Concerns over energy smart meters

Erm, I already have smart meters installed, It's called my wife, every time the bill comes in she is straight on the phone giving the correct readings. Spend a £000,000 on advertising showing people how to do just that and then £11.7 billion can be put to better use

Oh dear... a good article but comments from people that clearly have little idea (with no disrespect intended as the industry itself is still formulating the smart metering idea.) As someone who works in the metering industry as a comms specialist I can clear up some of the above misinformed information. Installation of smart metering starts in 2012, not 2014. My company is installing now! The idea of smart metering was to initially give more information to the consumer about how they use energy and how they can save energy. Smart metering will lead onto smarter equipment in the home that will allow a better control of the energy distribution. You can decide not to have a meter installed and if the meter is in your home, (and if not in a box on the outside, they can't get in to change it!) It's odd that people are happy to have their telephone bill etc sent to them based on what they've used, (how inconvenient it would be that every month you have to phone your network provider and tell them what you've used) but having the convenience to receive a bill that is correct for electricity and gas seems to cause a stir? If you're on a water meter that sits in the path just outside your home, I don't hear people whining that it's been read for them! If a peak demand is forecast in the use of electricity then a power station has to spin up generators at wait for the demand to hit. They track weather, TV programmes etc to monitor the demand changes. Instead of doing this if everyone had a smart fridge all the fridges in the UK could be switched off for a few minutes as everyone turns their kettle on during the ad break or turns lights on during the huge thundercloud that is passing. During this time the power station can spin up, add more energy to the grid but without having to waste loads prior. This actually will lower the cost of supply! Smart meters use SIM cards that are exactly the same as the one you have in your mobile phone. Once per day the meter connects to the backend servers to transmit data on readings. This reading is generally at 1am. The rest of the time the meter is not using the mobile network. So no radiation concerns there! The comms is via the GPRS network (ie sms, text messaging) and that in itself uses lower power than the voice comms. In addition to the mobile freqs used some systems use Zigbee mobules to communicated between them. Zigbee is bluetooth (something your wireless mouse may use) Zigbee is used to ask the gas meter for its reading. Before anyone starts stay, "that's the real issue, Zigbee is danagerous." the Zigbee association shows how the power levels are wound down to the lowest level that allows communication between devices. The whole point is for the technology to be low power. Your smart gas meter will have a small battery that will on average last 10 years communicating about once per minute for a few milliseconds. Also, as anyone who stayed awake during the most basic of school physics lessons should know is that radiowaves fall off to the square of the distance. Your meter sitting in the cupboard is far less radiation intrusive than you using your mobile phone or sitting next to someone using one: or even the electromagnetic field given off just by the mains wires running in your walls! Perhaps the Ph.D statement above should learn more about physics before making scaremongering comments! The last studies on radiation at the frequency of mobile phones, wi-fi and other similar frequency devices showed no ill effects. The study is still ongoing monitoring those that have been through the trial to see if any long term affects occur. The best article I saw about campaigns against mobile phone masts was a group that used mobile phones and a quite a few stood about smoking. NIMBY, was the best term there! As someone with a masters in medical physics I understand the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Mobile phone freqs are non-ionizing: that is they do NOT affect cells to break them apart. Interestingly the antennas course I attended showed that the signal superpositioning that could (could, but does not) would be in the other side of the head of the person using the phone. That warming affect from using a phone is because you are holding something against you, wish also warms during use as power is dissipated. Now, there are some concerns I have about the future control of energy for all users. Like the idiot that said scraping road tax and applying a system of pay-as-you-use and then charging more at peak hours. The same could be said for smart metering. Once the meters are contactable by the suppliers then there's no real reason why they couldn't change your tariff between 5pm and 7pm to charge more. So the rich would eat at 6pm and the rest would eat after 7pm.

This is another green scam and will cost millions for what return? Zero as far as the personal cost is concerned and as far as the management of my electricity bill is concerned, I do not need to be told that when I switch my kettle on it uses electricity. If I felt the urge I could go and watch my existing meter go around but I don't. A good analogy is my water meter which I know gives me accurate meter readings and makes me aware that I pay for what I use. That makes me careful but I don't waste my life rationing toilet flushes. Suppliers will save hand over fist and will be able to shut your power off remotely if you offend them but as a saving energy measure -rubbish! You can take horses to water but you cannot make them drink and the same goes for the flagrant energy user. I do wonder how these smart meters will interface with the other Government pushed scam of PV panels? Will they be smart enough to tell the difference between the watts generated by the panels and the kilowatts being consumed by the house?