Why is there a problem getting a smart meter in my area?

Hi @Miwdr , being mostly other customers here we can only guess. Do you live in an unusual area or has there been a problem for any previous owners?

What about neighbours .. do any have smart meters at all?

If it’s a Comms issue, then moving to a different supplier won’t fix anything.

True. I wouldn’t mind if they would just tell me that’s the problem. But they apparently can’t. I need to double check with the neighbours.

Not that I remember. I tried to book a while ago but because that wouldn’t let me I have phoned/messaged and spoken to customer services repeatedly. When I was with EDF in a different house you practically had to barricade the door to keep them out from installing a meter. 

@Scooby_dooby_doo please bear in mind that every post you submit causes a lot of email notifications to be sent out, especially to forum volunteers.

Please keep this in mind when posting on other threads as it jams up the feeds we rely on to know where we’re needed. Those feeds and our email inboxes are our to-do lists, please help us keep them that way!

Thanks

As for devices like Owl and (to play fair on other similar devices out there) Onzo, we (as the forum volunteers) are aware of them. Unfortunately, such devices can prove to be rather… Unreliable. We’ve seen a great deal of complaints on places like Amazon where such devices have packed up pretty quickly and become bricks - with the manufacturers outright refusing to honour warranty replacements. For this and other reasons, we (again, as the forum volunteers) don’t tend to recommend such devices these days.

If memory serves… Those gadgets are also basically dead in terms of manufacturing. Onzo is now owned by the IHD manufacturer Geo - who are a friend of this forum - and have completely pivoted away from their legacy CT Clamp based energy monitors. Meanwhile, Owl appears to have pivoted away from their CT Clamp based energy monitors as well to some kind of “Smart” solution that happily slurps and gobbles up your data into a random cloud system that’s probably not as secure as those used by any part of the SMETS1 or SMETS2 ecosystems. And a lack of things like ISO27001 means I wouldn’t exactly want Owl hoovering up my usage data. At least OVO has a dedicated security team!

Also, neither of their listed UK retailers have any stock left - and when Amazon says an item is “Currently Unavailable, we don’t know if or when this item will be back in stock” that usually means it’s a permanently dead listing for an item that’s never coming back into stock and they’re just keeping it around for cataloguing and stockkeeping purposes.

Privacy is at the heart of SMETS1 and SMETS2. If you don’t want your supplier knowing much about your usage, you can just request Monthly Readings which literally contain nothing but whatever the current meter reading is once per month and nothing else - the IHD would continue to show full data to you (and only you) however.

When it comes to remote disconnects/forced PAYG switching, that stuff comes under the same hyper-strict rules that have existed for many years - the same rules apply to Smart and Traditional/Heritage Meters alike i.e. those actions are a last resort. And besides, suppliers can just get a warrant to force entry anyway - refusing a Smart Meter will never stop your supplier forcing entry to disconnect you or force-switch you to PAYG. The difference is that being on a Smart Meter means that you don’t then have to pay for the costs of said warrant and locksmith (and they’re not cheap!), nor have to swap over all the keys that no longer work to the new replacements. It also means there is a much faster “Undo Button” option available in case of an accidental disconnect/switch - the supplier can just run a playbook/runbook to fix things up and put you back to how you were.

That’s interesting, thanks. Funnily enough they don’t put in there what happens if you have this kind of meter that’s running out of time and OVO won’t fit a smart meter or tell you why not! 

Hi @Miwdr,

I’m aware of issues fitting a smart meter for radio teleswitch (RTS) supplies in some northern regions. Where are you based and who’s your DNO? 

Hey @Miwdr 

Let me check this area with our dedicated team and get back to you with a full answer for what will be available here, as I believe this may be an area where there are some difficulties getting installations like Tim_OVO mentioned.

I’ll pop back on this thread when I get an answer from the team.

Hi there, still not heard anything. I’ve just got solar panels and I think I need a smart meter to claim SEG. Is my only option now to try to change energy companies?

Weirdly , OVO just contacted a near neighbour and insisted on doing theirs. Meanwhile they still won’t or can’t even tell me why they won’t or can’t change mine despite numerous promises to sort it and get back to me… I can , I guess, only hope someone has competent customer services? 

Thanks. It’s … frustrating. lol. 

Hey @Maureen D 

As far as I understand at the moment, customers aren’t able to book their smart meters with THTC set ups just yet. I’d advise contacting Customer Support to see if the installer is aware that you had a THTC set up and whether we can go ahead with the appointment, as I wouldn’t want your time to be wasted at the moment if this wouldn’t be suitable when they arrive.

I do believe that you’ll be contacted about your setup directly with a solution to move forward with.

I’ve linked to a similar topic below that might also be helpful for you: