Reply to post: Re: OK, but why ....

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

veti Silver badge

Re: OK, but why ....

While I will cheerfully agree that the UK rollout is highly stupid - clearly designed by and for the benefit of the big, incumbent retailers - there is a also a colossal amount of the most ridiculous FUD on this topic.

Security? As already pointed out, there is nothing of value to a burglar in tracking your electricity usage. There are easier, and more reliable, ways to find out who's not home.

Load control? Unless the rollout is even dumber than I've heard, that's not done by cutting off power at the meter. It's done by selectively cutting off individual major loads, usually an immersion heater. The rest of the house remains powered.

Disconnection? Covered by the same regulations no matter what kind of meter you have. Sure, they can be changed, but that's always been true and always will be. There is no reason to imagine that smart meters will make a difference, except that they make it much faster to get reconnected.

Power consumption? A smart meter uses a fraction of the power of your mobile phone. Your old mechanical meter probably used more.

If you want to complain, forget all this FUD. It's just noise, and everyone who knows anything about the subject knows it, so as soon as you start talking about it you mark yourself as someone who can be ignored. Talk instead about the decision to put the rollout in the hands of the retailers, and not even stipulate that they must stick to common standards of communication and encryption. That's what has given the UK the unpardonable situation where meters can be used as a barrier to competition. The correct solution was to give metering responsibility to some third party, whether govt-run or private sector, who are required to deal with all retailers on a FAND basis.

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