Smart Meters letter from Scottish Power...

[Terryl]

I had a problem here in the states with them installing a so called "Smart" meter at my location, the only problem they had was trying to read it remotely, they still had to run a truck out to the gate to even get a reading, but it saved me from having to go down and open the gate to let the old meter read in to read the old one.

I did not notice any RFI from the new meter, but I did warn them that at sometimes I may be transmitting at or around 2 KW or RF power, it may affect their meter, I still haven been able to blow it off the wall yet.

Here the electrical utility company owns all equipment right down to the meter in the electrical panel, if there is a problem anywhere from the meter out to the pole they have to fix it at no charge to me.

One good thing I found out was that I could look at my daily, weekly, monthly and yearly electrical usage on line, this is a good thing as it can tell my if I left the lights on down in the shop.

If your worried about any spying or interference then just wrap the meter with aluminum foil or window screen and ground it.

I had originally budgeted for an "Off Grid" solar system, but I didn't like the idea of having to pork out for a new set of battery's every ten years of so, that would have been 10 to 20 K$ every set, so it didn't pan out.

I have replaced all incandescent bulbs with LED, that knocked the electric bill in half.


I'm now rambling on as I have had too much coffee, I will shut up and go back to browsing.

 

[jeallen01]

We have had British Gas smart meters installed in June 2016 after I got a letter or email from them saying that they wanted to do that. The installation was fairly painless, and it's been handy being able to monitor the daily gas/electricity usage in "£s" terms and, a couple of weeks ago when I started to consider whether to switch suppliers (still deciding) next week, and decided to check out exactly what my annual consumption is likely to be, I was able to get the system to retrieve the current meter readings (which proved to match the actual numbers on the meters themselves!), and that then gave (presumably!) an accurate overall to-date cost figures, and then I was able to estimate the final 12 month total energy cost by extrapolation.

Luckily that proved to be pretty much spot on what I had estimated that it should be in Feb last year when I switched from SP to BG. Unfortunately, if I switch again then I may well lose the smart metering capability until the new company can get remote access to those BG meters - even if that proves to be Sainsburys with their systems and call centres provided and run by BG (or so the lady from Sainsburys Energy told me last week!). If that is the case then I will have to go back to providing 3-monthly on-line readings to "Sainburys" from those BG meters (just like I used to do when with SP).

In other words, "so far, so good" - for the time being!

 

[skomedal]

I have replaced all incandescent bulbs with LED, that knocked the electric bill in half.

Thats the way to go

Replaced ( january 2017 ) the 2 halogen 250watt PIR outdoor detection lamps with the same LED 20 watt, they illuminate a larger area than the hals. and a huge leccy saving.

Still working ( job in progress) on the indoor lighting convertion to leds

Regards

 

[scopus]

Thats the way to go

Replaced ( january 2017 ) the 2 halogen 250watt PIR outdoor detection lamps with the same LED 20 watt, they illuminate a larger area than the hals. and a huge leccy saving.

Still working ( job in progress) on the indoor lighting convertion to leds

Regards

All my lights both indoor and out are LED, saving a fortune in lighting costs! We had two 500w halogen outdoor lights, replaced with 30w LED ones, 60w compared to 1Kw, no contest!

 

[Topper]

Still work in progress on ours, kitchen, hallway, two landings and downstairs loo are converted and I am already seeing the benefits, leccie bill down by 30% over the last three months, oddly enough gas bill up by 20% and I am still trying to fathom that one......


EDIT, should have said I am trying to avoid the smart meters at all cost, waste of money apart from
the automatic read system and who wants another gadget taking up space and losing connection to the meter every week, I am speaking from of experience of my son's installation, his tell all display is in a drawer somewhere, where it was moved to after a week of installation

 

[jeallen01]

Replaced most of the incandescent bulbs (except for a few rarely used, or difficult/impossible to replace ones - BTW, can anyone point me to R8-base straight striplight LED bulbs that don't just illuminate UPWARDS as we use them in floor-standing lights that are both uplighters AND DOWNLIGHTERs) by halogen ones (no very high power ones!) a few years ago, and now gradually replacing the halogens by LED bulbs as the former fail. Not a great difference in power consumption except for those in two ceiling fittings, but some of the new ones do use the same or a bit less energy and are often a bit brighter.

OTOH, have had a lot of LED bulb failures after very short lives - hopefully the current generations of LED bulbs are more reliable.

 

[skomedal]

Hence:-

Still working ( job in progress) on the indoor lighting convertion to leds

Found it pays divdends to buy quality led lamps not the el cheapo from china

Regards

 

[jeallen01]

Still work in progress on ours, kitchen, hallway, two landings and downstairs loo are converted and I am already seeing the benefits, leccie bill down by 30% over the last three months, oddly enough gas bill up by 20% and I am still trying to fathom that one......

