As james_n says it might improve it as contacts may get a bit of a freshen up by being disconnected/reconnected.
I’m not keen on a Smart meter but two things might sway me:
1 - Like yours my meter is ancient - no one has ever calibrated it for accuracy - it might not be that accurate which could be good or bad. Presumably some of the moving parts might wear.
2 - The proposal to incentivise people for not using energy during peak times by a rebate (possibly the cost of several units paid to you for not using one). Details were scanty last time I looked - do they look at historical hour by hour consumption vs current? What if there is no historical record and have a newly installed Smart meter? Only people with Smart meters get this ‘rebate’.
Octopus have I understand trialled this very specific thing recently. They have been allowing people to have free power in a certain time period if they use less than normal in that period
The charging of different rates at different hours of the day / night is I think going to become very big in the next few years - a way to push people away from peak demand periods
Last i heard was that the offer on the table from National grid for lower off peak tariffs was deemed insufficient by energy suppliers to make people change their usage.
I have seen plenty of people (at the nerdy end of the scale!) get very excited on many occasions about cheaper overnight rates for charging their EVs. Every EV forum is full of them. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t a minority - I am pretty convinced it is coming, but there are many anti posts on here that indicate lots of people are resistant
I saw that, but didn’t undertsand their argument - surely if you were being paid more than a unit cost for not using one it would be very popular.
Yes, certain things will be impractical to offset eg cooking tea for schoolchildren, but for others it’s simply a case of runniung things earlier or later in the day.
The cynic in me says that even if it takes off and peaks are reduced significantly the next progression will be a return to more level pricing throughout the day/night, and you can bet that won’t be cheaper!
I got the impression that what was in the table in terms if a reduction was much worse than was trialled by Octopus……might be wrong, have to wait and see.
Many thanks for all the replies @Gazza@Alley_Cat@SamClaus@james_n (I hope that was everyone!).
That’s gave me confidence, I think I’ll get it done, as someone mentioned the meter is ancient
It’s tricky, and I have firmly been of a similar opinion to the OP.
I can take a reading and it’s not exactly tricky to submit one or to calculate your charges since the last bill which had an accurate reading.
The ‘nudges’ they’re using I think are grossly unfair in terms of cheaper electricity with a Smart meter or direct debit vs quarterly billing with customer readings.
Will a Smart meter itself genuinely change our overall consumption patterns? I doubt it but increasing costs definitely will, with a conventional meter or Smart meter.
To be honest, I don’t see a reason not to have a Smart Meter these days. I did take a lot of initial convincing as to why we needed one, but continuing on with a conventional meter was starting to limit tariff choice (when we had choices).
We did have teething problem with ours due to a failure of the comms module one month into fitment which took an age to resolve , not helped by EON saying it was SW issues when I could clearly see the comms module was not working and the lack of engineers due to COVID.
Once that was fixed it’s proved very useful. Yes, I could go and read the meters monthly like I always used to do, but having the little display reminding us of energy usage in near real time has been good, especially in recent times.
I’ve so far resisted having a Smart Meter installed, as the jury is still out as to whether they might interfere with my solar panels and dedicated FIT meter.
My present provider, Scottish Power, assure me over the phone that this will not be the case, but then, they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Plenty of differing opinions / experiences out there, but no definitive answer, one way or the other, so far.
Also, wasn’t it reported that changing energy suppliers might be difficult once one’s present supplier has changed the meters out?
I think you’re probably right, but being a curmudgeonly old fart who dislikes change doesn’t help
I probably think of them in a similar manner to self-checkouts which are surely only there because it’s cheaper for supermarkets than manned tills. Since the pandemic I can’t remeber the last time a meter reader actually took one, but I guess I was also concerned in the past about loss of jobs for those workers.
