We told them we didn’t want a smart meter, but it didn’t make a whit of difference; they were quite determined we should have one.
Our super cost-saving Economy 7 meter had packed up for the second time and the night-storage heaters were coming on at unpredictable times, even mid-afternoon which was hopeless. We decided to change our heating system to install panel heaters, so, we phoned EDF, our electricity supplier, requesting the meter be changed, “but no smart meter please.”
Two very competent young men duly arrived and proceeded to change the meter. Result? We now have one more useless gadget on our kitchen worktop. There it sat blinking away happily to itself, in green, orange and red, informing us that we had exceeded budget (hardly surprising, since we hadn’t set one!). We were alarmed for a day by its constant output of digital information, but it was not at all relevant to our requirements, nor will it save us money; after all we are a wartime generation which learnt well how to be thrifty. After three days we switched the thing off.
It would be interesting to hear of others’ experience, as to whether the smart meter does cut their electricity bills. The government reckons that each household could save £11 a year, a trifling sum perhaps compared to the quoted £11 billion total national cost of rolling them out across the nation. As for the electricity companies, they get the government subsidies and will be probably be charging higher tariffs to non-smart meter households. So we end up paying any which way.
