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Smart Meters- Unsurprising?


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38 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

Nothing (or at least not much) : There still has to be an inspection at least every 2 years (safety and integrity of anti tamper seals).  In practice my meter now is read only about every 2 years anyway (I submit readings monthly).

Smart Gas meters also need a battery - which has a life of 'several years', but there seem to be quite a lot of cases of early life battery failure.

By your reasoning the post office undoutedly made/saved nothing (or at least not much) by reducing post box collections from several times a day....to once a day, and deliveries from two/three times a day.... to once a day, either?....... And strangely, I never seem to get any post on a Thursday anymore!?

The same as mars bars are now 2/3 the size/weight they once were......and are more expensive!.........No profit there either!

We are constantly getting charged more for less...........that's how you satisfy your shareholders and how the rich get richer!

Edited by panoma1
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3 minutes ago, panoma1 said:

By your reasoning the post office undoutedly made/saved nothing ......

Stamps didn't reduce in price either. 

There will be some reduced visiting for meter reading (strict) - but it won't be as much as people seem to think, and with the meters being MUCH more complex, and needing battery back up etc., I suspect meter life will be lower, needing more meters replaced under maintenance.  The cost of the new meters is higher compared to the old type.  My guess is that there will be little real saving, just as I suspect there will be little or no real saving on usage for consumers.  In fact, the whole exercise is a scam.

If people really want to save energy/carbon/the planet, there are a few SIMPLE steps that make a REAL difference to carbon usage.

  • Keep the heating turned down in winter and wear better insulating clothes
  • Travel less - and when you do travel, use a very economical car (a supermini used much less carbon than a mid sized family car, let alone a 4 x 4, or luxury car)
  • Travel out of hours - sitting in queues wastes fuel and is very polluting
  • Give up flying - flying is the biggest 'avoidable' use of carbon/fuel resources
  • Make cars, appliances all last longer.  Many use more carbon 'in the making of' than they use in fuel in their lifetimes
  • only run appliances like washing machines and dishwashers when full - they use as much carbon (and water) whether full or washing one item.
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I've just posted about this on another forum.

As soon as we all are forced into electric cars, and they cant Tax us at the pumps.

The Smart Meters will know when we are charging our car up and then we can be Taxed.

We wont be able to travel for free or on the cheap, they need our Road Tax. Sorry our Tax.

They have to be in control of our electricity if we all have electric cars. Think about it ?

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We had a smart meter installed as it was part of the 'cheaper' tariff offered (i think it was a discount of £5 a month or so)

The meter itself is useless, doesn't really show you anything and isn't user friendly - you can buy a replacement brand new for £2 so that must tell you something!! the installer said most people end up binning them after a few weeks and just using the app (i do hear the meter from British gas is meant to be the best?)

You can still read the meter as normal in the box, the only difference it its now from 0000 due to a new meter and it saves me having to open it up and submit a reading every month.

I must admit i have used it to trial a few ways of trying to save gas (because as said electricity remains fairly constant) but so far it has only yielded minor savings (in the pennies) 

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2 minutes ago, ph5172 said:

I must admit i have used it to trial a few ways of trying to save gas (because as said electricity remains fairly constant) but so far it has only yielded minor savings (in the pennies)

Having gone this route (pre smart meter era) manually, I can offer a few possible 'tips'.

  • You will struggle to make much saving in the summer as gas usage is (should be) very low anyway.
  • If you have a condensing boiler, running it with the return water below (as far as possible below) 55 degrees Celsius will enable it to operate in condensing mode and will make a smallish saving.  Ideally difference between flow pipe and return pipe (steady state conditions) should be about 20 Celsius, and so a flow of 70 ish and a return of 50 ish is good, flow of 85 ish with return of (say) 60 will not be good for gas saving.  Flow 60, return 40 is better still.
  • Ultimately the best savings will be by keeping the house a little cooler, and making sure you only heat when needed (sounds obvious, but amazing how many people have it on late in the evening, whereas you can usually turn it off at least an hour before bed).
  • The idea that leaving it on low all the time will be cheaper is a fallacy.  In winter buildings loose heat - the amount of loss based on the difference between inside and outside temperature, so warmer inside = more loss.
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24 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:
  • Ultimately the best savings will be by keeping the house a little cooler, and making sure you only heat when needed (sounds obvious, but amazing how many people have it on late in the evening, whereas you can usually turn it off at least an hour before bed).
  • The idea that leaving it on low all the time will be cheaper is a fallacy.  In winter buildings loose heat - the amount of loss based on the difference between inside and outside temperature, so warmer inside = more loss.

