Smart Meter #2: "4 Million Smart Meters Don't Work"

Introduction

4 million smart meters are not working in smart mode (BBC).

 

Why this matters

For net zero to work it requires every household to invest in alternatives to fossil fuel consumption. Every year millions of people buy new cars and new heating systems for their home (or a new build home). All these people will make the trade off between investing in something that will use fossil fuels for the next several years or something that will consume electricity (increasingly from renewable sources). Roof top solar is a small contributor to the UK electricity production (solar is around 4%, a third from roof top solar); domestic roof top installs have potential to increase this significantly.

 

Which is the Best Use of Land: Solar Panels and Houses or Solar Panels?

With growing use of EVs and heat pumps electricity demand will rise; shifting demand to off peak periods is one of the paths to minimising new power grid infrastructure, as well as reducing the need to fire up gas power stations to meet peak demand.

 

How do Smart Meters Help?

A working smart meter allows automated 30min energy usage readings and billing; The user can then benefit from the range of flexible tariffs that pass savings on to the user for off peak electricity consumption:

• EV: Flexible tariffs might save £400 per year (based on 10,000 miles from home charging using Octopus Go night rate Vs standard day rate and 4miles/kWh (see Carwow for some example EV energy efficiencies)

 

Octopus Go tariff: low cost electricity at night to charge  an electric car

• Heat Pumps: Flexible Tariffs make the case for heat pumps - for example The Guardian shows the change from operating a heat pump with standard tariffs Vs for example, the Octopus Cosy Tariff is typically around £200 per year and can make the difference between a heat pump being less expensive to run than a gas boiler and more expensive on the standard tariff.  https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/13/are-heat-pumps-more-expensive-to-run-than-gas-boilers).
• Solar with Battery: Flexible tariffs help the domestic battery (and solar) investment case, for example the Octopus Flux rate means that you can buy electricity at cheap rate and sell at peak rate with a difference of around 9p/kWh. So for a 10kWh battery this means around £300 per year.

 

On top of this you can run other high consumption appliances at the cheap rate and add to your savings, eg my dishwasher consumes around 2kWh per wash, a convenient and easy way to save £100/year by programming an overnight run.

 

These investments are filled with uncertainty (how long will an EV last and how much will it cost to insure and repair?) and all are big ticket items for most people. Of course, there is the emotional side to this too, about feeling good on saving the environment and your view of the latest tweet from Elon Musk Vs the very nice cars that his Tesla company builds. The point here is that a working smart meter pushes the calculation significantly in favour of an investment that contributes to net zero.

 

So How Many People do not Have a Smart Meter that can tap in to Flexible Tariffs?

The UK Government states that working smart meter uptake is now at around 55%. So 45% of users are missing out on the chance of the return on investment boost of flexible tariffs. A good chunk of these have the 4 million smart meters that do not work and await a solution from their energy provider. The rest need to be convinced to embark on the smart meter journey.

 

Each person in this set of 45% potential users will need to be prepared to wait in all day for the engineer to visit, perhaps more than once. Perhaps e-mail and telephone their provider, maybe many times...

 

We all know that 'Time is money'; many of the people with money to invest in 'green technology' are time poor and even at minimum wage (£11.44/hour) a saving of £300 is only worth investing 26hours...

...the smart meter install needs to be achieved with minimal effort for the user or the above savings are meaningless. Martin Lewis points out that the smart meter installation record risks brand damage. It is easy to see why: as word of mouth from the users of these 4 million meters spreads no amount of advertising and PR will make an impact...

...the only way to fix the reputation is to fix the 4 million smart meters.

 

The Smart Meter Dream:

If all smart meters worked then the switch from fossil fuels will accelerate as the investment case for millions of people to buy EV's and heat pumps will be that much more attractive. Home owners will see a bigger return on a solar panel and battery investment adding to renewable energy supply and domestic batteries that shift demand from peak periods...

...but we get more:

• Flexible tariffs work by encouraging users to shift demand away from peak periods reducing the need for suppliers to turn to gas generation and flattening demand on the supply grid
• Roof top solar panels do not require fields to switch from food production to solar farms.
• As growing electricity demand is shifted to off peak periods the need for new grid infrastructure and the associated environmental impact, is minimised.

 

My Experience of the Smart Meter Dream:

• Without exception, all the Octopus people whom I spoke with were polite and as helpful as they could be.
• The Octopus team do have some good processes in place - for example each of the people whom I spoke with had access to our history of calls and e-mails.
• The processes and information available to the Octopus team, relating to smart meters, was very patchy and sometimes contradictory:
• Am I on the "North" ("Arqiva") or "South" ("O2") network? (correct answer - "North", I think)
• How long is data held in the meter if the data connection is not working? I still don't have an answer for this that I trust.
• Is there sufficient signal strength in my area?
• Do my neighbours have working smart meters? (knocking on doors was the engineer's solution here)
• Which direction is the radio mast? What might be obstructing the radio signal path?
• What are the options if my meter does not work (external aerials, signal boosters and having DCC increase the signal strength were proposed by various enthusiastic members of the Octopus team, but as far as I am aware none of these options exist in the "North" network).
• While weak signal strength was pointed to as the cause of the issue by all the engineers that visited, none of the engineers had an instrument to measure signal strength nor a specification as to what is required.
• There was no escalation path for difficult installations - after 5 engineer visits the proposal by the Octopus Customer service representative for a 6th visit with no new plan seemed like groundhog day.
• "North" of England (ie Arquiva provided) communications network does not provide good coverage of my home using the equipment and processes available to an Octopus smart meter installation engineer.
• The  network provider, Data Communications Company (DCC), Arquiva, are often pointed to by the Octopus team as the source of problems (eg weak signal), but, while I heard Octopus people say that the issue will be raised with DCC I have never heard anyone at Octopus say that DCC has responded.
• My take, based on this experience: Octopus could operate more efficiently (eg 1 or 2 engineer visits in place of 5), but in the end they do not have the tools to do the job, not the backup from the network providers that they really need.

 

So How Do You Fix Smart Meters?

 

The subject of another post (spoiler alert, I don't have all the answers, yet!...)

 

I will also provide an update on my smart meter journey