigators still need to greatly increase fuel production. Nocera says the team is working on prototyping the technology and is in partnership discussions with several companies.
Nocera has an even bigger vision for the basic technology. Beyond producing hydrogen and carbon-rich fuels in a sustainable way, he has demonstrated that equipping the system with a different metabolically altered bacterium can produce nitrogen-based fertilizer right in the soil, an approach that would increase crops yields in areas where conventional fertilizers are not readily available. The bacterium uses the hydrogen and CO2 to form a biological plastic that serves as a fuel supply. Once the microbe contains enough plastic, it no longer needs sunshine, so it can be buried in the soil. After drawing nitrogen from the air, it exploits the energy and hydrogen in the plastic to make the fertilizer. Radishes grown in soil containing the microbes ended up weighing 150 percent more than control radishes.
Nocera admits that he initially ran the fertilizer test just to see if the idea would work. He envisions a time, however, when bacteria will “breathe in hydrogen” produced by water splitting and ultimately use the hydrogen to produce desired products ranging from fuels to fertilizers, plastics and drugs, depending on the specific metabolic alterations designed for the bugs.
...
Full article ... (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/liquid-fuels-from-sunshine/)
I was going to re-emphasise the option of a home energy monitor, as mentioned earlier in thread, and as championed by Which as a safer alternative to a smart meter. In fact, I was thinking of buying one...
https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/energy-monitors/article/energy-monitors-explained
But after a few hours research, I’m not so sure. All they may be measuring is current flow, which leads to two sources of huge inaccuracies...
1) They don’t seem to measure voltage, probably just assume it to be 230V. Amazon reviews on one that I looked at seem to confirm this, suggesting you have to specify your own voltage manually, despite the fact it can vary from hour to hour.
2) If they don’t monitor voltage then I don’t see how they can allow for varying phase angles. AC Power consumption (for which you are billed) can be less than the product of current and voltage, if the two are not in phase.
Anybody know better? Are these monitors really any use?
Old thread I know, but I keep refusing a smart meter.
Some reasons:
I want one that allows switching while maintaining being smart.
It's hard to get metering wrong with an electromechanical meter.
I'm hesitant to have a smart meter.
It's hard to get metering wrong with an electromechanical meter. Multiple smart meters have been found to incorrectly overread or underread with high levels of harmonic distortion.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/millions-of-smart-meters-may-over-inflate-readings-by-up-to-600-percent/
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7866234/
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7339771/
Interesting reading, but I suspect these publications are confusing digital meters with smart meters. I for example have a digital electricity meter. It is read by a man that knocks on the door several times a year, in between visits I get estimates and/or supply my own readings. It contains no communications components, it is just a dumb meter, albeit one that is entirely electronic and has an lcd display.
The term “Smart meter” is generally used to refer to a meter that communicates its readings directly with the supplier, and allows the supplier to do other things that are useful to them, such as remotely disconnect or recconect the individual supply to your home.
It is fair to assume that all smart meters will be based on modern digital instruments, but not all such instruments are “smart”.
Whilst you can refuse a smart meter, I doubt whether you’d be able to refuse one that is digital, as long as it is “dumb”.That's right - once the current one is outside of its certification period or if it is shown to be inaccurate you can be required to allow it to be replaced.
Customers have financed the smart meter programme by paying a levy on their energy bills, while suppliers have frequently blamed the levy for rising costs.
However the report claimed most of the eventual savings would be made by energy firms, rather than consumers.
Here's a rather worrying take on smart meters
http://www.nickhunn.com/how-to-hack-a-smart-meter-and-kill-the-grid/
The remote OFF switch has always been one of my own biggest worries, re smart meters.