I actually quite like them!
I requested a smart meter when I changed suppliers to SSE about 18 months ago.
It has encouraged me to reduce usage - when you get up in the morning and find you've already used 50p of gas & electricity, you wonder why, and start looking into it. (Well,
I did
)
For example, the TV setup has lots of things plugged in that all mainly sit in standby. Although standby in modern devices is much more efficient than it used to be, it still adds up. A few of these devices need to remain in standby (Youview box for TV recordings, for example) other things don't. So I split the devices into two multiway extension leads so there's one I can switch off when not in use, the other can sit in standby. This made a saving of overnight electricity usage.
(Yes, I could have done that anyway, but I was prompted to do it by realising how much electricity was being used overnight)
I also like that I can see graphs on the SSE website, showing electric and gas usage by the hour. Again, this means I can see if it's unexpectedly going up, or if a change I've made has affected things.
It's not been without problems.
The little display unit isn't very sensitive. Even sat on a shelf outside of the cupboard where the meters are, it sometimes complains of weak signal. "take the display around your house and try switching things on and off to see their usage" is not possible. I've currently got it on the desk next to me, it's telling me I'm using 297 watts of electricity and 3Kw of gas (central heating is on)*. It's also telling me there's a weak signal, yet I'm maybe 6 metres from the meters
Early on, it kept telling me there was a new tariff, of 0p per unit. I thought this was a promotional thing, but a few hours later it would be back to showing the correct tarriff. This happened intermittently for a few months.
Agree entirely with the points about the incompatibility between suppliers with the current smart meters though, it's a mess that should have been avoided.
Ian (miser)
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* Oops, left TV on! Switched off, it's now 244 watts of electricity.