Unlikely ofgem is confused.
Meter replacement
- Thread starter DiyNutJob
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The cost of the smart meter installation program was initially said to be 11 billion pounds paid for by a surcharge on bills; it has risen since then.
For a start, as Harry and I have said, at least at present it seems to be one call per day, so, at least at present, you can divide your figure by 48. In addition, it's ridiculous to believe that suppliers will be paying at 'mobile phone rates' for the calls - they are probably paying 'peanuts', particularly given that each call probably only has a duration of a few milliseconds, if that.
Moving to practicalities, if all the domestic installations (I think about 45 million) had 'smart' meters (which is what the government would like),and if they were all 'calling home' every 30 mins, that would be over 2 billion calls per day - which, as I said, would probably overwhelm the networks.
Kind Regards, John
I agree, but highly likely DiyNJ is confused.
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Seem the situation is worst than thought. If you are paying £600 a year now. By the time they roll out the full deal, you need to x48 that.
Phone companies charge 35p set up charge per call, with the call cost on top. So an all inclusive 3.4p/call to the energy suppliers is about right.
You need to review your mobile phone package - I pay a flat fee of £6 per month, with unlimited calls, unlimited messages. I could be on the phone 24/7, for the entire month, at no extra cost.
It seems he's right - but the change to a default of half-hourly uploads is, as he said, not until 2025. However, I still don't see how the current infrastructure could cope with that - >2 billion calls per day is an awful lot
Kind Regards, John
I don't know where that £600 comes from. It's inconceivable that one call per day could cost remotely that much.
Try telling a phone company that you want a contract for 2 billion calls per day, and ask if they would charge a 35 p set up charge for each of those calls, let alone an additional 'call cost' - i.e. around £250 billion per year
Kind Regards, John
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I use 2 IHD's, one for Octopus and the other for my Drayton Wiser heating system. The Octopus IHD gives me real time information but the Octopus app is a day behind for some reason. The Wiser IHD is in realtime too and the information presented on my Wiser app is also in realtime.
We've explained why. Although a smart meter stores half-hourly usage data, at present most only upload that data once per day - and the app can only see data which has been uploaded - hence anything up to a day 'behind'. The IHD, on the other hand, is seeing the stored data, before it gets uploaded.
I'm not familiar with that system, so can';t say much. However, if the app is shoeing real-time data, that imnplies that wherever the appis getting its data from must be updated in more-or-less real time.
Kind Regards, John
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With Wiser the IHD gets its info from the smart meter and transmits it to the Wiser cloud over the internet, my Wiser app is connected to the Wiser cloud and gets the info almost immediately (within 30 minutes).
It's my understanding that the meters are linked by their own radio network rather than the general public networks? I read somewhere that a meter tries to get directly online, but failing that it talks to its neighbour, which passes on the data.
I've also heard of such functionality, although I don't know whether the comms modules in basic 'smart' meters can do it, or whether some sort of add-on (or special comms module) is required.
However, since the usual problem is the lack of an adequate signal (from whatever network) in a particular locality, if one meter is having a problem, the same may well be the case for 'neighbouring' ones - unless the 'local' communications facility has quite a long range.
Kind Regards, John
That makes sense. Since the meter cannot itself communicate with the "Wiser cloud", that cloud can only get data via the IHD - which, like the Octopus one, gets the data in real time directly from the meter.
Kind Regards, John
Which is nigh on impossible if the "code protection" bit has been turned on in the meter's micro-processor.
Some equipment goes further and any attempt to read the code will result in the micro-processor erasing it's entire code
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