back to article Smart meter firm EDMI asked UK for £7m to change a single component

EDMI, the UK maker of residential smart meter comms hubs, is seeking approval for a major modification to its kit - a process it had expected to take 18 months and cost £7m, leaked internal documents show. The revelation has emerged as the meter industry continues to drip-feed marketing studies into the press to persuade …

  1. JimmyPage Silver badge
    FAIL

    ...nope ...

    still don't want one.

    still wont have one.

    1. 2460 Something
      Coat

      Re: ...nope ...

      Would you like them here or there?

      Would you like them in a house?

      Would you like them with a mouse?

      1. wolfetone Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: ...nope ...

        A smart meter in my kitchen what am I gonna do?

        A smart meter in my kitchen what am I gonna do?

        I'm gonna fix that meter thats what I'm gonna do.

        I'm gonna bin that meter

    2. JamesPond
      Facepalm

      Re: ...nope ...

      "still don't want one.

      still wont have one."

      For what reason(s)?

      It's likely you won't have any choice in the near future. If you move house, most houses will already have one; if you want to change supplier, new suppliers will probably demand one; eventually your current supplier will probably just turn off the supply until you fit one (maybe a bit radical but they will put the squeeze on). Unless you are going to take your supplier to court to try to prevent it, you will end up with a meter, eventually. I'm not saying you should have one if you don't want one, but if you are realistic, you have very little control over the matter if you want their supply.

      1. The obvious

        Re: ...nope ...

        "For what reason(s)?"

        You must be new here. The exorbitant costs, poor implementation, and lack of independent security reviewing are just a selection of the many reasons. That's before we consider the non-existent benefits. All of them documented on el-reg, and obvious to anyone who has been in the IT industry for any length of time.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: ...nope ...

          I tried explaining that to someone who's supposed to be advising the vulnerable on financial matters.

          Apparently I'm now a conspiracy nut who's seen one too many Matrix movies.

          1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

            Re: ...nope ...

            Apparently I'm now a conspiracy nut who's seen one too many Matrix movies.

            ..which isn't necessarily incompatible with being right about smart meters..

      2. PNGuinn
        Mushroom

        Re: ...nope ... @JamesPond

        So - If they really get that nasty, lets see the B****y thing work reliably in a Faraday cage.

        The earthed tin foil is absolutely necessary for my right to enjoy a normal secure family life, m'lud.

        That should do it.

        Can I charge them several squillion for the development costs?

        KerChing.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: ...nope ... @JamesPond

          Interestingly, a scam emerged with them in Puerto Rico involving planting a large enough magnet on top to saturate the sensors.

          1. ADC

            Re: ...nope ... @JamesPond

            @Alan Brown

            Saturating the sensors with a magnet is detectable as a fault condition different from any normal state. Most meters will report a tamper fault in this case.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: ...nope ...

        >It's likely you won't have any choice in the near future. If you move house, most houses will already have one; if you want to change supplier, new suppliers will probably demand one;

        Depends on the supplier - EDF are happy to replace your smart meter with a dumb one. Nothing to stop you replacing it privately either (from Crown or similar) - own your own meter if you're worried.

    3. Cynic_999

      Re: ...nope ...

      Makes no difference whether you don't want one and don't have one, you'll still have to pay for it anyway. I suspect that it will end up with people who have smart meters paying extra for electricity at peak times, and about the same for electricity used during off-peak. Those without smart meters will end up paying the peak rate at all times ...

  2. Tom 7

    The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

    I still dont want one until it can actually tell me when the price changes. And by me I mean my home energy controller so I dont have to stick my head in a cupboard.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

      Nothing to do with Pi-zero, it is using the different ZigBee band - going out of the rather crowded and useless 2.4GHz and into a band that has significantly better propagation in urban environments. Based on the cost, I suspect it will also include a proper antenna.

      1. It is "I told you so" moment for me and thousands of other engineers. We told all of the imbeciles in product management that THIS IS the only way it can work. You use an industrial band and you mesh the meters so that you can use N:M uplinks. If a meter is outside (as they are putting them now), you can get up to 20-30 meters with one uplink in a residential neighborhood over the 800MHz band. More if you use street furniture (lamps, broadband cabinets, electrical substations, etc) to seed the mesh.

      The cretinous idea of using 1:1 uplink model as used so far in the UK does not scale and does not work because it fails even the most basic radio propagation model. It is also not future proof - GSM is being refarmed for 3G and 4G so the basic GPRS only modems which are put in the meters will simply stop working even in places where they work today.

      The way to make it work is to do a mesh with an N:M uplink model. It allows you to do 3G, 4G or fixed links for uplink as you no longer uplink from every node. However, instead of putting THIS (making it work) first, "Green Crime Level Reporting" was given a priority - making sure it talks to an in-house panel via wireless to show you how much of a green criminal you are. All of these are 2.4GHz so 2.4GHz was chosen. Classic product of "imbecile with an MBA degree inventing product requirements" (you can see them in the original retail energy white paper by the way).

      2. While this makes the whole project theoretically workable it makes it much more interesting security-wize. You can now sit somewhere down the street in an unmarked van and issue commands down the mesh. Welcome to the brave new world of "drive by metering".

      1. kmac499

        Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

        "imbecile with an MBA" or i-WAMBA love it..

        I had a similar experience of the i-WAMBA effect many years ago pre mobile phones. The client was trying to set up a private radio network for delivery vans. The system had a problem on Fridays around Heathrow, It turned out the consultants designing the network had averaged out the coverage and capacity over the whole country over the whole week. Turns out Friday around Heathrow is a bit busier than average.

        On a green note I'm told that a so called smart meter won't work for me because I have solar panels and the meter isn't smart enough to cope with 'Reverse Energy'.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          "[...] I have solar panels and the meter isn't smart enough to cope with 'Reverse Energy'."

          I had wondered about that.

          What happens to the measuring accuracy with the "power factor" effect of capacitive or inductive loads?

          My Belkin plug-in that measures an individual device's consumption sometimes shows zero for small "lump in a lead" adapters - where they are probably taking a couple of watts. Possibly they are switched psu types?

          1. Brenda McViking

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            Power factor is just about the degree to which voltage and current waveforms in AC systems are leading or lagging each other (they're both sine waves, but are they in phase - i.e. overlapping, or does the voltage wave peak before the ampere wave?). If you're measuring watts, it has no effect, as it's all real power and the power drawn will be the same no matter the phase between the two. You're averaging the sine waves then multiplying them. Power factor plays no part, and as a residential consumer, you're billed on real power.

            Commercial premises might be billed on apparent power (kVA) rather than real power (kW), and hence they might benefit from looking at whether their power factor is costing them extra. (reason being, that current and voltage being out of phase increases losses and reduces capacity for real power to be delivered by the grid.) Nonetheless the EU are determined to start regulating LEDs because of their power factor, without understanding the subject (they're usually capacitive devices, the grid usually lags, thus low power factor LEDs in every home will make the grid more, not less efficient).

            Your belkin adapter is not lying, modern lump in lead adaptors will be taking milliwatts when nothing is plugged in the other end. It's not the 90s anymore. Your phone charger might draw 10W at full chat. Greenpeace say you'll save the world by unplugging them. They're lying. You'll save more energy by switching off the oven/immersion heater 5 minutes earlier than you would by unplugging 20 mobile phone chargers every day for a year.

            1. Alan Brown Silver badge

              Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

              "Nonetheless the EU are determined to start regulating LEDs because of their power factor,"

              yes, they're going to start regulating the things, but not because they're capacitive power factors.

              LEDs (and just about everything with a switchmode supply too) use a bridge rectifier feeding a smoothing capactor. The result of _that_ is that no current is drawn until the line voltage exceeds the value of whatever's in the cap plus the diode drops - this leads to an _EXTREMELY_ spikey current draw around each voltage peak instead of any kind of sinusoidal current draw - and as a result when there are a lot of switchmode supplies in use in houses, significant currents start flowing in the neutral line in the street 3-phase system (along with the odd bit of DC offset) - and THAT cooks distribution transformers as well as generating a reasonable amount of RF interference.

              Office buildings had the same issue years ago - the currents would trip out ELCBs and so most computer switchmode power suppliers are phase compensated and smoothed these days, but very few other consumer devices pay any attention to the issue and switchmodes have become ubiquitous in the last 20 years (Old-style isolated bobbin wall warts frequently used to dissipate more power internally than they could deliver to their load).

              LED lamps tend to use series capactors to drop the voltage but all that does is offset the current spike by 90 degrees - It's still a spike. As lighting is still one of the largest continuous power draws in housing, it's a good first target for requirements about current draw conformality, but at the same time the flicker characteristic of those rectifier-fed/smoothed lamps has meant that there's been a lot of pressure on suppliers to use better circuits than a simple bridge rectifier fed from a capacitor tap and the rotten current draw characteristics from them is nowhere near as much of an issue as it was 3-4 years ago (almost all of them are far better than compact flourescents anyway. The prime reason I gave up on CFLs was because they killed the usability of any 433MHz remote controls I was using along with most infrared remotes used more than a couple of metres from the target. The Infrared and RF hash emitted from those pieces of garbage is mind-boggling)

          2. Arthur the cat Silver badge

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            What happens to the measuring accuracy with the "power factor" effect of capacitive or inductive loads?

            If you look at the SMETS 2 standard, all meters record both active and reactive power on however many phases they have. Domestic households don't pay for reactive power, but industrial consumers do AFAIK.

        2. Empty1

          Re: Reverse energy

          "On a green note I'm told that a so called smart meter won't work for me because I have solar panels and the meter isn't smart enough to cope with 'Reverse Energy'."

          Mine does.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Solar Panels

          That's my experience. My Old type meter is running backwards very nicely at the moment thank you very much. I have a small Setup (1.9Kw) but even in the winter it has meant that my usage as measured by the old type of meter has dropped by more than 1/3rd. Since November I have generated just over 300KWh of electricity. Not much but if more people had panels then we may not need so much extra capacity in years to come. It is a pity that councils can't make all new build houses have PV Panels on their roofs. Oh wait, they could but they don't.

          I estimate that in the summer, I won't see any movement of my meter upwards.

          Note that I am using metered units and not any cost of Leccy and am not including feed in tariff etc.

          1. JamesPond

            Re: Solar Panels

            I don't understand why the government isn't pushing more for micro-generation, whether that is solar and/or wind turbines on all new buildings. Surely it would be better for households to be as self-sufficient as possible, thus reducing the burden on centralised power generation?

            They are happy to push motorists around, now saying that we shouldn't use diesel because of NOx emissions, and only new cars that are pure electric now get reduced VED, everyone else is paying a minimum of £140 per year (or £450 if you car is >£40k). If everyone is going to move to electric vehicles over next 5-10 years, where is the extra electricity generation coming from to cover this?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Solar Panels

              Its Mad.

              I know someone who built a Hydro scheme and I Found out that he cannot supply electricity to the grid when the sun is shining as solar farms generate power then. BUT the local Gas fired Power station can Generate as much as it likes at any time of day or night. producing Greenhouse gasses.!!

              all that "FREE" green water going to waste.

            2. Alan Brown Silver badge

              Re: Solar Panels

              "I don't understand why the government isn't pushing more for micro-generation"

              Because the VAST majority of installations don't pay off their installation costs before they finally break, even WITH any subsidies that might be paid to put them there.

              Roof-mounted wind is a particularly nasty scam. If bearing and sail noise coupled into the building doesn't result in the things being removed quickly, you'll be lucky to get a few kWh/year on anything mounted that close to the ground. That's why the companies which were pushing them have virtually all quietly folded their tents and disappeared in the night. VAWTs were a particularly heavily pushed scam and none of the companies pushing them in the UK exist anymore, after taking large government grants and glowing media endorsements from journalists who can't be bothered doing simple math (or were paid schills)

              Even for the larger windmills, government subsidies are usually far higher than direct income received (and don't forget: windmills/solar are paid at ridiculously feed-in rates with networks required to give them preference and idle their thermal stations, etc) - the 350 foot one by the M4 at reading produces less than £100k of energy but in 2011 was getting £130k of grants.

              What's actually being farmed is subsidies - to the tune of 40% of the average annual domestic electricity bill being attributable to renewable subsidies, the cost of running backing capacity and the cost of overbuilding the grid and provision of peaking plant to handle wildly unpredictable sources switching in and out of the grid without warning or the ability to stop them - whilst only generating 4-6% of the annual energy production.

              If you had to pay the full cost of your solar installation AND a battery bank to keep things balanced and weren't allowed to backfeed into the grid (ie, keep your overproduction in batteries and then draw on it later) you wouldn't do it, because it would cost twice as much as grid power - and that's despite the real cost of solar panels dropping by 80% in the last 2 decades and off-the-shelf efficiency going from 2%

              to 10% - unfortunately their halflife point has also dropped from 12 years to 7-8 years, so you need to factor that into your caluculations.

              Because of this, the same chickens are starting to come home to roost in the solar industry. All those outfits promising free electricker or lease income from panels on your roof are going titsup, but you still don't get to own the panels and if you put any of your own money into them, tough - you lost it and they belong to someone else anyway.

              The amount of money that's been put into subsidising "renwables" in the UK over the last decade would have built more than a dozen Hinkley Points - each one cranking out more _reliable_ power than 1800-2200 windmills (the best capacity factor of the land-based ones installed around the UK is 24% of nameplate rating. The marine ones are slightly better - but all the big ones struggle to pay their way even with subsidies because they have a nasty habit of shredding their gearboxes - and sometimes those gearboxes catch fire. Byebye nacelle+tower and you'd better hope you're not downwind as the blades have been known to go up to 2 miles when they snap off.)

              Why does _that_ matter? 2 reasons:

              1: Solar and wind don't work very well in the UK's many still, cold winter nights.

              2: Because carbon emissions need to be not only capped but obliterated(*), you can expect gas-boiler heating to be banned within 15 years and transportation to be pushed hard to a more-electric model.

              If you comply with safety requirements and carpet the entire country in windmills and make all rooftops SolarPV, you can _just_ match existing carbon-thermal (ie, coal/oil/gas) electricity generation capacity. If you ignore the safety requirements then you might get 25% more.

              The problem is that because of #2 above, demand for electrical energy in this country is going to go up by a factor of _at least_ 6, if not 8, even if it was made mandatory for all housing to have high-quality insulation and bugger the planning regulations on appearances.

              So in other words, we've fucked our long-term abliity to provide power for ourselves (the interconnectors to france/netherlands/ireland only account for 5% of existing generation capacity and they cost even more to build/maintain than a nuclear power plant). As many have pointed out, the main reason for pushing "smart" meters with built-in cutoffs is most likely to have the ability be able to have rolling blackouts without cutting off "privileged" consumers.

              (*) Yes, that one I put in above - the reason why carbon emissions are going to need to be stomped on.

              It has nothing to do with rising sea levels, but a lot to do with the oceans.

              Ocean acidity has increased by 50% since the start of the industrial revolution. Oceanic mercury has doubled. Oceanic radioactivity appears to have increased by even more than that (burning coal accounts for more radioactive emissions each year than a half-dozen chernobyls) - but none of those matter.

              What _really_ matters is this: Oceanic oxygen levels are decreasing slightly everywhere as the water temperature has increased, but more importantly - anoxic zones are spreading. We get 50% of our atmosphere's oxygen from the oceans and in geology, Anoxic Oceanic Events (look 'em up) go hand in hand with CO2 spikes.

              It wouldn't be hard for atmospheric O2 levels drop to 15% (the equivalent of moving to 7-8000 feet altitude) and it's not impossible to drop to 11-12% (equivalent to around 12-14000 feet) during an anoxic period.

              Most mammalian physiology (and that of humans) reacts to reduced oxygen levels by thickening the blood. After a while this causes congestive heart failure (that's what altitude sickness is) and there are only 2 groups of humans who've evolved alternatives which don't cause long-term physical damage - unsurprisingly both of them are around the Himalayas - nepalese and tibetans.

              Now, factor in the rising temperature, destabilising methane clathrate deposits worldwide and the good possibility that the current Leptav Sea methane plumes (1-2km wide according to reports(**)) will destabilise continental margin deposits in a way that would be on par with the Storegga Slide(***), but could be much worse if the ensuing tsunami destabilises other arctic deposits.

              The way things are going there's a reasonable chance that meaningful sea level rises won't have much effect on civilisation, as 1/2 to 2/3 of the population will have died out by the time it happens. Malthus is a bastard but everyone was expecting starvation, not asphyxiation.

              Someone I know postulated about 20 years ago that if we don't get off the planet, our descendants in 100k years would be oxygen-deprived apes barely surviving. I bet he wasn't thinking it might happen much sooner than that.

              (**) The global methane survey found there are large sources of methane getting into the atmosphere that they couldn't account for or find the sources for. They were blaming farming as a possible source (all that recent media coverage about cow burps and rice paddies).

              I work with a couple of the people involved and asked them if they'd factored the Laptev Sea in. They weren't even aware of the reports, and because all the orbiting instruments they used are only designed to pick up methane over land and aren't on polar orbits they wouldn't have picked oceanic emissions up.

              ... So now they're frantically trying to see if they can recalibrate the existing ones to detect methane over ice (easyish) or water (virtually impossible) to see if it's the missing source - but they still may not be able to look far enough north to confirm

              (This is akin to the re-reading of NOAA satellite ozone readings in the 1970s to confirm that the Ozone Hole really existed - the processing scripts were setup to dump low or high detected levels as a calibration error and when that fudge(****) was taken out, the hole leapt into existance in the reports - in this case it's a lot harder as they weren't looking in the right direction and methane over water is extremely hard to measure)

              . If the reports coming out of Russia are accurate then it would easily be the missing source.

              (***) Lots of geologists and historians concentrate on the tsunami but miss the important point that the Storegga slide happened early in the knee point where the last ice age gave way to rapid warming and increased CO2 levels (ie, it's likely that the slide triggered the rapid increase in warming and northern climate changes, not that other way round).

              The Storegga Slide released somewhere around 2-3 gigatonnes of methane into the atmosphere. There's at least 1 gigatonnes under the Laptev Sea and might be as much as 5 gigatonns.

              Am I conspiracy theorist? Perhaps.

              An alarmist? Perhaps.

              I'd prefer to investigate this stuff and see if it might be plausible rather than poo-poo it offhand.

              And I'd DEFINIETLY prefer that we prepare, just in case - It's better to be wrong than dead.

              (****) Support staff inserting fudges into software to get results akin to what the lead scientist predicted is a common occurance. I've run into 2 cases of it where I worked in the last 15 years. In both cases the unfudged observations contained the seeds of important discoveries that allowed important theory tweaks - underscoring that the best science often starts with "Hmm, that's odd, I wasn't expecting _that_"

            3. John Dawson

              Re: Solar Panels

              Here is a simplified explanation for the UK. It turns out that most charging (approaching 90%) of electric cars is done at night, so for a very long time to come you can use the gap between day and night demand to charge these vehicles. This yields about 10-12GW of capacity over about 7-8 hours, conservatively 80GWh per day. At 250Wh per mile that allows you to charge say 12 million electric vehicles without needing extra grid capacity. The full UK car fleet is about 32 million vehicles, averaging 7,900 miles per year by the way. Of course you will need to burn extra fossil fuel but that is more than offset by the diesel and petrol you no longer need. More to the point this will clean up our city air considerably.

          2. kmac499

            Re: Solar Panels

            We've had panels for nearly two years, What finally convinced me was accidentally googling a clipping from the financial papers. The journalist pointed out that £7k in the bank\ISA earned you three parts of fuck-all (not his exact words), but stick the same 7k on the roof and the combined grant\bribe and utility savings would give you about 10% back.

            Plus you do get quite nerdy on when to run things "Suns out, Dishwasher on" .

            I now have enough data for serious analysis. and sure enough the net extra cash I have in the bank every year is about £800, which as our system cost £6.5k is about 12% or about 8 years payback, with 12 years of the grant scheme to go. Assuming HMG doesn't change the rules again.

            What's not to like ?

            1. Richard 12 Silver badge

              Re: Solar Panels

              The fact that it's a tax on poor and lower-middleclass people.

              The subsidy directly increases the cost of electricity by a significant margin.

              The only people who can take advantage of the subsidy are those who own a house (not a flat) and have £6-10k sat in the bank or sufficient equity to add it to a mortgage.

              The solar panel subsidy is almost purely a method to steal from the poor to give to the rich.

        4. nematoad
          Unhappy

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          " I'm told that a so called smart meter won't work for me because I have solar panels and the meter isn't smart enough to cope with 'Reverse Energy'."

          I have solar panels as well but that didn't stop the numpty sent to remove my electro-mechanical meter, that did let me know how much electricity I was using via the little rotor, with one of those "smart" things. It was only when I pointed out that there was very poor reception where I live that he had to put in a "unsmart" one. Which is a PITA to read and does not show what I am using.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

        "Based on the cost, I suspect it will also include a proper antenna."

        The man changing my electric meter yesterday said that they had met several cases where radio communication was impossible either because of the property layout or its location.

        He asked why I didn't want a smart meter. My answer about the possibility of hacking the on/off function seemed to be a new one to him.

        He was surprised the electricity supplier was doing a meter change after only 9 years - rather than nearer 15 years. He wondered if they were using this as a way to get smart meters in when customers weren't smart enough to ask for a "classic" one.

        The new meter has a tiny reflective LCD panel with poor contrast. Each digit is about 7mm x 3mm. You have to get yourself positioned exactly right to take a reading. Given that the new meter is tiny compared to the old electromechanical ones - there seems no good reason for not using a bigger display. Old people will have trouble doing their own readings. Economy - or again a designed incentive for a move to a remote display smart meter?

        He did mention that the water company elicits their meter readings with a "drive by" method. That is obviously not a mains electricity connection in the hole in the pavement. Does anyone know how they do that - battery or some sort of passive transponder technology?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          as far as I know water meters (in my area in Cornwall anyway) are just dumb mechanical meters they read them by physically going to the meter.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            in my area in Cornwall anyway) are just dumb mechanical meters

            Is that because electricity hasn't reached Cornwall? Still being blocked by the Tamar?

            (Anonymous because my wife is of Cornish stock[1] and, despite being nearly a foot shorter than me is Not To Be Messed With(tm)

            [1] No - not the sort of stock you make from old bones and offcuts. Honest.

        2. Tom Paine

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          The new meter has a tiny reflective LCD panel with poor contrast. Each digit is about 7mm x 3mm. You have to get yourself positioned exactly right to take a reading. Given that the new meter is tiny compared to the old electromechanical ones - there seems no good reason for not using a bigger display. Old people will have trouble doing their own readings.

          I thought the whole idea was that you wouldn't need to read your meter, as the utility can do it remotely. No? If not, what IS the purported point of the things?

          They came round and installed mine a year ago; I got a little 6x4"LCD panel with a speedometer-type readout that tells me nothing of any use. It sat on the mantlepiece gathering dust for a few weeks before I gave up waiting for it to do something useful and chucked it in the back of a cupboard.

          1. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            The new meter has a tiny reflective LCD panel with poor contrast.

            I got a little 6x4"LCD panel with a speedometer-type readout

            It would seem that these are ideal applications for ultra low power display technologies ie. e-paper. I suspect those responsible for smart meters made their decisions when e-paper was relatively expensive and 'new'.

            1. BebopWeBop

              Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

              Yes - about 20 years ago?

            2. Cynic_999

              Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

              "

              It would seem that these are ideal applications for ultra low power display technologies ie. e-paper.

              "

              Not really. A meter needs a display that is updated pretty frequently if it is to display usage in real time. If an e-ink display is changing every few seconds it will take more power than an LCD display (due mainly to more power-hungry drive electronics).

              e-paper is still significantly more expensive than LCD, especially when you add in the drive electronics and all 5 power supplies. The microWatts of power an LCD consumes is irrelevant when if comes to an electricity meter anyway, and while a dumb LCD meter does not need an MPU, any e-ink display will have an MPU to handle the algorithms needed to change the display.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            "I thought the whole idea was that you wouldn't need to read your meter, as the utility can do it remotely. "

            This not a Smart Meter - just a "classic" replacement that is going to be read by a human. Whether it is actually a dumbed down Smart Meter is an interesting thought - but the box looks a bit too small to contain a 100 amp breaker.

          3. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            "I thought the whole idea was that you wouldn't need to read your meter"

            he's talking about a non-smart meter. Mine's like this, mounted at floor level at the back of a cupboard in a corner that's difficult to get into because the cupboard door doesn't fully open due to a radiator in front of it.

            I find the easiest way to get a reading is to use a smartphone camera and before that it was a pain in the arse.

            The stupidest thing is that the entire installation is less than 20 years old as the building was rewired and my flat separated off into its own power feed in 1999. In other countries externally readable meters have been mandatory for new installations since the 1970s.

            This entire farce is reminiscent of the inventiveness, can-do attitude and positive approach to customer service which made British Leyland such a staggering international (and then domestic) sucess story.

          4. hoola Silver badge

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            No, the point is that you have a useless panel inside that changes colour and tells you have much it is costing. My mother ended up with one when they were forced to have the old mechanical meter changed.

            Previously they were no worried about the bills, it was not too expense but importantly was affordable.

            Now she is shit scared to turn anything on like a toaster, kettle or washing machine because it us so expensive.

            A totally, utterly pointless waste that has actually made things worse. They did not need to save electricity and did not need a stupid display that they did not understand.

            Real progress there.........

        3. Gareth79

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          Powered by a turbine wheel in the water supply perhaps? I guess that wouldn't work for constant low usage though.

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          > He did mention that the water company elicits their meter readings with a "drive by" method. That is obviously not a mains electricity connection in the hole in the pavement. Does anyone know how they do that - battery or some sort of passive transponder technology?

          Sensus water meters are battery powered and broadcast a reading every 15 secs with a range of roughly 100 m in clear air. So drive by is fine provided you don't go too fast! A typical scenario is to attach the reader to a dustcart and take the readings as the bins are emptied.

          The battery powers the measurement mechanism as well as the wireless. It's sealed and lasts about 20 years, with the aim being to replace the meter every 15 or so. Replacement is simply unscrewing the whole dial assembly and screwing a new one in - no need to re-plumb anything.

        5. veti Silver badge

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          My answer about the possibility of hacking the on/off function seemed to be a new one to him.

          Assuming you live in the UK, that's a bit like "refusing to go outside on the grounds that you might be eaten by a tiger".

