Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

You (they) seem to have a lot of faith in the private sector to not utilise the opportunity to price gouge for demand that cannot be moved around - being cold in winter - under the guise of dynamic pricing.

“Sorry folks the it wasn’t us it was the algorithm”.

Whether society at large could benefit from this is irrelevant to me anyway, I consume less than the average for electricity and gas. My usage is almost entirely inconsequential. If there’s efficiencies to be had - and presumably money to be saved - that needs to reach the pockets of end users and not shareholders.

In the absence of anything concrete they can keep threatening to pap me onto the variable tariff - which on 1st April is cheaper than my fix (until July) anyway.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

No, I am with you on this. The "private" energy sector will absolutely try and roger the consumer. OFGEM is useless, in fact you might think they are actually employees of the Energy companies. The only hope is for a new Government to bring the energy sector back into public ownership and restructure it for the long term benefit of the consumers and the country. Let's see ...

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

So if my only hope is that a British government develop a spine against the practices of cartels in the “competitive” privatised industries I’ll hang onto my dumb meter for now.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

Yet you can save a lot of money while you wait :)

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

It’s a bad investment to save small change now to lose more later when fully dynamic pricing is implemented.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

Just been reading that, if Labour win the General Election, they aren't going to relationalise the energy companies, but will create a people's energy company that puts customers first.

People would be free to choose which they want to go with.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

I personally do not consider £1000+ small change, YMMV

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

Would be interested to know what subset of the population would be in a position to save that amount considering the average is £1600 per year.

Edge cases may do so. However fundamentally these poorly regulated companies have responsibilities to their shareholders.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

£4k in my case. Large house, with very large rooms, several out buildings. I run two 33KW boilers and 4 gas fires.

Leccy was free or almost free, at the weekend or negative (except 4-7pm)

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

Not really an edge case: 3-bed semi with Combi Gas boiler. Our savings over the last year are approx 40% so we think this is worth having.

Don't forget that Octopus do make a profit on the smart tariffs we are on.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

And how much profit would octopus make if everyone switched?

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

Considering the ridiculous profits the energy companies make I'm sire they'll still make plenty.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

No idea but given that the sector should be in public ownership anyway, I don't really care. I think they (successfully) rely on most people being too scared/lazy/unaware to switch to the smart tariffs to make the point moot.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

In the case of leccy is 100% profit

The formula is public

I will try to find the gas formula.

Re: Smart Meter, Yae or Nae?
 

The only thing they have said they will renationalise is the railways, doing so gradually by bringing railways back in-house as each contract expires.

---------- Post added at 11:57 ---------- Previous post was at 11:55 ----------

I think at some point we will all be forced to go 'smart' but hopefully this will be a long way off as clearly they don't work well enough to force this on every household and business across the country.