John

Whilst I agree in principal with these comments I would make the following points.

Fit time zone thermostats which allow flexibility in temperature at different times of day  without the need for adjustment.  ie lower temps when active higher when sedentary.

Whilst your second point is correct it is less advisable to let areas drop below dew point (12/13 deg) as condensation starts to form which can take more heat to remove, on top of warm up, as well as causing fabric damage.

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43 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

Having gone this route (pre smart meter era) manually, I can offer a few possible 'tips'.

  • You will struggle to make much saving in the summer as gas usage is (should be) very low anyway.
  • If you have a condensing boiler, running it with the return water below (as far as possible below) 55 degrees Celsius will enable it to operate in condensing mode and will make a smallish saving.  Ideally difference between flow pipe and return pipe (steady state conditions) should be about 20 Celsius, and so a flow of 70 ish and a return of 50 ish is good, flow of 85 ish with return of (say) 60 will not be good for gas saving.  Flow 60, return 40 is better still.
  • Ultimately the best savings will be by keeping the house a little cooler, and making sure you only heat when needed (sounds obvious, but amazing how many people have it on late in the evening, whereas you can usually turn it off at least an hour before bed).
  • The idea that leaving it on low all the time will be cheaper is a fallacy.  In winter buildings loose heat - the amount of loss based on the difference between inside and outside temperature, so warmer inside = more loss.

Thanks for the info.

We have a thermal store so unless we set it on timer (the heating is currently set to off) it uses gas to keep the store at a set temperature as it uses some trickery to heat the water via a coil inside the store (the water in the store is sealed in and only travels via the radiators back to the store (if heating is on) 

Probably a perfect setup if we connected it to solar

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10 minutes ago, ph5172 said:

We have a thermal store so unless we set it on timer

OK. my knowledge is thin on them!  A friend has one used with an log burning boiler.

22 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

John

Whilst I agree in principal with these comments I would make the following points.

Fit time zone thermostats which allow flexibility in temperature at different times of day  without the need for adjustment.  ie lower temps when active higher when sedentary.

Whilst your second point is correct it is less advisable to let areas drop below dew point (12/13 deg) as condensation starts to form which can take more heat to remove, on top of warm up, as well as causing fabric damage.

Don't disagree with any of that.  I in fact have 4 heating zones + 1 water 'zone' here, different timers and thermostats on each

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10 minutes ago, bruno22rf said:

If Energy companies are really interested in saving us all money why not supply LED light bulbs instead of pointless meters?

British Gas did that a few years ago. I couldn’t stop them sending me energy saving light bulbs. 

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20 hours ago, mickyh said:

I've just posted about this on another forum.

As soon as we all are forced into electric cars, and they cant Tax us at the pumps.

The Smart Meters will know when we are charging our car up and then we can be Taxed.

We wont be able to travel for free or on the cheap, they need our Road Tax. Sorry our Tax.

They have to be in control of our electricity if we all have electric cars. Think about it ?

Found this on the BBC today 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44923014

 

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As part of the smart grid trials we thought we could use ev batteries to feed back to the grid at peak. That was until some manufacturers decided to lease the battery and also restrict the number of cycles the battery could be put through. Add range anxiety and many owners once the car is charged did not want to risk the car being flat should they want to use it. Even if they were paid 10 times for the power they in the battery many were not persuaded. 

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On 21/07/2018 at 15:14, JohnfromUK said:

Nothing (or at least not much) : There still has to be an inspection at least every 2 years (safety and integrity of anti tamper seals).  In practice my meter now is read only about every 2 years anyway (I submit readings monthly).

Smart Gas meters also need a battery - which has a life of 'several years', but there seem to be quite a lot of cases of early life battery failure.

Only had one reader come in last six years.

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