          Look, there are reasons to dislike smart meters, but most of those talked up here are pure FUD. With hundreds of millions of the things installed worldwide for years now, there have still been zero, count them, zero credible reports of remote hacking. I'm not saying it's impossible - just that the people who enjoy doing that kind of thing simply have much softer and less boring targets to go after.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            Lots of "smart" meters in other parts of the world only send data to the supplier they do not receive data and don't have a remote cut off function SO they are more secure as all you can hack is the outcoming data stream you cant exploit meters or remotely disable them.

          2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

            Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

            @veti

            With hundreds of millions of the things installed worldwide for years now, there have still been zero, count them, zero credible reports of remote hacking

            Ah, the "it hasn't happened yes so you can discount it as a risk. Hmm, in "a few decades" I've never needed the seatbelt in the, so on that basis they aren't needed for me ? And i can stop paying for insurance as I've never needed it in the past ?

            @Alan Brown

            Mine's like this, mounted at floor level at the back of a cupboard in a corner that's difficult to get into because the cupboard door doesn't fully open due to a radiator in front of it.

            I find the easiest way to get a reading is to use a smartphone camera and before that it was a pain in the arse.

            Dad made a contraption with a stick, a couple of blocks of wood, and a couple of small mirrors for reading the gas meter. The mirrors allow you to stand up and see the display - two mirrors being needed to avoid it being upside down.

        6. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          The Water meters in the sheltered housing i lived in had a coupling on the meter that registered as a moving magnet rotated. this was readable by a black housing containing a coil and other electronics that hold the data from the moving magnet reader attached to the meter so the reader didn't have to enter the building. these reading pads can also be replaced with an infrared transmitter.

        7. ADC

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          Smart water meters I saw 15 years ago were battery powered - with a large capacity battery and a low power MCU (TI MSP430) to get >20 years battery life.

        8. Wim Ton

          Meter reading

          "Smart" Water (and gas) meters run on a battery and send their readings with a simple radio protocol.The trick is that the radio sleeps most of the time to achieve a 10 years battery life.

          For a nicer display, one can use the "In-home display".So no need to crawl under the stairs.

      3. steamnut

        What about rural?

        I live in North Wales and my nearest neighbour is too far away to enable any form of mesh to work reliably. Add to that my house has thick granite walls that wifi and mobile phone signals struggle with.

        In short, a smart meter is going to be a problem in my location unless they use some form of LTE and that assumes that the infrastructure will be added in our locality. My Vodafone signal is good but I still don't get 3G yet. I bet LTE is a pipe dream. And, if the smart meter needs to be modified again for this, then it's even more money. It would be cheaper to miss us out.

        There are a lot of rural areas in the UK so it's not a Welsh thing. Add the lake district, Yorkshire moors, Cornwall all of these areas are going to be challenging for the smart meter system.

        If all homes had broadband then wifi might be the way to go but, as the Sky engineer discovered in our property, sometimes you still need to use an Ethernet cable.

      4. Mage Silver badge

        Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

        Actually using the SRD 864Mhz doesn't solve the problem.

        The whole concept is broken at so many levels. It's really just about the ability to shed load.

        1. roytrubshaw
          Big Brother

          Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

          "The whole concept is broken at so many levels. It's really just about the ability to shed load."

          They're being quite open about it too.

          Their current slogan is "Getting Gaz and Leccy under control", the kicker is that it is their control and not your control!

      5. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

        Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

        "Based on the cost" I suspect someone has gone "We can't do that, just slap a really high charge on it so they think we can do it but its to expensive"

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

      Well that'll be hourly if the electric companies get their way. Nobody will know what they're paying.

    3. Mage Silver badge

      Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

      The Pi has no 864 to 868 SRD* band (it's not specifically Zigbee, but also short range walkie-talkies, home weather stations, wireless headphones, etc). It's "licence" free if you have approvals. It's probable a high part of cost might be approvals. The 433MHz SRD band is much smaller and also used for door bells, wireless security sensors, remote control extenders on 2.4GHz or 5.8Ghz video extenders, etc.

      I bet they eventually ask for another £7M to add 433MHz too!

      Yes the bare modules are only a few $ to buy off the shelf, but only finished products with SRD modules have approvals.

      Ofcom have a list of the "licence free" bands (really pre-licenced due to approvals of products). There is no such thing as an NFC, WiFi or Zigbee band, just ISM/SRD bands that those things can use.

      [* SRD = Short Range Device. ISM = Industrial, Scientific, Medical. Often North America has different Allocations to the rest of the world, they use 385MHz approx instead of 433MHz and part of 900MHz GSM band instead of 864 and their FRS (462 & 467) isn't the same spec or band as the European PMR446, at 446MHz. I think the 49MHz SRD might be similar. Legal CB (26 to 27MHz) historically wasn't the same spec in mainland Europe, UK (FM only higher channnels) and North America. Buyer beware on the Internet and in Maplin. ]

    4. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

      "until it can actually tell me when the price changes. "

      And only me, and not allow changes by third parties, and for people on prepay card meters (who are being pushed these particularly hard), can guarantee that some toerag won't eat all their credit just for a wheeze.

      These things are such a monumental fail that I suspect that the best way to make people see sense will be to publish attack vectors and then let the script kiddies have a field day - sooner or later they'll turn off the power of someone who needs it to stay alive.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It would be interesting to know how customers' annual savings are calculated. The displayed total consumption in a house at any instant is very variable if you have devices like fridges, freezers, and central heating pumps. Something that saves £26 a year isn't going to register significantly on instant - or even daily - readings.

    Only monitoring of individual devices would give you enough information about where you could make savings.

    I have a Belkin device that you plug in to a socket to measure the consumption of any new device. After that the device's usage comes down to how much I want the functional benefit it bestows.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It would be interesting to know how customers' annual savings are calculated

      "Calculated"

      or

      "guessed"

      ????

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        Re: It would be interesting to know how customers' annual savings are calculated

        Worse than guessed - they decide what the number needs to be and work backwards from there.

  4. Zog_but_not_the_first
    IT Angle

    Really smart meter?

    I too am still opposed to these so-called smart meters for all of the reasons spelled out here previously (El Reg passim). BUT I might be persuaded if said meter would monitor the spot price of all suppliers and automatically switch me to the cheapest, say, every half hour. This would have the effect of forcing the utilities to become ever more competitive driving the price down to the cost of production. Which is what market economics is all about, isn’t it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Really smart meter?

      Nice thought Zog the, how many? I feel the need to ask.

      But I think you should have used the joke icon.

      But this is not, never has been, or ever will be, about you and me saving money.

      Maybe Mr Hart-Davis' crappy openTRV project could add their crapsertise to the project, they seem like a good fit for each other.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Really smart meter?

        I didn't know about openTRV. I've just invested in a Honeywell Evohome system, estimated breakeven 3-4 years.

        So I googled "where can i buy opentrv". OK, looks like it's vapourware. I clearly made the right decision.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Really smart meter?

      "[...] automatically switch me to the cheapest, say, every half hour."

      That would have no effect on the amount of energy being consumed at any time. Capacity seems to be the predicted future concern.

      If a smart meter changed a household's consumption patterns automatically - then it is possible that the "herd" effect would merely move the over-capacity spikes. It could also mean that temporary usage of slow reacting generation facilities would not be able to be engaged on a predictive basis.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: Really smart meter?

        If it could do load shedding/scheduling then I could justify it.

        But it doesn't need a meter - I could simply plug in my washing machine through a plug that can schedule the load...

        If I had an electric car then it could be scheduled as well (I just say when I need it charged - the next morning)

        I can't do that as easily with the dryer because it's more important that I know when it's stopped.

        I can't do that with the freezer - because food safety.

        No-one can do that with a kettle/toaster/cooker because they are needed at the time they are needed.

        Without load shedding/scheduling there is no significant benefit to the network - there is no chance that these meters will take less energy than the current breed of meter.

        So how are they saving energy? They're not.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Really smart meter?

          " I could simply plug in my washing machine through a plug that can schedule the load..."

          Don't new model washing machines come with a "delay" function? My dish washer one is very useful for scheduling a start at a reasonable time after dinner - in case I forget to start it manually.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Really smart meter?

            we have a clever Meile dishwasher that you can shecdule to start when you have cheaper electric if you're on a tarrif which charges differtn rates during the day\night

            1. AMBxx Silver badge
              Flame

              Re: Really smart meter?

              Lovely idea to schedule stuff overnight until the houses start burning.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Really smart meter?

                "Lovely idea to schedule stuff overnight until the houses start burning."

                I use the scheduling to make sure that a loaded dish washer only starts the cycle when I know I will be home for its whole run. So I can set it up after lunch - but only to start automatically after dinner. My concern is also that a water control malfunction could flood the kitchen.

              2. Stoneshop
                FAIL

                Re: Really smart meter?

                Lovely idea to schedule stuff overnight until the houses start burning.

                You need to have a qualified electrician overhaul your fusebox.

                1. Neil 44

                  Re: Really smart meter?

                  or not buy Hotpoint, Indesit, Creda, Swan or Proline Tumble Dryers....

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Really smart meter?

                  Fire Fighters have said that a large number of house fires are caused by white goods,

                  Therefore there is an increased risk if you are running them when you are asleep.

