Smart meter benefits even crappier than originally thought

Re: Just cancel it now

some missiles, some hospitals... Nah, scrap the hospitals, they'll get paid for from you-know-what...

Change the WiFi password as part of your routine security protocols at her house...

Increase in the Standing charge likely.

She'll likely see an increase in the standing charge/tariff, if you break the t&c of supply, with a move to an out of contract evergreen tariff (expensive). Differs across sector. May also be other charges.

She's been conned!

We had smart meters installed - the electric works as a hub for the gas and, presumably, uses mobile to report back. No wifi required. Sounds very dodgy to me!!

If I cut it off from the wifi - what happens?

Why not ask for a copy of the contract making obligatory for your mother to have broadband for the benefit of the electricty supply company? On whom does the contractual liability fall if for any reason the broadband service fails?

What you describe sounds extremely dodgy. IMHO a formal complaint ought to be made, rather than just flagging it up on this forum.

"If i cut it off from the wifi - what happens?"

With eny luck you get in touch with someone who can be asked WTF this was about. And give them a good bollocking. Then you have a name when you raise your complaint with OFGEM. And the ICO.

Ah,

that would probably be "someones" (a pair or the buggers) of the ilk who came to my door last weekend trying to fob me off with smart meters, when told politely that I didn't want them and was under no legal obligation to have them installed, I was hit by a load of 'agressive' scripted BS, then I was eventually told by these "someones" that the law will be changed to make the things mandatory anyway...and they'd see me then.

I got the distinct impression that this pair would use 'bully boy' and/or bullshit tactics on vulnerable people to get them to sign up, your story confirms this, and as you're probably in another part of the country it seems a suspiciously common tactic. In my case, there is no point complaining to my local MP or MSP about this as they're both useless tosspots, as for reporting this to anyone else, it's my word against theirs..(I really should set up a camera with both video and audio recording facilities at the front door porch)

> the engineer demanded the wifi password during the install, again mother has no idea why - no explanation offered and no documentation left with her for me to go over after the fact.

Least case scenario is that he wanted to stream Spotify or whatever while working. Worst case scenario is that he has a sideline selling compromised routers to people who will drain your mother's bank account.

Next steps for you:

1) Change the router password immediately. (And re-flash it back to factory ROM if possible and you're really paranoid).

2) Make a written statement to the police saying that you think a crime may have been committed

3) Make a written complaint to the energy supplier (address it to the CEO), copying Ofgem.

4) Optional - copy your MP as well - they need to be aware of this kind of shit arising from their decisions

Re: Simply...

Ofgem is a narcissistic organisation,

Yes, a bunch of aggressive, bearded, sandal wearing communists (and that's just the women).

actively tries to cover up/surpress complaints

Incorrect, they have VERY detailed guidance to ensure that reported complaint numbers are as high as possible. And there have been multimillion quid fines repeatedly dished out to companies found to be in breach of standards.

and is obsessed by thinking competition is the answer,

Yes, although this has come from government policy making departments. Ofgem is just an over powerful administrator and in this respect is doing what it has been told by all recent governments.

Ofgem itself needs to be investigated in the role it played in surpressing direct complaints regards @CoopEnergy,

How is fining Coop energy £1.8m last month for customer service failings "suppressing direct complaints"? And that ignores the millions of pounds Coop will have had to pay to the Energy Ombusdman for complaint escalations.

Anyone that thinks Smart Meters will reduce Consumer Energy Bills is deluded,

They do have a clearly measurable effect in the short term as a very small reduction in electricity use, whether that persists in the long term is unknown (I doubt it). But politicians and greenies have persuaded themselves that these are a good thing - I'd agree they are deluded, but no more so than over money sinks like HS2, Hinkley Point, or Heathrow R3.

Smart meters about complicating/obfuscating bills

Not an objective, that will be merely incidental as the government want to push complicated and expensive time of use tariffs onto as many people as possible, whilst they fight the 1970's battle of peak demand. In aggregate, peaking power isn't actually that expensive when averaged across the whole system, but government having spared no expense in screwing up energy policy, and they see TOU tariffs as a brillant way to hide their ineptitude in providing security of supply. Also, it is very important to accuse suppliers of incompetence and profiteering as a smokescreen to try and hide that serial incompetence.

Hint to the Commentariat: Expect double digit price rises from most if not all suppliers early in the new year as they have to pass through rising wholesale and system costs that they are all exposed to. Now could be a very good time to consider taking the cheapest two or three year fixed price deal, and possibly to make sure that's with somebody you expect to still be around in three years.

