smart meter

I honestly cannot think of any cons in having smart meters (although I have had minor problems with mine, NONE of which have affected the accuracy of my bills). The first pro is that I no longer have to go outside to read my meters in all weathers. To read my gas meter, which is below the level of the house, I would need to kneel on the ground just to access the cover - no fun when it is wet or snowy! The second pro is that I no longer have to remember to read my meters! Pro 3: If you are an OVO customer who has a regular (not PAYG) meter, you can see your DAILY charges for energy and standing charges and, if you opt to have your data recorded every half hour you can quickly identify if you have accidentally left something on that causes an unexpected spike in your usage. This graph shows my electricity usage for November 30th.

I can also view this same data in table form. I can do the same for my gas usage. Pro 4: my bills run from the start of the 4th of the month and end at the end of the 3rd of the following month. Every day, by logging into my account it is possible for me to see the daily changing balance,

Before I got my smart meters, I could only see the daily standing charge totals (plus VAT) rather than all of the items that contribute to my eventual bill. I really like being able to see how any changes I make can change my costs while not having to wait until I actually receive a bill. We have refined over the time we have had our smart meter when and for how long we need to put our hot water on to ensure we have enough to do what we need: a couple of showers and a bit left over for those things that cannot go into the dishwasher. (half hour allows us to do this!) In addition to this, the In Home Device is an easy way to see how much a particular action is costing. The only thing that you have to be aware of is that the IHD shows what it would cost if you continued that action at full blast for an hour. For instance, you would never have your kettle on for an hour, so don’t panic and throw out your kettle!!

As Bendog says, once they’re up and running there really is no down side - just be prepared for a bit of faff to get to that stage.  We’re currently 6 months on from our first installation visit and still don’t have a fully functioning system - speaking to others near us, we’re definitely one of the worst cases but I have heard very few cases where everything worked correctly first time around.  

Still definitely worth getting them installed, just set your expectations accordingly to begin with!

But do people mention things if they don’t go wrong ?
This is the crawl space in the undercroft under my sister’s house, accessed from doors in their back garden. They had to scale a slope then lie on the black mat and get a torch out to read these meters every month!! The meter exchange guy had to do this too to install their smart meters of course. All went perfectly and they’ll never have to  go in there again. Readings are automatic now.

My meter exchange wasn’t at all dramatic, they’re in a cupboard in my hall, and also went perfectly. 

Gosh! What functions are you still missing after all this time? What others faults did you have earlier that have now been fixed? And did any of this post-installation work involve calling in OVO meter engineers to carry it out?

I’m fairly sure your experience is atypical - we’d surely have heard if a significant proportion of the 35 million installed smart meters weren’t functioning properly. 

​@Firedog It’s a long story, and it’s almost entirely down to the ridiculous subcontracting system Ovo use which means each engineering visit is to do a specific job rather than just get the meters working. Each time the engineer identifies a new issue, instead of being allowed to fix it, it gets logged as a new job which needs another appointment.  We’ve had 6 visits so far, with a further one scheduled for Friday.

The summary so far is:

Visit 1 - Installed meters and IHD, advised all would be operational in max 4-6 weeks. Result - working gas meter, no working electric or IHD

Visit 2 - Visit to perform full reset. Identified issue with electric meter. 

Visit 3 - Replace electric meter. Identified issue with comms module. 

Visit 4 - Replace comms module and recommission everything. Result - electric working, gas no longer working, IHD not working

Visit 5 - Replace gas meter, couldn’t get it to commission

Visit 6 - Identified replacement comms hub is the wrong kind (single band) and needs to be replaced

Visit 7 (this friday) - Replace comms hub and hopefully commission gas meter.

To be fair, throughout this process we’ve always had uninterrupted gas and electricity supply, but each visit is then followed by the same 3-4 week process of contacting Ovo, re-explaining the issues and booking another engineer, so it all takes a very long time.

​@woodstok2000 sorry it’s been such a journey for you to get a smart installation - let’s hope visit 7 goes smoothly!

​@gletley thanks for your post - it’s generated a lot of great answers from our user-base. As ​@Bendog has brilliantly illustrated, a great aspect of having smart meters is the half-hourly usage data you get via your online account and app. You can find out more about this here:

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Me personally - I’m happy to have a smart meters for the same reasons other users have mentioned above. Thankfully I’ve never had an issue with mine, and having them makes my life that bit easier.

One time that we were grateful for our smart meters was not long after we had them installed. We have our heating set to come on from 6.30am - 11pm controlled by Hive controllers and radiator thermostats. At the time, we had three dogs (now, due to their age, we are now down to one) and we were going out for an event in London. Since we did not know exactly when we were going to be back, we decided to leave our back door open, giving the dogs free access to the garden. We had talked about turning off the heating while we were out but we did not do it. What is even more stupid on our part is, of course, we had the ability to do it remotely via the app we BOTH have on our phones. We did not think about the heating the whole time we were out. I guess the company was too good! When we got home the heating was, of course, going full blast - the bush outside of the back door was full of birds loving the heat escaping through the door. We had a minor panic about how much it would cost. We only had to wait 24 hours rather than three weeks to find the answer - a couple of pounds was the difference between that day and the previous day. Phew!!