                  In My rented flat i had a whirlpool tumble dryer that is on the dangerous list. The agents tried to tell me it was safe and whirlpool had said it was not on the list. when i contacted watchdog i had the dryer modified by one of whirlpools engineers within 48 hours. but i still wouldn't run it when i was asleep.

            2. Tom Paine

              Re: Really smart meter?

              My old Mum's been running her washing machine on cheap Economy 7 overnight rate for, what, thirty years? at a guess.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Really smart meter?

                we had economy 7 in our old house so used to time our tumble, dishwasher and washing machine to all go on at night

              2. Roland6 Silver badge

                Re: Really smart meter?

                cheap Economy 7 overnight rate for, what, thirty years?

                Suggest you take a look at her usage. Unless she's using storage heaters the overnight savings are being totally negated by the added cost of day units.

                Eco7 became more expensive for me back in the early 1990's when the misses moved in and a single tank of hot water (heated overnight on Eco7) was no longer sufficient...

                But getting her to change a long standing habit...

                Aside: We addressed this by putting solar panels on their roof when an investment matured and the government grant/bribe gave a return of 10~12% pa on the investment; then suffered complaints each year they had to pay an electricity bill covering the winter quarter...

                1. AMBxx Silver badge

                  Re: Really smart meter?

                  Cold water only

                  I asked a plumber about this. The reasoning is that a modern machine uses very little water. By the time the hot water reaches the machine, the machine has enough water with the cold that was already in the pipes.

                  No idea how true that is, just what the plumber said.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Really smart meter?

                    "No idea how true that is, just what the plumber said."

                    Depends how far away the hot tank is from the machine.

                    It's the classic schoolboy "filling a bath" calculation. As it's a long time since I was that eponymous lad then all working is being shown below - so any error should be obvious. The results "feel" right.

                    A pipe's volume is pi * (r^2) * length

                    A 15mm pipe per metre holds approximately 0.68*0.68*3.142*100 = 145 cubic centimetres

                    So that's 0.145 litres per metre of pipe.

                    so 10 metres of 15mm pipe from the hot tank*** would hold 1.45 litres.

                    A modern washing machine can use as little as 56.8 litres

                    Assuming the cold water is fed into the machine at the same head pressure as the hot - and the hot pipe is completely cold - then

                    there will be 27.65 litres of hot water and 29.125 litres of cold water.

                    The temperature of the mixture will be approximately halfway between the difference of the two sources - just measured at 10C and 55C = 32C

                    In practice the machine would be expected to regulate the input flows to get a cooler or warmer overall mix.

                    ***in practice there would be wider diameter manifold at the tank for some distance.

                    The 55C is a bit low if one is trying to avoid Legionnaires' Disease in the shower.

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Really smart meter?

                  "Unless she's using storage heaters the overnight savings are being totally negated by the added cost of day units."

                  Stayed in a house with that heating system many years ago. Was puzzled why the heating was on in the day time. It transpired that the supplier's sealed time switch had long since gone out of sync with wall clock time - presumably due to many/long power cuts.

                  1. Robin Bradshaw

                    Re: Really smart meter?

                    Im fairly sure the economy 7 time switches were radios tuned to Radio 4 LW, they dont contain a clock but switch on and of according to a signal embedded in the Radio 4 transmission, its quite oddly interesting really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch

                    1. AndyD 8-)₹

                      Re: Really smart meter?

                      "Im fairly sure the economy 7 time switches were radios tuned to Radio 4 LW"

                      ... which 30 years ago was on 1500m not quite the same as the current 198khz

                      1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

                        Re: Really smart meter?

                        "which 30 years ago was on 1500m not quite the same as the current 198khz"

                        Hmm. Indeed. It was moved from 200KHz to 198KHz in 1988, that's 29 years ago.

                        https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/463316/bbc-radio-4-lw-when-did-it-change-from-200khz-to-198khz

                        Should be safe to assume that "embedded devices" of the era could be re-tuned for such a small change in frequency. Or maybe they didn't need to, if their frequency filters weren't that narrow to begin with.

                  2. Kiwi

                    Re: Really smart meter?

                    "Unless she's using storage heaters the overnight savings are being totally negated by the added cost of day units."

                    Stayed in a house with that heating system many years ago. Was puzzled why the heating was on in the day time. It transpired that the supplier's sealed time switch had long since gone out of sync with wall clock time - presumably due to many/long power cuts.

                    Over here they don't use clocks. Every one of those heaters (and other "nightstore" systems) I've seen works off a "ripple switch", same as our "controlled hot water", so it gets turned on and off at the right times. Have a power cut at the time the switch should be changed? Then it will miss said change. But except for those very rare times, no power cut will affect the timing because the switch is controlled elsewhere.

                  3. Stoneshop
                    Boffin

                    Re: Really smart meter?

                    It transpired that the supplier's sealed time switch had long since gone out of sync with wall clock time - presumably due to many/long power cuts.

                    Somewhere in my Pile of Stuff there's a timer switch apparently designed for such an environment. It has a fully mechanical clockwork, spring-driven, with the spring being wound every couple of hours by an electric motor; as the spring unwinds it hits a contact that switches on the motor. It has a gang reserve of about five days and a weird flag-like thing that drops into view when the spring is fully unwound and the echappement has stopped. After a bit of pondering I figured it was a "time is probably incorrect" indicator. Marvelous construction.

                    1. Kiwi
                      Thumb Up

                      Re: Really smart meter?

                      Somewhere in my Pile of Stuff there's a timer switch apparently designed for such an environment.

                      Would love to see something like that.. Or pictures of it at a pinch.

                      Always been a bit weird for neat mechanical tricks like that!

                      (A "drool" icon would be great to add to that upcoming extra row El Reg! :) )

                3. Richard 12 Silver badge

                  Re: Really smart meter?

                  government grant/bribe gave a return of 10~12% pa

                  It's not a government grant, it's directly paid for by everyone who uses electricity.

                  So I'm paying you for that solar PV, as is the poor sod in a council flat who can barely manage to keep in pre-pay tokens.

                  We are also all paying for the "smart meter" rollout. Several times.

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Really smart meter?

              Living in a flat i will love it when my neighbours starts turning their washing machine on between 12:30 - 07:30 when economy 7 is in operation. as its so loud i will get no sleep. being an old property there is virtually no sound proofing.

          2. Tom 7

            Re: Really smart meter? - Washing machines.

            Most washing machines seem to be fuckups anyway - in order to get A rating they seem to need have no hot water connection - they cant say if the hot water is efficiently heated so rather than risk it...

            I personally would like a smart meter that does nothing other than tell me electronically what the price is and for how long the price will last so my home energy management system (which may or may not co-operate with my neighbours to ensure we dont push the price up) can do the best it can with it.

            I think I can see sales of personal EMP devices going well in the not too distant future.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Really smart meter? - Washing machines.

              yeah its a bit odd with washing machines as dishwashers tend to accept a hot or cold feed but I suppose they need hotter water than a washing machine does these days. Most of our loads get washed at 30 degrees

            2. Neil 44

              Re: Really smart meter? - Washing machines.

              Ebac are now doing British-made hot and cold fill machines! (yes, I've got one and its working well - using my solar-heated hot water right now!)

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Really smart meter? - Washing machines.

              "which may or may not co-operate with my neighbours to ensure we dont push the price up"

              Isn't there a UK "shill" law against that sort of conspiracy?

        2. Richard 12 Silver badge

          Re: Really smart meter?

          If it could do load shedding

          The UK smart meters can.

          You're the load, you get shed. There's a 100A contactor inside, what else could that be for?

          Well, other than destroying grid balance when there's a high enough market penetration for somebody to think it might be fun to draw a cock and balls visible from space.

          Or when a foreign government wants fo cause us real - and very deniable - trouble.

    3. Tom 7

      Re: Really smart meter?

      You do realise they are already Really Smart Meters - most of them will only work with the original supplier so if you try and change supplier...

      Really smart - but not for the customer,.

  5. AMBxx Silver badge
    FAIL

    Capita owned?

    'nuff said.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Capita owned?

      Did I misread the article?

      Capita own DCC, who spotted the fault, not EDMI (owned by Osaki Electric Co Ltd) who want £7m to fix it.

  6. Tom Wood

    That doesn't sound ridiculous

    Works out an average rate of £98 an hour, which is not crazy. Depends a lot on where they are based and the availability of people with the right skills.

    So the question is, are they over-estimating the resourcing needs?

    Based on everything involved in designing and validating a hardware change and the software changes to go with it (does it need new drivers? How well tested is the new chip? Do you end up finding bugs and weeks of back-and-forth with the chipset vendor to resolve them? etc) 18 months and 13 people seems kinda the right ballpark.

    Considering the outrage there would be if the project was rushed and the resulting code under-tested and buggy, maybe they are rightly estimating cautiously in this case?

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

      Indeed.

      It may be just a case of "I am afraid of big numbers" (a usual attitude seen in muh bossman) or it may be a case of overcharging (a usual attitude promoted by muh bossman) or even discombobulated, money-burning project execution . Probably and as usual, it will be something in between these three points on the triangle.

