Smart meters - what's the point?

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shpalman
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by shpalman » Mon Jan 25, 2021 3:49 pm

JQH wrote:
Mon Jan 25, 2021 3:43 pm
shpalman wrote:
Mon Jan 25, 2021 12:39 pm
JQH wrote:
Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:48 am
I was thinking more on the lines of stopping their hearts then restarting them with those shocky things.
You don't shock a flatline.
Well, however they restart flatlines.
Adrenaline injection like in Pulp Fiction.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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nekomatic
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by nekomatic » Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:26 pm

I went for a job with the people who make smart gas meters a few years ago and was all ‘wouldn’t it be cool to be supporting the environment against The Man’ until I realised it was actually all about supporting The Man against people who can’t pay their gas bills.
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wilsontown
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by wilsontown » Fri Mar 12, 2021 11:24 pm

So I joined the property owning classes today (subject to the benevolence of my bank), and when I got in the house there was no gas or electric supply. I had to get in touch with the provider (so I needed to find a document I'd been sent weeks ago to figure out who that was), and then I had to go and press a specific sequence of buttons on the smart meters to get the supply restored.

In my current rental, we have smart meters but the the electric one seems to have packed in, gas is OK. So presumably when I move out, I will get an estimated bill, thus negating the one advantage I was supposed to have as a consumer.

Whenever I've moved in to a place before, the power has always been on when I got in the place.
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by dyqik » Fri Mar 12, 2021 11:49 pm

Switching it off is a pretty dangerous thing in winter. More so here than in the UK, but still...

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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by Hunting Dog » Mon Mar 15, 2021 10:25 pm

Hunting Dog wrote:
Sat Jan 23, 2021 10:29 pm
We will probably never know...

Eon want to change our gas nd electric metersmto smart versions. To change the gas one they need to check the flue which is in the loft. They hve sent one person round who couldn't do it because he needed a ladder trained operative to help. They keep trying to make us book new appointments for it but every time we ask they still can't actually send the required two man team..... this has been going on for a few years now!
We finally got the meters changed. It was a bit touch and go... one, rather large, man turned up to do it, we explained about the location of the flue and asked if he could use our ladder to view it. He initially sais yes, then retreated to his van to check something, and emerged to say it was more than his jobs worth to do it on his own But he did manage to get someone else to turn up later to help. New person came with neat collapsible ladder aproved by the company. Then we heard them debating how they were going to do it, because approved collapsible ladder apparently had a weight limit somewhat lower than our rather large engineer, and would apparently colapse at the wrong point.... not sure what they decided to do in the end, but we now have smart meters we didn't want...

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Boustrophedon
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by Boustrophedon » Mon Mar 15, 2021 10:40 pm

We kept getting calls from Eon wanting us to accept a smart meter, I kept saying no and the calls were just frequent enough to be annoying. Besides smart meters work on the mobile network and the mobile reception/service in the village is appalling, to the extent that I gave up my phone and left Vodafone after 20 years. (That was an interesting story, seems I was tied to a contract til sometime in the 3000s.)

Eventually got a phone on O2 who seem to cover the village well and there's a new mast just 200 yards down the road. So next time Eon phoned I said "OFFS! yes." Eon sent a man round, he had a little test meter thing, he held it up and said: "No can do, you haven't got a strong enough signal."

:lol:
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by dyqik » Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:33 am

We have smart meters for gas, electric and water.

They aren't any trouble. But then we have a government enforced monopoly on the transport/billing of all three of those things (you can change gas and electric supplier, but your bills still come from the company that owns the wires/pipes. Water and sewer is run by the town.).

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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by Boustrophedon » Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:46 am

dyqik wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:33 am
We have smart meters for gas, electric and water.

They aren't any trouble. But then we have a government enforced monopoly on the transport/billing of all three of those things (you can change gas and electric supplier, but your bills still come from the company that owns the wires/pipes. Water and sewer is run by the town.).
Or is the government simply enforcing a sensible physical status quo? Otherwise you would have duplicate electrical supply and duplicate pipes for water and gas and multiple utilities digging up the street.
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by dyqik » Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:04 pm

Boustrophedon wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:46 am
dyqik wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:33 am
We have smart meters for gas, electric and water.

They aren't any trouble. But then we have a government enforced monopoly on the transport/billing of all three of those things (you can change gas and electric supplier, but your bills still come from the company that owns the wires/pipes. Water and sewer is run by the town.).
Or is the government simply enforcing a sensible physical status quo? Otherwise you would have duplicate electrical supply and duplicate pipes for water and gas and multiple utilities digging up the street.
I don't think it's an "Or" or a question there...

We do have people that use private trash pickup instead of the town service. And people that use propane, oil, wells and septic tanks despite gas, water and sewage going past their front door.

But we picked our house because it's in a town with sewer, water, trash pickup, and it has natural gas. That's not true everywhere in this town or in the adjacent towns.

Although some of those adjacent towns do run their own electric and gas companies, instead of giving a monopoly to one of the regional companies. On the flip side of that, Cambridge MA gives a monopoly to Comcast for cable TV and internet provision, and they have a terrible service.

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Boustrophedon
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by Boustrophedon » Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:53 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:04 pm
Boustrophedon wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:46 am
dyqik wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:33 am
We have smart meters for gas, electric and water.

They aren't any trouble. But then we have a government enforced monopoly on the transport/billing of all three of those things (you can change gas and electric supplier, but your bills still come from the company that owns the wires/pipes. Water and sewer is run by the town.).
Or is the government simply enforcing a sensible physical status quo? Otherwise you would have duplicate electrical supply and duplicate pipes for water and gas and multiple utilities digging up the street.
I don't think it's an "Or" or a question there...

We do have people that use private trash pickup instead of the town service. And people that use propane, oil, wells and septic tanks despite gas, water and sewage going past their front door.

But we picked our house because it's in a town with sewer, water, trash pickup, and it has natural gas. That's not true everywhere in this town or in the adjacent towns.
What I meant was that where there is a physical infrastructure that you would not want duplicated it is a sensible option for those to be monopolistic, anything that goes by truck well that's up to the market innit?
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by dyqik » Wed Mar 17, 2021 1:19 pm

Boustrophedon wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:53 pm
dyqik wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 12:04 pm
Boustrophedon wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:46 am


Or is the government simply enforcing a sensible physical status quo? Otherwise you would have duplicate electrical supply and duplicate pipes for water and gas and multiple utilities digging up the street.
I don't think it's an "Or" or a question there...

We do have people that use private trash pickup instead of the town service. And people that use propane, oil, wells and septic tanks despite gas, water and sewage going past their front door.

But we picked our house because it's in a town with sewer, water, trash pickup, and it has natural gas. That's not true everywhere in this town or in the adjacent towns.
What I meant was that where there is a physical infrastructure that you would not want duplicated it is a sensible option for those to be monopolistic, anything that goes by truck well that's up to the market innit?
Two trucks stopping every other house is a whole lot more expensive to run than one truck stopping at every house.

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Boustrophedon
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by Boustrophedon » Wed Mar 17, 2021 1:31 pm

dyqik wrote:
Wed Mar 17, 2021 1:19 pm
Two trucks stopping every other house is a whole lot more expensive to run than one truck stopping at every house.
Quite.

Goes for supermarket deliveries too, but still better than lots of shoppers driving to the supermarket.
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Martin Y
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Re: Smart meters - what's the point?

Post by Martin Y » Thu Nov 10, 2022 7:33 pm

Bumped at Millennie Al's suggestion, to add this rather creepy tale of smart meter owners finding their supplier has remotely changed theirs to a prepay type at the push of a button.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63554879

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