National Grid Blackout Scheme

[Boro_Interlinked]

worked on the smart metering implementation project for 5 years for one of the big 6 and I didn't meet a single person in the company in that time that had any sort of smart metering resistance, and we worked with everyone from call centre through to management and metering operatives etc. customers were also pretty fine with them, it wasn't even a huge complaint category - offshore call centres scored worse in complaints metrics

Can you give us an indication then how an industry , knowing that UK customers were well into the new behaviour of switching providers to get a good deal for a year, managed to introduce a tech appliance that had an extremely high likelihood of failing to work once the customer did their first switch to a new provider? I just can't fathom that that industry had the gall to do that. Should have waited for smart 2 meters. Such a waste of money all round for everybody

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

Can you give us an indication then how an industry , knowing that UK customers were well into the new behaviour of switching providers to get a good deal for a year, managed to introduce a tech appliance that had an extremely high likelihood of failing to work once the customer did their first switch to a new provider? I just can't fathom that that industry had the gall to do that. Should have waited for smart 2 meters. Such a waste of money all round for everybody

The industry didn't have the gall to do that, they were made to get something out the door by targets the government gave them.

Smets1 meters have now largely been upgraded to smets2 remotely, the few that aren't shouldn't be getting swapped out

 

[Boro_Interlinked]

I'm going to start doing all my washing and cooking at peak times. Then my saving % will be more.

That's it. I'd be switching off the CH an hour or 2 before hand, then 5-7pm putting the tumble dryer on and and 2kW electric fan heater as well You've got to build up a profile of peak use at weekday peak times to make this worthwhile.

 

[Boro_Interlinked]

The industry didn't have the gall to do that, they were made to get something out the door by targets the government gave them.

Smets1 meters have now largely been upgraded to smets2 remotely, the few that aren't shouldn't be getting swapped out

Ok but the industry themselves had lobbyists who persistently lobbied successive Govs to bring this tech in and they eventually got their way in. We weren't the first. USA had quite a few years head start on us in bringing about the forced installation of smart meters. I remember youtube hopping back in the day and I'd never heard of smart meters and yet US homeowners were posting vids going apoplectic about them and the utility company 'spy' issue they posed.

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

Ok but the industry themselves had lobbyists who persistently lobbied successive Govs to bring this tech in and they eventually got their way in. We weren't the first. USA had quite a few years head start on us in bringing about the forced installation of smart meters. I remember youtube hopping back in the day and I'd never heard of smart meters and yet US homeowners were posting vids going apoplectic about them and the utility company 'spy' issue they posed.

Not surprised they did, old meters are fairly archaic - the idea you had people employed to go and read what dials said so someone can raise a bill, or send a metering op out because of an issue with the meter. Auto reads giving granular detail are a big improvement for customer and supplier - I see my energy use in half hourly increments using Home Assistant and I get value out of that.

People with issues can have them remotely diagnosed and sometimes fixed remotely, if they do need a metering operative appointment it still happens

Prepayment customer it's a paradigm shift. Sheen inadequate prepayment it was a nightmare having to go to the shop to top up, assuming they're open. Someone would always forget to say they had used emergency credit so we'd have to wait til morning to go get credit

Prepayment customers can now at uk auto top ups, credit alerts, top uk via mobile app, have credit added remotely by supplier etc. all very good stuff

3rd party access to consumer data will be good as well as will help with switching.

More people switch now than they used to. Even back in 2016, close to 70% of people sat on expensive standard rate tariffs. Switching is more common now and will be going forward.

The whole smets1 thing was all about government targets to get meters on walls with a view to updating them later, suppliers would have happily brought it all in later when it was ready, but the complication was the targets from government and the governing organisation, the DCC, ran by Capita, having to be up and running and ready to operate


We've had a smart meter for 5 years and it was a smets1 meter for 4 of them, we switched soon as we moved in - meter still worked, no hardship, still saw kWh usage via IHD and used that for meter reads, we just had to submit them, no worse off than we were with old meter and better off in some ways

 

[Steer]

I thought that domestic use of electricity only accounted for a about a quarter of all, with the rest / majority being industry and non-domestic? Am I wrong?
If I am not wrong, then what the hell is the point of all of this?

It's the same with water, when these is a drought we are told not to flush the toilet etc. but billions of litre per year are lost due to leaking pipes, which if they fixed properly would solve the problem.

 

[clay]

I've saved £16.50 so far, not including the two January sessions and a third coming up tonight. Better than a kick in the teeth, but to be honest if they'd done this without the financial incentive and just pitched it as doing your bit for the country and the environment then I think I might have joined in anyway. It also helps that I've been in the office for a couple of the sessions.

I must say, I'm amazed at some of the posts in this thread from people who genuinely believe they understand more about electricity demand issues than the energy companies themselves. It's starting to read like a load of Facebook mums complaining about the covid vaccines.