Gas bill up? It's colder now, and maybe you turned the 'stat up like I did, compared with last year - OTOH, the house is so well insulated (under-floor insulation in the big lounge, lots of roof insulation of two different sorts, and internal & external insulation on most of our solid walled 3-bed 1920's house with 4x outside walls!) that nowadays I spend most evenings in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt because the temp is around 24C (like right now)
PS: annual energy bill at current BG rates is between £1200 & £1300.

EDIT, should have said I am trying to avoid the smart meters at all cost, waste of money apart from
the automatic read system and who wants another gadget taking up space and losing connection to the meter every week, I am speaking from of experience of my son's installation, his tell all display is in a drawer somewhere, where it was moved to after a week of installation

Moral: put the display where he (you?) can see it easily, and then - like I do - look it each day to remind him/you/me to watch out for the consumption.

 

[Archive-8]

I spend most evenings in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt because the temp is around 24C (like right now)
PS: annual energy bill at current BG rates is between £1200 & £1300.

Wow, my annual gas bill is £170 ish and I have a gas cooker.

My thermostat is set to 21.5°C

The bungalow is 1960's, loft insulation.

 

[Lazarus]

£480 for Leccy and £600 for Kerosene.

3bed Bungalow with Attic Conversion.

Stone frontage, so no CWI, but fully DG, 27cm Loft Insulation and GSOH.

 

[Archive-8]

About £730 ish for the electric. Annual cost.

 

[Topper]

Moral: put the display where he (you?) can see it easily, and then - like I do - look it each day to remind him/you/me to watch out for the consumption.

Oh ye with little knowledge of women at a certain time of life, one minute boiling hot next minute freezing cold, I am really not surprised at the gas bill and it will be what it will be, I am glad you have an energy efficient house, I could have had my walls injected for free but did not fancy 80 holes drilling into my newish pebbledash. Like I said they will have to catch me first before putting meter monitors in my house

 

[Ghostleader]

About £730 ish for the electric. Annual cost.

I'm between £10-11 a week on electric, be cheaper again if it wasnt just a shower we had. In regards to your gas Chris....do you not cook? lol

 

[Archive-8]

I'm between £10-11 a week on electric, be cheaper again if it wasnt just a shower we had. In regards to your gas Chris....do you not cook? lol

Yes I use the gas cooker every day. The combi boiler supply's the hot water and heat.

The heating water temp is set to 42° This gives me 21.5° room temp.

My electric bill is my killer, its about £61 a month at last check.

I know I use a lot of power.

 

[Ghostleader]

Yes I use the gas cooker every day. The combi boiler supply's the hot water and heat.

The heating water temp is set to 42° This gives me 21.5° room temp.

My electric bill is my killer, its about £61 a month at last check.

I know I use a lot of power.

Me thinks the gas is rigged lol [emoji12]

 

[Archive-8]

Me thinks the gas is rigged lol [emoji12]

If I can find the photo in the old offtopic chatter thread you can see for yourself.

My monthly payment for gas is £14.14 a month.

The meter is read by there meter reader.

The boiler is about 5 years old and an A rated combination boiler. (worcester bosch)

And has not been tampered with to the best of my knowledge, but it is on the front of the house in the front garden.

 

[Ghostleader]

That's good going mate, I'm actually envious of your gas burn, I thought I was doing good, you have officially shattered my illusions now in regards to my Gas usage.

 

[Ghostleader]

I'm also going to have a look at my hot water setting on the heating side of things rather than the tap hot water temperature settings, see if I can do better before summer arrives.........nope sorry that was too funny lol, the less cold more pissing it down period of time up here that passes for summer is what I actually mean obviously.

 

[2cvbloke]

Smart meters are a bit of a con really, since they implemented them, the price from suppliers has gone up to compensate for the cost of supplying them, and they act like twin-rate meters so during peak times so you pay a lot more for your daytime usage than you would with a normal single-rate meter, and the biggest part of the con, they can remotely turn you off when there's not enough generation capacity to keep up with demand, so that those who are, shall we say, "more equal than you", get the benefit of being powered while we're left in the dark, because building power stations to replace ones they've decommissioned and dismantled is not a priority...

The other thing is, being one of the many so-called "Internet of things" gadgets, it's susceptible to hacking, if the hackers got hold of the remote switch-off commands, then they could probably have a utilities version of ransomware on the go, making you pay up in bitcoins or else they interfere with the meter to make your bill massive...

Not that I'm cynical or anything, I just prefer a simple meter that reads what is used, rather than something that tells me I need to stop using it because it's remote operator says so...

 

[PaulR]

My monthly combined gas and electric standing charge is £56. Three bedroom semi with double glazing. There's a small amount of insulation in the loft but rankly there's so much stuff up there that it been crushed down considerably.