Sure, it will be there eventually - but, if (as seems likely) it may be hours, even perhaps up to 24 hours, out-of-date, it would not serve the desire eric had to monitor his FIL's activities in more-or-less real time.
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.
My first pair of SM's were from memory installed by EON. They gave a choice of resolution of the readings of 30minutes, daily, or monthly for the consumption graphs on their website, for both G and E. Curious about when and how much we used, I set it for 30 minutes. The data for every 30 minutes was uploaded as a batch, once per day at around midnight, from what I could gather. The previous days consumption data, would appear in the graph by the following morning.
The In Home Display, would provide near instantaneous consumption data. Updated every few seconds for electric, around every couple of minutes for gas. It did (or at least my version of the IHD) stored a crude record of consumption, but it was too crude to be useful.
The gas meter runs on an internal battery and sends up dates to the electric meter, the electric meter takes power from the mains, so is better able to supply more frequent data updates.
... The data for every 30 minutes was uploaded as a batch, once per day at around midnight, from what I could gather. The previous days consumption data, would appear in the graph by the following morning.
As I said, that was my understanding - so, as I said, not suitable for eric's purpose, since he wanted to be able to tell if/when his FIL was bloiling a kettle (or whatever) when, or soon after, it happened, not "the next morning".
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