    2. Steve Todd

      Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

      13 people, on full time at about £700 per day, for 18 months, to replace ONE chip in an existing design doesn't sound rediculus to you? Where do you work?

      1. Tom Wood

        Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

        I work in embedded software - not smart meters - but I've worked with on similar projects.

        "Replacing one chip" is probably not as simple as it sounds.

        From the hardware side - there will probably be board redesigns (operating in a different band may need new antennas, RF validation etc) which could result in several spins of hardware, refinements etc.

        From the software side - we don't know what the interface is to this chip but quite possibly it will require entirely different drivers to the old chip. Maybe some kind of abstraction layer needs changing if the interface to the driver is different (we don't know if the new chip is from the same vendor as the old chip). Sure, drivers are often provided by the chipset vendor, but they also rarely work perfectly first time and need effort to integrate and test.

        And then you have to test the thing, not only with the new bands but also with the old ones, and shake out all the weird edge cases, investigate, debug and fix them. And then there's the official certification process too, which is I imagine fairly onerous.

        I'm not saying that this is definitely a £3.3m project, but in the absence of any other information, it certainly seems plausible that the engineering (and, yes, project management and QA) involved in such a project could come to that ballpark.

      2. Swarthy
        Happy

        Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

        I would gladly sign up to do dev work for £250K for 18 months.

        1. Tom Wood

          Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

          A single developer working on a contract won't get that much, though they'll probably make a bit over half of that, with the rest being overhead costs (premises, recruitment, management, etc...) and profit for the company you are working for. An employee will make less but gets job security, holiday pay, sick pay, maternity/paternity pay, employer's NI etc etc.

          http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts/uk/software%20engineer.do

    3. Stoneshop
      Devil

      Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

      and the resulting code under-tested and buggy,

      That won't change.

    4. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

      It is ridiculous.

      According to several people who work in RF, the developer time cost of such a change is about a fortnight.

      Then a week of compliance testing, and if it fails another two weeks of dev and compliance to make it pass.

      868MHz is not a difficult band. There are many standard modules.

      We have swapped in the other direction a few years ago. It took a month to go from requirements to shipping product!

      This is all assuming that the existing design actually works at all, which it must do because they are not allowed to charge twice for the same work, right?

      The numbers and timescale are very suspicious. One suspects the existing system architecture and software doesn't actually work.

      1. Wim Ton

        Re: That doesn't sound ridiculous

        868 MHz Zigbee has a lower bandwidth and duty cycle than the 2.4 GHz version, so the application might have to be adapted as well

  7. Paul Smith

    Smart?

    When did "pay as you go" become smart for anyone other then the service provider.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "When did "pay as you go" become smart for anyone other then the service provider."

    My annual water/sewerage bill is about £450 pounds based on the rateable value of the house. A change to water meter charging becomes compulsory in a couple of years time.

    In the interim they are supplying quarterly advisory costs from readings of the newly fitted meters. So far they indicate a metered supply would only cost me about a quarter of the fixed bill. I will be interested to see what happens after I spray clean the patio.

    1. JamesPond

      Based upon my rateable value, my water bill was £35 per month. 2 adults and 1 child on a water meter now comes in at £24 per month on average. That includes washing cars at home (no longer use the pressure washer) but have stopped watering the garden. It does make one more water conservative (small c).

      1. localzuk Silver badge

        The outcome of water meters in many areas has been a big jump in water prices - as the companies found they had a much lower income using the meters, so had to compensate with prices rises.

        So, you end up paying more for less eventually.

      2. Kiwi
        Boffin

        but have stopped watering the garden. It does make one more water conservative (small c)

        Depending on your council by-laws1, it's easy to fit/make rainwater tanks off your downpipes, and you can even buy a number of models on the open market easily enough (at least here), which fit into your normal downpipes (I think "Gutter Witch" might be the brand name). A couple of 200L/44 gallon drums with downpipes diverted to them can be a cheaper alternative, but takes a bit longer to set up. And of course make sure your foundation is good enough, 200L is around 200kg....

        1 Some NZ councils frown on rainwater tanks, even though they usually reduce consumption and also provide some level of rainwater surge protection (ie the first 100 litres of a downpour might go to filling your tank, meaning their network doesn't have to deal with it). Notably, I believe it is those councils who charge for water who are most against rainwater tanks (but ICBVWAPA)

  9. trev101

    What benefit is a smart meter? I have said no and still say no. I am not convinced it is of any measurable benefit to the consumer. To spend £11bn, at no cost to the consumer suggests it is of more benefit to the providers of our energy in the homes. It enables them to regulate, control, ration remotely and we have all seen the press articles warning of looming energy shortfalls with demand for electricity outstripping supply within a decade. Any reasonable person would say no to allowing a third party cut off or reduce power to your home remotely.

    1. alain williams Silver badge

      You forgot to mention: sell your energy use profile to ... someone will want to buy that; even if only ''private'' deals between energy staff and their burglar mates who want to know when you are away on holiday.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Any reasonable person would say no to allowing a third party cut off or reduce power to your home remotely."

      If they run out of capacity they will first reduce supply to those businesses that have an explicit contract to allow that. After that they will have to shed the load on sections of the general supply.

      1. localzuk Silver badge

        They should expand capacity then. No point in an electric system if they randomly run out and turn stuff off.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "They should expand capacity then."

          The following is my guess at the problems with UK electric generation capacity.

          Coal-fired plants have been at best moth-balled - as too slow and spoil climate change emission targets

          Oil - climate change targets

          Gas - climate change targets

          Wood burners running into fuel supply problems.

          Domestic waste burners. Much NIMBY opposition from Tory heartlands.

          Investment in UK nuclear replacements has been long delayed. Existing plant reaching end of life.

          Buying French nuclear energy via the channel cable in jeopardy as they might not have a surplus due to reactor maintenance problems.

          Wind turbines incentives removed. Much NIMBY opposition from Tory heartlands.

          Solar panel incentives drastically reduced.

          Estuary barrage schemes keep getting delayed for various reasons.

  10. JamesPond
    Unhappy

    £7m for a change, sounds about right

    Win the contract by bidding low, then make 'em pay through the nose for every change. What could be wrong with that, serves the customer right for not making the requirements clear first time around (that's sarcasm by the way, not my world view).

    When EDS beat BT to the NHSmail contract, they delivered their first proof-of-concept / sandbox system for testing. Email addresses were 1@nhs.net, 2@nhs.net etc. The requirements didn't define what format each persons' email address should be in, only that each person should have a unique address. Cost to make a change to the contract, £1m .

  11. 0765794e08
    Coffee/keyboard

    Sore misgivings

    When it comes to ‘smart’ meters, I must admit I have very sore misgivings.

    A few weeks back, I got a letter from my water supplier, saying my currently non-metered water supply is going to be changed to a metered connection, and a ‘smart’ meter is going to be installed at the boundary of my property.

    And then a few days ago I got a similar letter from my electricity supplier, saying that the old meter is going to be replaced with a ‘smart’ meter, and I need to contact them to arrange a day for installation.

    But here’s the rub. In both cases, I wasn’t asked if I want a new smart meter. Seems I don’t get a choice – they’re going to be installed whether I give consent or not. The government wants us all to have them, you see.

    Now normally I wouldn’t mind – I’ve had replacement gas/electricity meters before. But these new ones broadcast usage data over a wireless signal, and that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

    I’m reminded of a scene in the film ‘Heat’. Robert De Nero is discussing a bank heist with a fellow criminal. The crim has printouts of the bank’s cash flow. De Nero says, “How'd you get this information?”. The crim replies, “This stuff just flies through the air. It's just beamed out all over the place. You just have to grab it. I know how to grab it.”

    And that is why smart meters worry me greatly.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Sore misgivings

      They're still optional no matter how the supplier tries to word it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sore misgivings

        Spot on sir.

        No one is under ANY legal obligation to have one of these white elephants fitted, despite the pressure being applied to consumers to "nudge" them into their fuel suppliers smart meter schemes.

        Dumb people have smart meters

        Smart people have dumb meters.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sore misgivings

        "They're still optional no matter how the supplier tries to word it."

        The electricity ones are optional - even though the companies never volunteer that information to customers when telling them to make an appointment.

        Not so sure about water meters - which are now being compulsorily fitted Our supplier said there is a two year grace period when they will give you a choice as to which method is used to charge. After that it is apparently compulsory to be meter charged.

        Friends have been told they can't have a meter as their stop tap hole is too deep. No suggestion has been made about how that will get fixed.

        1. Neil 44

          Re: Sore misgivings

          The other one that gets them is terraced houses where the water supply comes to one end of the terrace from the road and then links (usually the back of ) the houses....

          The drains often do the same

        2. Kiwi
          Boffin

          Re: Sore misgivings

          Friends have been told they can't have a meter as their stop tap hole is too deep. No suggestion has been made about how that will get fixed.

          Wouldn't it be possible to fit a large inverted "U"? As in dig a larger hole around the "stop tap hole" (often called a "Toby" in NZ), fit a 90deg elbow so the incoming pipe bends upwards, at an appropriate height put in another 90deg so the pipe hoes horiontal, fit the tap+meter to this, then another elbow, downward drop to original depth and another elbow to finish.

          (For those wanting to try to avoid a meter with the "too deep" excuse, well, your answer's an inversion of my post, though you either have to get the street main turned off or get quite messy doing this ;) )

    2. Neil Spellings
      Facepalm

      Re: Sore misgivings

      If criminals were that interested in how much electricity you were using it would be much easier just to steal your mail

      1. BebopWeBop
        Thumb Down

        Re: Sore misgivings

        I don't get a bill through the post.....

        1. Stoneshop
          Boffin

          Re: Sore misgivings

          I don't get a bill through the post.....

          And even if you did, it would only show total usage over the past billing period. Not very useful for determining whether you're out for the day.

  12. Adelio

    How do customers save anything.

    I have never understood how getting a smart meter saves customers ANYTHING.

    I had a smart meter intalled a couple of years ago by EON. They gave me a seperate device to monitor my usage. Never looked at it a lot, just sits in the kitched gathering dust.

    A year later I changed to Sainsbury (British gas), Guess what. It stopped working EXCEPT for giving me the meter reading and NOW I have to have someone READ my meter!

    Why. Because when they started rolling out smart meters they had not set-up all the infrastructure.

    Talking to my mate A Yorkshire Electricity.

    All the readings go to a central hub and are then farmed out to the suppliers. BUT if you change supplier they apear to be unable to re-direct the meter reading to the new supplier. (that bit was not written yet) So that is why I now have to have a man to read my "Smart" meters.

    The ONLY cost benefit for smart meters that I can think of is fo rthe suppliers because they no longer need bodies to read the smart meters, just get if from the data feed.

    Why would I save a single penny? I mean what is this "smart" meter supposed to do. Magically reduce my household power bills?

    As I do not have Economy 7 (does it even still exist?) the power costs the same anytime of day!

    1. JamesPond

      Re: How do customers save anything.

      "I have never understood how getting a smart meter saves customers ANYTHING."

      For electricity and gas use, where you already have human meter readers, the driver comes from the supplier not having to send a person out to read your meter. For water it's different because in the UK we used to be charged on the value of our house rather than how much we used.

      Maybe if the smart meter was really smart and could show in monetary value how much each appliance was costing to run at any moment in time, it might scare you into switching stuff off. But who's going to replace a cooker or TV just on the basis of buying a more energy efficient one when the ROI is going to be years away if ever.

      1. gryphon

        Re: How do customers save anything.

        Still goes by council tax banding in Scotland.

        I looked at getting a meter a good few years ago since I was single but in a high rated house. Would have worked out way more expensive.

        Massive standing charge even before paying for the actual water.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How do customers save anything.

      "A year later I changed to Sainsbury (British gas)"

      You're lucky if British Gas read your meter regularly. I had a snotty phone call from them saying they now only read the gas meter every two years. Apparently I was now at fault for not sending them regular readings - without any idea of when that should be. They said the change had been flagged in some small print on a bill (paid by monthly credits) a few years ago.

      Pissed me off - as I paid them £100 a few years ago to move the gas meter outside the house so they didn't need access to read it.

      At least EON is sensible and send me an email when the want me to take an electric meter reading to enter on their web site. Once a year they tell me not to send a reading - but to expect a meter reader.

      1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

        Re: How do customers save anything.

        "They said the change had been flagged in some small print on a bill"

        Also freely available from their planning office on Alpha Centauri.

  13. JimboSmith Silver badge

    I explained to a colleague why smart meters weren't the best thing to happen to electricity since Faraday and he was amazed. He said that he thought these meters were supposed to be able to save him money automatically. I pointed out that he would have to make changes for these things to save him any money. He said there was no chance he'd be saving anything as they turn off lights they're not using, only boil enough water for the cups they're using, use a timer in the shower to save water/gas, turn the tv/router/dvd/Gru Ray fully off as opposed to standby etc.

    He's told his supplier to sod off after that when they've told him they'd like to come round and install a Smart Meter. I think there will be a very small percentage of people this will actually help but not enough to make a difference.

    There are those (a small number of people) like him who do the utmost to use a little power as possible who will save nothing.

    There are those (a slightly larger number) who will use this to lower their power consumption.

    There are those who will get a meter installed and after playing around seeing what uses what will go back to their previous habits.

    There are those who will have it installed and do sod all with it and never change their habits.

    1. JamesPond

      There are those who will have it installed and do sod al with it and never change their habits.

      ....The vast majority will have it installed and do sod all with it and never change their habits.

      FTFY

      1. JimboSmith Silver badge

        Yeah I agree with that, they'll then be hit with spot pricing and wonder why their bills have gone up.

  14. Andytug

    I've had several phone messages left (home and mobile) asking if I want one

    When a person finally got me direct I said no, and was assured I'd be removed from the list. Time will tell.....

    The physical facts haven't changed, so to save significant amounts use devices that heat less often (look at the label for the wattage). 2000W thing for an hour is 2 units, etc. Washer, dishwasher, heating boiler, cooker, kettle, hair dryer and so on. If it heats air or water it's going to cost. Anything that uses tens of watts is nowhere near as significant, but if you think you'll get a saving from changing it (LED lights, if you have a lot of halogen spotlights it's worth it as it's 50W against 5W per light etc) then do.

    Worrying about phone chargers is pointless if your house is draughty and electrically heated.....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I've had several phone messages left (home and mobile) asking if I want one

      The physical facts haven't changed, so to save significant amounts use devices that heat less often (look at the label for the wattage). 2000W thing for an hour is 2 units, etc.

      But if I want something to reach a certain temperature, I want the rate of energy in to be as high as possible as all the time it's heating up, energy is also being lost to the surrounding area. So, in extremis, 100W for 10 hours won't get me to the same temperature as 10KW for 6 minutes, even though the total energy input is the same.

      So a lower power device is a false economy.

      1. Tom Wood

        Re: I've had several phone messages left (home and mobile) asking if I want one

        "But if I want something to reach a certain temperature, I want the rate of energy in to be as high as possible as all the time it's heating up, energy is also being lost to the surrounding area. So, in extremis, 100W for 10 hours won't get me to the same temperature as 10KW for 6 minutes, even though the total energy input is the same."

        That's true if you're heating a fluid (e.g. boiling water for a cuppa) but not for a solid. If you cooked meat that way you'd end up burned on the outside and raw in the middle.

        And gentler heating can be more efficient, for example you could cook a joint of beef in a big electric oven or a small slow cooker. The slow cooker would use less energy because it loses less heat to the surroundings, the cooker itself has lower thermal mass, it heats the beef directly by conduction rather than indirectly by convection, etc.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I've had several phone messages left (home and mobile) asking if I want one

          "[...] you could cook a joint of beef in a big electric oven or a small slow cooker. "

          Or even a hay box - where the meal is cooked by its initial cooking heat retained in a highly insulated box.

        2. dajames

          Re: I've had several phone messages left (home and mobile) asking if I want one

          If you cooked meat that way you'd end up burned on the outside and raw in the middle.

          That's called "Black and Blue" -- the perfect way to cook a steak!

          The point is to have control, and to be able to cook quickly those things that are best cooked quickly while cooking more slowly those things that are best cooked slowly. One size does NOT fit all.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I've had several phone messages left (home and mobile) asking if I want one

      "When a person finally got me direct I said no, and was assured I'd be removed from the list. Time will tell....."

      They eventually stopped phoning me - but still sent me letters.

      Then they told me that my meter needed changing as it had reached the end of its certified life. Fair enough - so I rang them. I specified that I did not want a Smart Meter. They said that was ok - and it would be a "classic" one. My impression is that they would not have volunteered that option - like they never tell you a Smart Meter is voluntary.

      The guy who changed the meter was surprised that it was only 9 years old - he said they normally change them nearer 15 years. He did wonder if that was the company's way to get a Smart Meter in by default where people have not yet agreed to have one.

    3. David Shaw

      I've got (so-far) three smart meters at home

      A reads the left side of the house for one energy supplier [or it should] (LCD display has failed so I can no longer read it locally - I'm going to have to wire an arduino up to count the kWh led pulses)

      B reads the right side of the house for another energy supplier

      and a third one C checks what output my main FIT PV-array has, (installed immediately after the inverter to ensure that I don't cheat to get bigger FIT payments) [or they should]

      The reality is that all my meters are read by company B, who sometimes send my consumption data to company A for billing, [once they delayed the data by a whole year] My B & C smartmeters are also not accurate for receiving my FIT payments as I'm simply receiving "an average" for my 3kWp array - I'm getting identical payments to a local friend. Maybe one-day they will correct with over/under payments?

