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Smart meter diatribe

Legh Richardson
What does the panel think about this?

Smart meter scam?


I'm interested in a professional qualified view as this character is pretty ruthless regarding the energy suppliers


Legh
  • 0
    Lol,......well I'm sure nobody within the supply companies would want that fact to be advertised, If SMETS 2 were made obligatory under some government dictate to roll out a digital future then we would never know the truth, perhaps similar to that of building houses under 400kV power lines, radiation from mobile phone masts; getting the manufacturers to own up to the health risks associated with smoking or even the historical argument between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla .

    Actually, I'm not an advocate of conspiracy but when a lobbying group such as WHICH takes up the cause then you ask yourself what's going on here?


    Legh

  • 0
    My supplier recently asked to fit a Smart Meter and I said - no thank you. 


    I just couldn’t see how this would offer any benefit to me at this time, given the inconvenience of installation and the increased risk of some problem or other. I hope that I wasn’t swayed by any hype , since my earlier career was spent in the electrical power industry, including being intimate with the transition from electromechnical induction protective relays to solid state (e.g. P&B Golds). I also impulse purchased a few years ago in the supermarket an “OWL” which via a small clip-on CT, fed a display of power used etc.  I thought that it might interest my other half, but she thought that I was just trying to “penny pinch” and that the display didn’t match the ornaments, so at the first opportunity it was banished from sight.

    Did I make the wrong call to decline the smart meter?          

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Isn't the biggest problem with Smart Meters is that they don't tell you it's paid for through an increased standing charge?

  • 0

    Andrew Jewsbury:

    Oh dear. Where to start?


    "Biggest swindle ever perpetrated on the general public" -

       - Andy.




    Nice try but global warming wins hands down when it comes to the biggest swindle on the general public.lol

  • 0
    Ok, lets load the cannon up with some more grape shot

    Here's a couple of examples of customer frustrations dealing with slightly different concerns regarding smart meters

    The first is from that well known electrical supply company in the mid west USA....you may say what's American smart meters got to do with the UK well it is still the control and flow of electrical current, albeit at 60Hz and at a transmission voltage of somewhere between 580 and 660KV

    Long winded discussion between a couple of mid west chaps


    Moving on and closer to home this one deals with the roll out of smart meters in France and maximum demand in domestic properties

    Quelle arnaque !

    ,

    I'd be interested in your views and why there is so much denial about the smart meter issue.


    Legh
  • 0
    Legh, I thought that I had posed a simple question. I lack recent direct experience of Electrical supply work in either France or the USA, or the time to critique these. Especially as Aliens have just landed outside as I write and being denied the right to bear arms, I'm going to have to rush out and fight them off with a Garden Fork. ?
  • 0

    Quelle arnaque !



    Apart from seemingly not really understanding VA and power factor, I think what he's really trying to say is that the smart meter is enforcing the limit at something like 39.1A (which more closely matches the agreed limit) rather than the 45A the old circuit breaker supposedly tripped at - i.e. he's lost a bit of unofficial leeway.


    One interesting comment was that French smart meters use power line communications rather than radio.


      - Andy.
  • 0

    Did I make the wrong call to decline the smart meter?  



    I don't know. How would you feel if your supplier introduces a 'free electricity on Saturday or Sunday' tariff, or the next washing machine you buy comes with an option to delay start until the cost per kWh drops below a certain level or your new electric car has an option to sell a few kWh back to the grid at very attractive prices at certain times. Will you feel like you're missing out?


      - Andy.
  • 0

    Andrew Jewsbury:




    Did I make the wrong call to decline the smart meter?  



    I don't know. How would you feel if your supplier introduces a 'free electricity on Saturday or Sunday' tariff, or the next washing machine you buy comes with an option to delay start until the cost per kWh drops below a certain level or your new electric car has an option to sell a few kWh back to the grid at very attractive prices at certain times. Will you feel like you're missing out?


      - Andy.

     




    Well, that's a lovely utopian theory. where we become mini industialists partaking in the grand scheme of selling and being sold the dream. That will be very generous of the electrical suppliers to give their hard earned electrical researched enegy away while our brains are frying through the microwaves bouncing off the metalwork.

    I wonder if anybody has done any research into combinations of multitudes of different electromagnetic waves criss crossing through the human body simultaneously?


    Legh

  • 0
    Let’s generously assume that guy explaining the French system understands the operating characteristics of circuit breakers , the difference between a breaker and a meter, reactive power etc and that perhaps a little is lost in translation? A quick bit of googling led me here https://www.frenchentree.com/living-in-france/utilities/french-electrical-systems/  which  provides some context such as standing charges being set by maximum demand with options for 30,45,60 & 90A. I’m inferring that the supply cable will in many cases be capable of 90A, but that the main breaker can be set to a lower value?  Some member will I’m sure have in depth experience of all this, which I lack.


    Turning to electromagnetic radiation, this seems to be a complete red herring to me. Much higher levels of electromagnetic radiation have been studied and managed safely for a couple of generations. We don’t constantly hold meters to our ears either.  I spent a period earlier in my career working in high voltage open substations (up to 400KV) including membership of the Health & Safety Committee. There were concerns and research about whether long-term exposure to significant levels of electromagnetic radiation had negative health effects. Such effects could take decades to become apparent , such as asbestos related illness, which was only belatedly understood.  I’m no longer close to this subject, but it is a legitimate avenue for a technical discussion, perhaps someone else has expertise and familiarity with more recent research?          


    In response to Andy’s sensible answer, I agree that the potential is there and I might even ask for one to be fitted in future, but right now there wasn’t an obvious benefit.  Regulatory action seems to forced consumers to become “early adopters” which as anyone who has ever purchases a consumer electronics product will testify, is often a costly approach.  Perhaps we should have waited for the technology to mature? Is it mature now?  Can they be “hacked” to create a disconnection? The last pre-payment meter that I was familiar with took two-bobs!  A Smart Meter going “dumb” negates any benefits, but isn’t a particular hazard is it? Twenty years ago we had the dotcom bubble, when the hype of technology got the better of the reality, but on-line shopping eventually began to displace bricks and mortar, so we are in a different place now.  We are in no state now to move en masse to electric vehicles, but we may be in future.  


    I still have a functioning VHS machine, an “ultra-modern” (15 years ago) expensive DVD-RAM and Hard Disk machine, an 8mm Camcorder, 35mm & 60mm camera equipment, a USB Floppy Disk reader, a vinyl record player and an audio cassette player.  The electromechanical electricity meter has seen many of these come and go. Much of our electricity transmission infrastructure is over 60 years old and will still function effectively in another 60 , with only selective targeted investment needed.  De-carbonisation has removed much low-cost electricity generation which is a political decision with enormous costs, based mainly on climate change models. Demand management at the consumer end via smart meters is another part of this.  The issue creates some strong opinions, which only the course of history can definitively validate. My career began in a “cathedral of power” packed full of the latest technology and the teething troubles that this creates, now it and its brethren are empty shells, called dirty, outdated and scheduled for demolition.

    At a strategic level it always difficult to decide when to adopt the latest technology and when to wait, because you are potentially damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Plus ca change?                             

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