Do Smart meters require you to have internet?

[conny]

As the title says, do you need to have internet in your home for a Smart meter to work?
As an example, my FIL doesn't have any internet/wifi etc in his home. The only thing digital, besides his watch, is a TV set top box.
Would he be able to have a smart meter installed without any problems or is it simply a no-no?
I don't want to go into the semantics of the benefits/pitfalls etc. Just a simple straight question.

 

[Mottie]

No. They have their own SIM card and communicate over 3/4G.

 

[JohnW2]

As the title says, do you need to have internet in your home for a Smart meter to work?

No -they use (or try to use) the mobile phone network.

Do you get reasonable/reliable mobile phone signals in your home?

Kind Regards, John

 

[conny]

Thanks John.
We get reasonable mobile signals but not sure about my FIL as he lives over 30 miles away.

 

[ericmark]

Yes he can have a smart meter, we did this with my FIL with the idea we could monitor him using power, so if you see 2.8 kW for 5 minutes then you know likely boiling a kettle so OK, however when we tried to get internet access to his account that never happened.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

As the title says, do you need to have internet in your home for a Smart meter to work?
As an example, my FIL doesn't have any internet/wifi etc in his home. The only thing digital, besides his watch, is a TV set top box.

No Internet or wifi is needed, the meter includes a mobile sim, which allows the meter to 'phone home' with the meter readings.

Having Internet access would be handy though, if FIL wanted to keep a close eye on his consumption figures, beyond what the Indoor Display would provide. It should also be possible for a relative or friend to be given access, to do this for him.

 

[SpecialK]

If there is wifi then a smart clamp meter could do it? They are £50 though!

Yes he can have a smart meter, we did this with my FIL with the idea we could monitor him using power, so if you see 2.8 kW for 5 minutes then you know likely boiling a kettle so OK, however when we tried to get internet access to his account that never happened.

 

[Mottie]

.

 

[ericmark]

If there is wifi then a smart clamp meter could do it? They are £50 though!

That would mean internet at FIL house, so monthly fee, idea was to monitor on the cheap and not in an intrusive way, mother we had internet and a pet cam in living room, however not really that good, went off line too often. Also had an alarm system linked to call centre, that was also not as good as claimed, camera and call centre base in same room, we were rung to say button had been pressed and mother had not responded when they tried to call her, but on pet cam we could hear her shouting help, the toilet door had come off trapping in the toilet.

It is a problem looking after the elderly without being too intrusive, and monitoring energy usage is not intrusive and lets you see they are pottering about, without installing internet into their house. The council monitoring system also uses phone, and should be installed as the first item, so even if a phone left off the hook it can auto switch off other phones and on getting a dial tone ring call centre, it also rang call centre if power failed, which is a problem with internet systems. Internet goes down too often to trigger an alarm each time it fails.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

It is a problem looking after the elderly without being too intrusive, and monitoring energy usage is not intrusive and lets you see they are pottering about, without installing internet into their house. The council monitoring system also uses phone, and should be installed as the first item, so even if a phone left off the hook it can auto switch off other phones and on getting a dial tone ring call centre, it also rang call centre if power failed, which is a problem with internet systems. Internet goes down too often to trigger an alarm each time it fails.

Energy monitoring via SM's would, I think, be too crude for that. They only report consumption data once per day, though they can be set to record and report in via a once per day data upload. That means an elderly person could be laying injured for up to 24 hours, before the habitual consumption pattern could be changed.

 

[ericmark]

How would a smart meter reporting once a day ever help saving energy, that is clearly not very smart.

 

[JohnW2]

How would a smart meter reporting once a day ever help saving energy, that is clearly not very smart.

As I understand it, all 'smart' meters provide access to real-time consumption data within the property concerned.

Harry and others seem to be talking about what data can be accessed (from the suppliers system) over the internet, and seems to be suggesting that such data is only updated (from the SM) once per day. Never having dealt with one, I haven't a clue as to whether that is correct, but it sounds pretty credible - it would not be very credible that every 'smart' meter in the country had to 'report home' every '5 minutes'/whatever..

Kind regards, John

 

[cleggy]

we have smart meters with British Gas.When they are installed the engineer fits a box which houses a sim card etc.The smart monitor is paired with it.So you do not need your own internet to have smart meters fitted at all.The readings are done automatic and the monitoring of usage etc is real time less a min or 2.So you can see what is using electric and gas etc.

 

[bernardgreen]

Good accurate information about the maybe dubious functions that a smart meter has to offer.

 

[JohnW2]

we have smart meters with British Gas.When they are installed the engineer fits a box which houses a sim card etc.The smart monitor is paired with it.So you do not need your own internet to have smart meters fitted at all.The readings are done automatic and the monitoring of usage etc is real time less a min or 2.So you can see what is using electric and gas etc.

Yes but, as I recently wrote, that 'smart monitor', which allows one to monitor usage in real time, only works within the property concerned.

Eric, Harry and others are talking about the ability to look at usage via the internet from some other location. One can then only see what has been uploaded from the 'smart' meter to the supplier's system - something which only happens 'periodically, and Harry has suggested might be just once per day.

Kind Regards, John