      As a new hobby, I've just bought a new set of PV components (from a major online book-seller) :- couple of "12V" 100Wp poly modules from somewhere in the EU@£80-ish each and a £79 MPPT 18V 600W grid-tie micro-inverter. I'll be feeding this 230V into smartmeter A, checking carefully to ensure that it doesn't register my generation as power-consumption! [smartmeters often don't run backwards] I hope to just get rid of my base-load on that side of the house. All lights are already LED.

      In this part of the EU I was given no-option / zero choice about the first two meters, and had to accept the checksum meter as part of the FIT contract. It's good that you might get a choice in UK, if you say "NO" a lot when offered.

      The initial load-shedding function hypothesis envisaged of smartmeters is that they will connect through a domotic API for turning off the fridge and freezer for a few hours [without any risk of spoiling the food], then progressively shed further loads until potentially fully off. However it seems that the current generation doesn't do that, my fridge & freezers certainly don't do that, and I don't really want to pay multi-millions to billions to implement this, without a lot more debate.

  15. localzuk Silver badge

    Numbers in the article don't add up

    £11bn for the project. 53 million meters to install. That's £207.55 each.

    So, how did the project cost come to £7bn originally, when they were looking at £390 extra per meter?

    It doesn't compute.

    Unless they mean that the £11bn is what was predicted to be charged to the government, and £390 is what they expected to get back from households to pay that off?

  16. defiler

    Used to have an OWL

    There's a sensor to clip onto the cable and a remote display to show you how much electricity is used. It was good for a few weeks to determine where my costs were going, but after that it turned into a way of telling when the oven was pre-heated...

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Makes me chuckle

    I know some ex-EDMI bods, and they've been screaming about this nonsense for years. 2014? That's late to the party...

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Its all about energy rationing

    its the infrastructure needed to charge you more for using less, rather than build more infrastructure, same as water meters.

  19. Drefsab_UK

    when it comes to a smart meter I wont be taking one optionally unless theres an actual benifit to me.

    I know how much energy I use, I know what my bill will be and all on my old mechanical meter that works a treat. It presents no security concerns to me, it does not allow anyone any direct control over any "smart" devices in my home (other than everything on or off).

    The people designing these can not get the functionality right let alone security.

  20. Mike 125

    secure?

    Is there some serious, open, detailed security analysis of these things? If not, then history tells us they *are* vulnerable. Presumably they use embedded 'secret' keys? And how is all that managed at the other end? Also, lots of other standard questions on proprietary ‘security’...

    1. The obvious

      Re: secure?

      Hahahaha! You'd think wouldn't you. No independent testing. But about this time last year it turned out that a huge number of the devices had to have their encryption keys changed as they were using THE SAME KEY... That is the level of competence behind this little endeavour.

      We had an engineer come out to change our meter who couldn't understand why we wouldn't have one. After I showed him a couple of articles I think he may not be so keen any more.

    2. JimboSmith Silver badge

      Re: secure?

      GCHQ got involved after they spotted major flaws in the systems used abroad - yep high amongst them was the use of the same key for everyone. They mandated that different unique keys were used and other measures to protect our infrastructure.

      https://www.ft.com/content/ca2d7684-ed15-11e5-bb79-2303682345c8

  21. JaitcH
    FAIL

    Yet ANOTHER Fail In The Offing?

    The 868 MHz-band (868–870 MHz), in the UK, is filled with RFID systems, thermostats, fire systems, burglar systems, 'wireless' audio, telemetry, telecommand, etc. Sounds like another recipe for disaster.

    Some units can output up to 500mW when equipped ith LBT (Listen Before Transmit) and RFID units can output 2W!

    It seems that the UK Consumer is getting ripped once again when frequency agile smart-meters are going for USD$50 in quantities of 100 on Alibaba. Guess this is yet another case of re-inventing the wheel so a Union Jack can be planted on the things.

    This is not new technology - smart-meters have been installed by the millions over the past 5 plus years. SOC smart-meters cost a few dollars and given the present mechanical meters have much of the needed hardware there is no reason why they should cost more than GBP100 - except for the government-granted monopolies.

    Why can't smart-meters perform similarly to SIGFOX, Weightless and WiSUNs, which use licence exempt wide area mesh technology based on the IEEE802.15.4g standard on their own cut-out frequencies?

    For drone operators, another great band for your use! Hardware available on Alibaba and other Chinese marketing sources. And for those putative eco-terrorists, get some 2 watt RFID units and give the power companies some exciting times.

  22. BongoJoe

    My Ideal SmartMeter

    Would be one that changes supplier automatically to the cheapest supplier, without penalty, and without a lock in period.

    In an ideal world if my smartMeter decided that those five hours on ScottishPower were good value, but there's a cheaper tarrif if I moved to VirginElec and then, perhaps tomorrow, it would flip to LincolnLeccy for half an hour before deciding that OrkeyPower is better value and so on...

    Then I could see the case for one.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My Ideal SmartMeter

      The supplier tariffs would be dynamic and determined by their bot systems depending on demand. So it would soon become a whack-a-mole scenario.

  23. andymbush

    Incompatible meters

    It makes me wonder what the true cost of the roll out will really be.

    I had two smart meters installed just over a year ago replacing my 20 year old ones. I am in the process of changing energy providers as my fixed price deal is coming to an end, and the new provider will be installing two new meters, as there is no interoperability between the two company systems.

    What a huge waste of time and resources and ultimately MY money as they seem to have rushed the whole thing without working out common standards etc!!

  24. Kiwi
    Holmes

    Vendor lock-in is such a wonderful thing...

    When you're the vendor.

    A government-type "We can see it's going to cost us $XXX times more than projected, but we've already spent $Embarrassing on it so we'd better continue despite all the evidence to the contrary" also makes being such a vendor even more $$FUN$$!.

  25. heyrick Silver badge

    Beware the Linky

    In France, consumption and pricing is by KW. Typical tariffs are 6KW, 9KW, 12KW...

    The problem with the Linky is that it doesn't understand the start-up surge demands of equipment like electric motors. So you could have a 9KW tariff, be using half that, but when the spin cycle starts up on the washing machine there's a microsecond of higher demand and .... click. Darkness.

    The "cure" is to upgrade to a higher rated tariff. Which costs more in the standing charge and also in the per unit charge.

    They're also said to be extremely poor at coping with direct lightning strikes. As I have a mile of exposed conductor three phase coming to the house (very rural!), not only is my 230V really 218V (dropping to around 190V with the kettle and the heater on), the exposed wires are a lightning magnet. The current mechanical meter from 1964 sinks several direct hits per year. The usual result is the disjoncteur (A 650mA trip) cuts out. No equipment damage, living here I'm paranoid about this and unplug everything sensitive at the first signs of a storm. I have had exploding light bulbs, which pretty much justifies the paranoia.

    Can't wait until they force a Linky on me (the law says we don't get to say no). The mechanical meter has been there for 53 years. I wonder if the Linky will survive 53 weeks? [I would say 53 days, but it's been fairly calm so far this year...]

  26. AndrewDu

    They came and installed these things in half the houses in our village, despite being told that no mobile phone ever works there. The guys doing the work just said "Yeah, we know, dumb management eh, but we're being paid to do this so we're going to do it".

    What a waste of money.

  27. Hugh Barnard

    I suggested at the 'consultation' (I call them insultations now, being patronised to death by Sir Humphrey) that the UK consider P1 data ports on the consumer side as in the Netherlands. This would allow 'us' to have the datastream for analysis, rather than only the suppliers.

    If I had simple access to the data, I might consider it. But, as it is, and other commentators have said on this thread, waste of space, waste of money, bad security and no upside for the consumer (I don't count the smiley face 'in home display'). As usual a bit of Crapita is involved too.

  28. Roger Mew

    Oh yes

    868 is supposed to be the frequency that the government want phase out. Certainly over about the next 10 years the use of 868Mhz is supposed to be being given to something else. In any case even that will not give full coverage of the UK.

    1. Kiwi
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Oh yes

      Certainly over about the next 10 years the use of 868Mhz is supposed to be being given to something else.

      That "given to something else" wouldn't be electronic devices for Government monitoring of when people are home and what appliances they're using "smart meters" would it?

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My smart meter

    Hasn't worked since 2013.

    In fact had to contact North Korea Electric & Power because the stupid thing was jamming my WiFi, 3G, 4G, amateur radio and other stuff.

    Even measured the RF leakage of the thing 3 floors away so clearly something badly wrong there.

    Interestingly they did fix it once I spoke to the right person.

    Apparently it can be changed but the cost is quite high and they are going to fix it on the next scheduled check rather than doing major electrical work which would require a 12 hour outage and at least two trips because this is one of the really old meters that has the wrong backplate so the whole thing needs redoing.

    Anyone else here had this "feature" ?

  30. Electricity_Guy

    13 people, 1.5 years, £13M?

    Seriously, they are taking the piss.

    I work on similar (equipment that measures electrical power, much more advanced than these meters) design projects (probably more complex) that requires a big element of firmware and application software.

    If our team proposed a project like this asking for that budget wed be shown the door.

    Would I have a Smart meter? No, consumer savings are marginal unless you have no idea where your electricity goes.

    The savings for the power infrastructure companies is where the money is.

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