Do you think Smart Meters are the next best thing since Sliced Bread?

I actually think that sliced bread is overrated 😂 

Smartmeters can’t reduce energy usage on their own but they can help identify when and where you’re using it. I’ve probably halved my usage over the past few years by understanding when things have been consuming power when I wasn’t using them. 
They’ve also helped identify a small gas leak by showing gas usage when I didn’t expect it. The gas hob was the culprit

I HATE the adverts! I think the claims are silly and bare no relation to reality. I postponed having one fitted and was even helped by Covid in that they paused fitting for a while. The fitting was poor and I was asked to demonstrate that all my appliances worked before continuing (including an aging gas fire that hadn’t been used in years). The installation was faulty and had to be repaired by a team from National Grid(?). The IHD isn’t really much help as usage (in particular gas) varies so much from day to day and with the weather.

As you say the smart meter doesn’t save you money, you’ve already used it.

BUT

It allows me to see how much energy and gas I’m using on a 30 minute basis. I can see what standby loads are on over-night (nothing to do with the IHD I download it from OVO). I can see how much energy I use to heat my hot water. So for me that extra data allows me to see precisely where my energy and money is going. I can make changes and see what effects they have. I detected when my off-peak timer failed (leaving the immersion heater stuck on) so that I could correct this within a day. I have used the IHD to check how much some standby loads use although the resolution isn’t great so I can’t check clock, timers etc.

So now it’s fitted and working It really helps me.

is smart meter better than the manual reading meter, please I need someone to explain for me 

In many respects, and in many people’s opinion, yes, “ smart meter is better than the manual reading meter”.

Here’s some reading material. Once you’ve been through it, please come back here to post a reply with any questions you may still have and we’ll do our best to answer them.

It really depends if you want to crawl around under the stairs with a torch trying to obtain a reading (which may, or may not, be recorded correctly) or allow the electronics to do it for you and it appearing on the meter. Only the occasional check is needed and as I know mine is accurate,  I rarely check

I know which one I'd go for. 

There is a whole sub-culture of pointy-hatted lunatics who reject the introduction of smart meters. Ignore their mewing.

Other meter locations are available. 

Hi,

   I was a Smart Meter sceptic and happily submitted my manual meter readings to OVO every month and resisted the continual e-mails and letters being posted thru my door, more so especially after reading about all issues with the early roll out of smart meters and there lack of communication coverage, fast forward to now and most of these issues have been addressed.

I moved to a smart meter in 03-2024, as Valiant & OVO introduced a new Tariff aimed at A.S.H.P owners like me, the tariff was 0.12p kwh instead of 0.27p kwh, Valiant needed smart meter readings to track my usage along with a Valiant WIFI gateway of which i installed.

Moving on 18 months I wish I`d had a smart meter installed earlier, 11 months ago I had Solar Panels installed and I export my surplus energy to OVO and required a smart meter to read your -A Solar exported energy,

So I would say yes, its time to change to a smart meter if you don`t live in a aera that is a known Smart meter black spot, I live in the East Midlands and all is good here.

Morning ​@Ijomahenry0909,

Thanks for your post, and welcome to the OVO Forum! 

Thanks as well to ​@Firedog ​@mikes01666 and ​@johnr64 for your helpful replies here. I’m happy to share my own thoughts from the perspective of working in the Industry and being an OVO customer with smart meters. From an Industry perspective, smart meters allow suppliers to know exactly how much energy is being used by UK households and, with this data, we can more accurately forecast how much energy to buy. This helps us to keep prices as low as we can whilst billing our customers to their actual usage, rather than having to estimate usage.

As an OVO customer, I find my smart meters to be very handy indeed. I don’t have to provide manual readings at all, which is especially useful for times I’m away on holiday etc. I’d say the biggest benefit for me is the accurate usage data that I can view on my online account and app. With my smart meters providing half-hourly readings I can view my half-hourly usage, which has allowed me to nail down which times of the day my usage is spiking. I’ve been able to keep my usage as low as possible with this data. The In Home Display screen is also very helpful, as I can set my budget, and can see throughout the day whether I’m still within this budget, or am using more energy than I’d planned.

I can see ​@Firedog has put some great guides up. Here’s another that displays how your online account / app ‘Usage’ pages will look if you get a smart meter installed. 

If you decide to go ahead and book an appointment, it’s free of charge. You just need to book a four hour appointment slot where someone over the age of 18 can be at your property when the engineer is there. You can find out more, and book an appointment here.

Hope this helps!