New electric connection - is a smart meter mandatory?

[nst68]

Whilst I appreciate it's clearly not a nice thing to have had happen, it is a bit scaremongerish.

Personally I have plenty of devices switched on either overnight or whilst I have left the house without worry. Could my phone charger explode and catch fire whilst I'm sleeping? - absolutely, is the risk worth worrying about? - no.

Fair enough YMMV, but charging your phone at night is normally done overnight and the chances are the phones in the same room as you, so you'd be alerted quickly.
A dishwasher in a different room (with maybe the door closed) is not the same, why take the risk to save a few pennies (yes I know it adds up).

Looks horrific and is not something anyone would want to discover any time of the day or night. Did your fire alarms alert you? Or did you discover it before it got to that stage? Looking at the half hourly tariff, setting it to start at 8pm looks like a good compromise.

It was the dog that alerted us!
The smoke and CO alarms started to go off a minute or so later, the CO alarm kept going off even once the fire brigage had put the fire out, I had to stamp on it to get it stop.

Did you find out the cause of the fire? (switching it on at night isn't a cause). Either the socket is overloaded, not enough ventilation at the back of the appliance - think these are usually the two main causes.

It looked like the fire started at the front of the machine where the electronics are, that's where the flames were, I know this might have been because that's where they could escape from.
The fire brigage asked what make it was, it was a Hotpoint, they didn't seem surprised.

In 2014 we got a letter from Hotpoint saying there was risk our dishwasher could catch fire due to an electircal fault https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jul/03/hotpoint-indesit-dishwashers-recalled
They got a suitably terse response of you're 4 years too late.

and it's still happening https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51298725

 

[stuman]

Got an example of pricing over the weekend? As that's where i guess i can see things becoming more expensive as more people are at home during weekends.

How does Octopus work with gas? or are they only an electric supplier?



Did you find out the cause of the fire? (switching it on at night isn't a cause). Either the socket is overloaded, not enough ventilation at the back of the appliance - think these are usually the two main causes.

You would think that’s how it would work, but it’s not really, it’s more dependant on the weather. Most electricity usage is used for showers and cooking so you see a small peak in the morning, then in the evening the massive jump. People don’t change those habits easily! I’ll post the numbers through this weekend so you can have a look.

last night was pretty cheap, had dishwasher, washing machine and hot water tank all run, cost 4.2p/kWh.

I think they can supply gas, but as gas is tanked and stored in the pipes the price does not fluctuate. You’d have to have a look at how it compares price wise to others and then decide if it’s worth the work of managing 2 separate suppliers.

https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-yorkshire/

this is quite a useful stats page that can show last years figures etc.

 

[Haggisman]

Got an example of pricing over the weekend? As that's where i guess i can see things becoming more expensive as more people are at home during weekends.

A couple of times at the start of lockdown, they were actually paying people for usage on Sundays. Needless to say the car got charged, I had a nice long shower, and set the PCs to do some folding

 

[BigBoy]

Edit 2: Removed personal information.

You're rows on a database, nobody has to care about you to find you in a select query.
The times and dates of energy usage, when they inevitably get stolen and uploaded to a tor site, will be a burglars wet dream.
Optimal times to rob your house, feel free to love it, that's your choice.

The energy company will benefit from your and others data for predictive analysis.
How good is their security, will they share that data to others in the same shell corporation?
Do they truly comply with privacy by design or use your data in dev and OAT environments?
Will foreign contractors see your unobfuscated records in test data, is the data stored in the UK?

I'm a professional in this field and ignorance is bliss.

If your an expert in this field you would know they data centre (called the DCC) has no customer data other than a 160 digit property identifier and the meter reading, customer data is held only by the supplier whom you have given permission to hold your data.

You are right. Although I get that people don't like the power companies looking at their data, the truth is that the data really is extremely useful for them. They can monitor your power use on an hourly basis ( mine do ) and with that they can accurately forecast demand which in turn allows the correct generation and distribution of energy at any time of the day. It doesn't really do you any direct good but it really helps the energy companies, which in the long run does help you and the planet.

In the long term it may help them introduce flexible hourly based tariffs but personally I don't care about that. If there is a way to save money I would take it!

Usage data and statistics are massively useful for suppliers who are generators, and very few are.

I was going to ask my new energy provider, Green Energy, if they could replace my SMETS1 smart meter with a SMETS2 meter. But I recently read about SMETS3, so I thought why put in another meter which will probably need replacing with yet another in however many years time?

I'm happy enough taking monthly readings manually from my meter. The IHD helps with electric readings, but gas readings can sometimes be out by one unit due to the varying calorific value throughout the year.

My advice would be to wait for SMETS3 now. What do you have to gain or even lose?

No they wont change your SMETS1 meter for a SMETS2 as its not up to your supplier the DCC and the Meter Owner (again not your supplier) will only request a change if there was an issue.

I am a major projects engineer for one of the big 6 suppliers and am very well versed in how it all works and what the processes are. If you have any questions please ask I will be more than happy to give you the information you seek.

@ivandrago it depends on your supplier, and who they use to install the meter, only three of the big 6 have their own engineers the rest use contractors. As for what meter, my employer will only install smart meters for new supplies. Why do you not want something that you have no need to interact with? something that means you dont have to fight your way through cobwebs to see a small screen with 5 numbers on it? Something that can (and its been proven) help you understand your usage better and enable you to actually save money!

 

[theone8181]

As you don't want one, are they actually fitting them in you area. I'm with edf and I've got an old smets 1 meter that I'd like changing as I can to keep reading numbers. They aren't doing my area though, but don't know if that's a covid thing or not.

 

[BigBoy]

As you don't want one, are they actually fitting them in you area. I'm with edf and I've got an old smets 1 meter that I'd like changing as I can to keep reading numbers. They aren't doing my area though, but don't know if that's a covid thing or not.

See my post above you, they will not change a smets1 meter that is functional, some have upgraded firmware that makes them smets2.

 

[darael]

No they wont change your SMETS1 meter for a SMETS2 as its not up to your supplier the DCC and the Meter Owner (again not your supplier) will only request a change if there was an issue.

I am a major projects engineer for one of the big 6 suppliers and am very well versed in how it all works and what the processes are. If you have any questions please ask I will be more than happy to give you the information you seek.

That's a shame, but I'm in no big rush to be honest. I'll just sit tight for SMETS3 - what will SMETS3 bring to us and why is it being released so soon?

 

[ahar]

@BigBoy Good info, thanks. I worked on Smartmeters at the start when seconded to DECC, setting up the commerical model and procurement for the DCC and the comms supplier. I remember some ... bumpy.... meetings with the big suppliers in the early days!

One thing that was definitely on the cards in the long term for smart meters when first being planned was euphemistically called 'demand management'. Not sure where that got to in the meter specification in the end, but I expect that its still in the back of mind for the policy makers and long term planners at National Grid.

Interestingly I had a smart meter on my Gas, but it broke and was replaced with a dumb one as they didn't have the right smart one in stock! I now have a smart electric meter (which doesn't work as I switched supplier) and a dumb gas one. Oh well....

 

[BigBoy]

That's a shame, but I'm in no big rush to be honest. I'll just sit tight for SMETS3 - what will SMETS3 bring to us and why is it being released so soon?

SMETS3 Is way off looking at next winter before release to the public front it's more a hardware upgrade than anything an end user would notice.

@BigBoy Good info, thanks. I worked on Smartmeters at the start when seconded to DECC, setting up the commerical model and procurement for the DCC and the comms supplier. I remember some ... bumpy.... meetings with the big suppliers in the early days!

One thing that was definitely on the cards in the long term for smart meters when first being planned was euphemistically called 'demand management'. Not sure where that got to in the meter specification in the end, but I expect that its still in the back of mind for the policy makers and long term planners at National Grid.

Interestingly I had a smart meter on my Gas, but it broke and was replaced with a dumb one as they didn't have the right smart one in stock! I now have a smart electric meter (which doesn't work as I switched supplier) and a dumb gas one. Oh well....

Yes DCC's whole issue was the data handling that has been changed with SMETS2. SMETS1 Integration has been put on hold as each supplier holds the data and only if your meter supports upgrade to SMETS2 would it be added and only if it is with a Supplier that supports the protocols it's difficult to put into layman's terms how the older gen interact with new protocol.

 

[theone8181]

SMETS3 Is way off looking at next winter before release to the public front it's more a hardware upgrade than anything an end user would notice.



Yes DCC's whole issue was the data handling that has been changed with SMETS2. SMETS1 Integration has been put on hold as each supplier holds the data and only if your meter supports upgrade to SMETS2 would it be added and only if it is with a Supplier that supports the protocols it's difficult to put into layman's terms how the older gen interact with new protocol.

The whole smets thing has been a joke imo. I don't understand why nobody thought of compatibility to start with.

 

[flea.rider]

The whole smets thing has been a joke imo. I don't understand why nobody thought of compatibility to start with.

they prob did .. but then thought we could lock them in there not going to change if it wont work for the next company .. ?

 

[BigBoy]

The whole smets thing has been a joke imo. I don't understand why nobody thought of compatibility to start with.

Originally it was down to suppliers to do what they wanted, tbh we have had smart metering for nearly 30years for industry it's not a new thing.

Most suppliers just implemented existing tech for the consumer market. It's only because ofgem didn't set any rules or regulations around how to do thing that smets1 went the way it did. You have to remember all suppliers have different ways of doing things, the SMETs2 shake up has changed that in huge ways even Network Operators have had to come into line where as before they could do just about whatever they wanted!

 

[ahar]

The whole smets thing has been a joke imo. I don't understand why nobody thought of compatibility to start with.

The reason that smets1 was allowed to go ahead and not be compatible was the timelines that were originally assumed where much shorter to get smets2 in place and to complete the rollout (DCC in place, comms provider up and running etc). British Gas were already rolling out smart meters at the time so the plan was to get Smets2 in place as a standard I think within 2 years and have the full rollout done by 2019 I think.

Certainly the meetings I was in (2010 I think?) we knew that there would be some incompatible meters, but that shouldn't have been a problem due to the speed of rollout. Those rolling out the incompatible meters knew that they would be a sunk cost and replaced at some point, but the cost was worth it anyway for them. I don't think anyone assumed that we'd be in 2020 with so little completed.