Re: Oooh, I bet that Smarts!

Why not hack it yourself & change the software so that it calculates an amount far below what you actually use? If the gas company ever tries to complain then you can claim no knowledge of the vandalism & rebuke them with their own marketing bullshit that the meters were supposed to be secure. Have a nice day!

The only way to meet the projected numbers of passengers would have been every resident of Hamburg travelling to Berlin at least once a week, and vice versa.

Not far off the logic for both HS2 and Heathrow R3.

"Just tell me the results you'd like to see, and I'll design the calculations accordingly."

Sounds very much like the comments my Dad used to say about clinical trials in Germany and the US for new drugs..

Re: No shocks here

The only point I can see for having smart meters is so that the electric company can charge me the spot price instead of the average for a month.

That might work for generators, it doesn't work for suppliers. What suppliers actually do (and is little understood by customers, and not at all understood by politicians) is to act as a risk manager for residential customers, providing (as far as practical) a flat rate price in a volatile market where the wholesale costs vary half hourly, with big seasonal swings, where transmission costs are allocated by peak demand, where distribution charges vary by location, time, peak demand and connection capacity, plus an overlay of government costs like the Renewables Obligation, Warm Homes Discount, Energy Company Obligation, Smart Metering, etc etc. The suppliers buy forward contracts to guarantee they have the necessary energy to sell, they hedge demand, weather, gas prices, and currencies. And if they get the forecasting and hedging wrong, they are "out of balance" in the wholesale markets, and not only do they have to pay penal prices for the extra spot capacity they have to buy, they also have all of the costs of the balancing systems thrown at them. If a supplier gets those complexities wrong, they'll find themselves losing so much money that they'll be out of business in days.

In theory you could set up a supplier selling "spot" to consumers, and avoid some of these risks as a supplier - but then the customers take that risk, because no generator would seek to sell all their capacity on the spot market as there's too much risk. If you're buying forward capacity as a consumer, that works like a take or pay contract. if you're under your forecast then you paid for energy that you didn't use, if you're over then you could be looking at the excess being charged at £35/kWh on a winter peak, or a whole lot more.

So do suppliers want you to pay a wholesale tracker rate? Not at all. We make money by managing wholesale market risks to a flat rate. The people who want you to be faced with either time of use tariffs (or worse still "dynamic pricing" that's a step closer to following wholesale prices) are the clowns of DECC (now BEIS) and Ofgem, because it suits their agenda of forcing customers to adapt to the system they've built, rather than building a system to deliver what customers might want.

Another commentard make the observation that in energy markets don't appear to work, and he's right, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. Markets don't work here because government want the market to produce a specific answer they've pre-decided is the right answer - a market outcome is not what the policy makers want. However, the conclusion that if markets don't work we should re-nationalise the lot is similarly flawed, because the problems stem exactly from public sector ineptitude in policy and decision making. The market (mostly) doesn't want to pay for expensive "solutions" chosen by a climate change industry that has captured all recent governments; Government demands that you do pay for those. Until you've squared that difference, neither markets nor state ownership will produce an adequate answer.

Re: The smug git feeling

OMG you generated a whole quids worth of electricity.

Just need another 3.3 million solar arrays like yours and we could get rid of Hinkley B (except their meter runs in the same direction 24 hours a day).

Re: The smug git feeling

Yet another smug git who doesn't understand the difference between kW and kWh; between power and energy.

Re: The smug git feeling

"today it generated close on 8Kw from my PV Array"

Apart from the fact that the number of kW is meaningless without knowing how long it was for, where did you get the free PV array?

Re: Two reasons

Close, but not quite right. Yes, remote disconnection will be used to give you your own private power cut when it's cold and dark and we find we really do need all the power stations the bean counters said we it was cheaper not to build.

However, there won't be any saving on meter readers (which would have been minute anyway, how much does it cost for a two-minute minimum wage visit every year or two compared to the £400 cost of installing smart meters?). There will still have to be periodic 'safety' visits (translation: to make sure you're not bypassing the meters to get free energy).

The real second reason is price hikes and Confusion Marketing. You'll have to pay more for an Uninterruptable Tariff to stop the Smart Meter cutting you off when there's not enough juice to go round, and you'll have to pay more per kWh if you use lightbulbs after dark, or don't cook Sunday lunch at 2am while you do the washing and tumble drying.

Dumb People have Smart Meters. Smart People have Dumb Meters.