How's it going to work?

The only way I can think would be either a separate "low priority circuit" or individual remote controlled sockets. Either way, you'd be in control of what you plugged in where.

It's unlikely that all future appliances will have a compulsory "remote kill switch" fitted to enable "them" to control our goods without our consent. That's just a conspiracy too far.

This strikes me as big business being far too cosy with current government. Again. Comparatively, there's next to no benefit for the consumer.

What you are ignoring the £23 a year saving made by the consumer? The industry will be saving a fortune not having to use people to read meters, and you could have monthly bills based on your actual usage and not some estimate which somehow always leaves the energy company with a lot of your money.

This £23 isn't fact. As for meter readings, we input our readings ourselves online, they very rarely check them.

Are they spending any money on this?

FFS go Thorium, gives us cheaper, cleaner fuel that we only have to rely on ourselves for. It's not rocket science, well nearly, but not.

Mine is checked hardly ever, since the eejits insist on coming to my house to check it during working hours. When I'm... working. If they ever do catch me on a day off, it's entirely a lucky coincidence.


Well yes, but to save money in the long run. If we all have smart meters, they won't need to pay people to go round and read the meters and the entire billing cycle could be completely automated. Smart meters save you as a consumer no money at all. Well, there are smart meters that can reduce your bill by allowing you to hopscotch around various suppliers at various tariffs on a frequent, say maybe once an hour, basis to always have the cheapest electricity for your needs. But of course none of the UK suppliers are planning to install those. What they call 'smart meters' are in fact incredibly dumb - the only function they have over clockwork meters from the 19th century is they can callback the supplier with their usage data. Smart meters will save the suppliers a fair wodge of money though. Hands up who thinks that saving will get passed on to the consumer...


If we managed to find a way of generating limitless free electricity, the suppliers would still try to use it as an excuse to put the price up.

Jon

See Jon's answer

That's what I meant by it suits the companies far more...

I am in when they call but they barely have enough time to read the meters. I guess that they are expected to visit x number of houses and if you are in that is a problem as well, as they do not have enough time to read the meter and visit all the houses as well.

And if you have a house like the one I’m in, the meters are in the cupboard under the stairs. To get to this cupboard, you have to crawl through a door under the work surface in the kitchen. One told me that he hated doing the rounds in the kind of house we have because of this.

I am surprised that the meters haven’t been moved to the outside of the house.

My old house had them inside under the stairs. My new place has them outside.

Utility companies normally charge the customer to move the meters, and it's not cheap either.
Unsurprisingly, most meters stay exactly where they were installed in the first place, even if that location makes little of no sense in terms of being able to read the damn things.

Smart meters:
Would I save energy: No. I turn stuff off when I'm not using it already.
Woukld I like accurate bills: yes please.

I had to laugh at the last set of gas & electric bills I got, well, after I'd stopped swearing at any rate.

Unsurpisingly, over the winter I'd used more gas than my monthly payments had covered so have built up a bit (well, quite a big bit) of a debit on that account.
Utility letter says that obviously my payments aren't coving the gas I'm using and that I should increase them.

Except of course, this is how it should work. Build up a debt over the winter and pay it back over the summer. They're quite happy with it when it's working in their favour (i.e. a big credit at the start of the winter that goes back to effectively 0 as summer starts). Thing is, the refunded a lot of money to me just before the start of winter last year so it's their own fault that the debit is there in the first place.
I take a meter reading once a month (or more if I happen to get a bill) so I seem to have a much better idea of how much gas I'm going to use than the gas company

Smart meters might make billing more acurate but they won't make the tossers at the gas company any better at managing bills effectively.

Same here.