Smart Meters and Tariffs

Time to get back on topic, enough of this utter cobblers.

If you dont want one, great, your choice.
This is not the place for stupidity and nonsense, there are plenty of crackpot sites you can post that.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Stephen

The motivation is to make life simpler. That's usually why new technology is invented.

It's never to make things simpler for the customer, if by happy coincidence life is made simpler they'll take it but the usual reason is to reduce the workforce and whilst this might not be the primary objective of smart meters no one is going to deny meter readers haven't lost their jobs because of them

---------- Post added at 03:52 ---------- Previous post was at 03:51 ----------

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

If you want to be on a smart tariff it needs to be set at 30mins.

As usual Dude111 has come in and ruined a thread with his bollox, the guys got a screw loose.

Poor Dude, he's just trying to warn us

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

If you want to be on a smart tariff it needs to be set at 30mins.

As usual Dude111 has come in and ruined a thread with his bollox, the guys got a screw loose.

Sorry, no it does not at least if you are with EDF it offers a choice of how often it takes the reading . I just checked it

Originally Posted by Itshim

Sorry, no it does not at least if you are with EDF it offers a choice of how often it takes the reading . I just checked it

Sometimes you have no choice.
Octopus give you the "choice", but some tarrifs require you to set 30 minutes (agile for example). If you dont, you cant use that tarrif.

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by Itshim

Sorry, no it does not at least if you are with EDF it offers a choice of how often it takes the reading . I just checked it

If you want smart Tariffs Octopus needs it set to every 30mins, atleast for the Tracker and Agile and my Home Mini device gives me a readings instantaneously for the last 5mins which is great.

So today was the day, meter (eventually) installed.

Not without its drama of course.
Meter 1 installed, turned fuse box back on .... nothing (except a puzzled electrician).
Some investigation later, they had told him the wrong type to install (E7), so it wouldnt power up [as he'd wired it] until midnight ...
So out with that one, in with Meter 2 (std) and we finally had power again.

Gas meter then changed without further issues.

IHD is now sitting on my desk (currently set to show "real time" usage).
Its only showing electricity readings atm. I'm told it will eventually display gas as well.

My house seems to run at about 490W in the day when no high power devices (kettle, shower, washer, cooker etc) are in use, thats dropped to around 420W now everyone has gone to bed (except me).

[SnoopZ]

I would signup for the Home Mini if you haven't already then ditch the IHD.

Checking my Home Mini app live(last 5mins) usage it's showing I'm using 49w, thats with everything off apart from fridge freezer and anything in standby.

Tracker Tariffs have been higher lately but still lower than SVT, tomorrows Electricity rate is nice though dropping from 19.75 to 13.58 in my area.

Interesting, I just looked that up.
Apparently it relies on you having the app.
Can you run both ? I couldnt see that answered anywhere.

I signed up for Tracker earlier, thats likely to take 2/3 weeks.

---------- Post added at 01:41 ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 ----------

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

I'm using 49w, thats with everything off apart from fridge freezer and anything in standby.

Yeah, I have a lot of stuff running 24/7.

[downquark1]

I got the octopus mini. The engineer didn't commit the final gas reading so I had to get octopus to follow up before the gas bills started coming. My electric bills are stuck in limbo however (despite the data flowing correctly) so I'm still trying to get them to fix that.

[Taf]

"We must replace your electricity meter as it is over 15 years old. We will replace the gas meter at the same time".

Nope, especially with next door still having no connection either way on the mobile phone networks. Our meters are less than 4 metres from each other. One of the last techs could not get signals from between our homes, and that is where the meters are located.

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by Paul

Interesting, I just looked that up.
Apparently it relies on you having the app.
Can you run both ? I couldnt see that answered anywhere.

I signed up for Tracker earlier, thats likely to take 2/3 weeks.

---------- Post added at 01:41 ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 ----------

Yeah, I have a lot of stuff running 24/7.

You can run the IHD or Mini both together but you also don't need to plug in or use either as it's just a display of usage.

With the Mini data viewed via the Octopus app you get to select your Live Usage view for either the last 5mins or 30mins for Electricity but for Gas you can only see the Day usage, the Mini is far better in my opinion because you may get fed up of the IHD and you can literally walk around the house with your Mobile or Tablet and get an instant reading when switching something on which is useful.

Surprisingly when I signed up for the Tracker I must have got lucky as they switched me over in the time it took to fill out the form, that was after having my smart meters working for 7 days as it takes a while to see everything appears to be working on your account, eventually my old meters disappeared from the account and I could see daily reading on the app for usage so I risked the change.

I got an email today telling me I just need to accecpt the T&Cs for Tracker and I'll be switched.

I have accepted them. I also got invited to join Octopus Plus (Octoplus).

I have 5 meters on my account atm, my old Electric & Gas, my new Electric & Gas, and the extra electric they installed by mistake.

Atm, I can see the daily readings for the active electric meter, but no gas readings as yet.

[SnoopZ]

I think it took a week or so for me to go from 4 to 2 meters on my account and the Gas is always the slowest to change and send it's readings.

Hopefully you won't have any signal issues like Taf neighbours do.
https://www.octopriceuk.app/tracker
You can use this site which will let you see if your data is working once you put in the API.

Also your smart meters need to be set for 1/2hr readings for smart tariffs, this you can change yourself in your account settings somewhere.

My account shows I have already been switched to Tracker for Electricity, but not Gas.
Maybe becasue I still have no actual Gas readings. in the meantime, I'm checking out that site.

---------- Post added at 20:53 ---------- Previous post was at 20:52 ----------

Interestingly, one of my 5 meters has now vanished, the old Gas meter.

[SnoopZ]

My meters vanished at different times, they say it can take days for all the changes needed to be working.