The introduction of energy smart meters in 30 million UK homes will be delayed for more than a year, the government has announced.
The £11.7bn project will start in the autumn of 2015, rather than the summer of next year, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said.
It said that the industry needed more time to design, build and test the communications system required. (emphasis added)
The devices show exactly how much gas and electricity is being used.
This should bring an end to estimated bills, because the technology could send back an accurate meter reading to an energy company every day.
According to the industry, the technological advance would be the equivalent of using wireless broadband instead of sending a telegram.
The project is considered vital in attempts to cut energy use by households as the UK faces having to import more energy in the future. (Smart Meters do NOT cut energy use – but they can cut energy supply and facilitate prohibitive pricing tariffs – Ed.)
However, the smart meter rollout has been criticised. Consumer group Which? has previously called on the government to postpone the scheme until it had reviewed its approach, saying there was a danger the situation could become a “fiasco”.
But the then energy minister, Charles Hendry, said at the time: “The last thing we need is more dither and delay.”
Now, the programme to install these meters into every UK home is expected to be finished by 2020, also a year later than planned.
Read more BBC News – Smart meter project is delayed.
I suspect this is obfuscation – hedging their bets while leaving room for a quiet retreat. This may be a sign that we’ve been heard. We couldn’t have expected them to openly declare a mistake.
Saw this on the beeb today and filled in their contact form to complain about the overly promotional tone of the article. I think ‘smart meters’ are a great idea if *I* can collect detailed information on resource consumption from my meters. It is of no benefit to me to grant someone else continuous access to that level of information – it will obviously be used for sales targeting. Suppliers need only a charging period end reading. There’s no more reliable way to get that reading than to approach the consumer’s meter and read it by some proximal method.
I wouldn’t have such a device in my home – and I recently made my own (link below). I’d be happy to use a ‘stick-on’ version of such a device for an interval over which I was trying to understand my resource consumption or to track down a fault. You’d have to be barking mad to permanently install one which reported your usage to a supplier.
http://firtl.com/2013/04/25/read-gas-water-electricity-meter-with-webcam/
The BBC is definitely singing a pro-Smart Meter tune currently. Kudos on the invention!
Bias from the BBC? Surely not!? LOL!
These meters remain as they are. An unwarranted intrusion on people’s lives, a means of collecting additional corporate revenue by means of sneaky stealth, and a massive health hazard.
This ‘token’ Government (and frankly the vast majority of it’s predecessors going back well over a century) don’t give a damn about ordinary people. Great illustration recently seeing the UK being the ONLY voting E.U member NOT to agree to a 100% ban on nicotinoid-based chemical sprays affecting bees and pollinators.
I’m patriotic to ordinary UK citizens and the great nation we have contained here.
As for politicians, the media, big business, monarchy, the church and the banks. Hmm – Room 101!
Richard I completely agree with your points of view. The British Government should do a bit of Global research find out what enormous FIASCO this so called SMART meter is. I have returned from Malta, after experiencing the hardship friend of mine are going through with UNJUSTIFIED HIGH WATER AND ELECTRICITY BILLS THEY are faced with. They even installed other standard meters to try and verify any errors evident with these SMART meters and they found a great discrepancy between the two meters. Smart meters are faulty and the Bastards , Government included do NOT accept this. The internet offers an excellent source of genuine complaints from Smart owners from all over the world. WHAT MORE DOES THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT NEED TO CONVINCE THEM OTHERWISE!!!
I received this email from British Gas after signing the petition.
Many thanks for your email. Smart meters are important for British Gas and our customers. We believe they are both safe and secure.
I should say that you are being badly misled by the Stop Smart Meters website. Most of what they say in their template email is misleading at best and completely untrue at worst. But you don’t have to have a smart meter if you don’t want one. We tried to remove you from our roll-out programme but we couldn’t find you on our customer database. Are you a British Gas customer? If so, please reply with your customer number which you will find on the top of your bill along with your address details.
If you are not a British Gas customer then we can confirm that we have no intention of installing a smart meter at your property. We suggest that you contact your current energy supplier for answers to your questions or requests for information and comment.
Regards
Phil Bentley
Managing Director
British Gas
Not the first time we’ve seen that (see here: https://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/british-gas-quietly-removes-safety-security-contentions-from-email-slurring-stop-smart-meters/) and we’ve seen exactly the same wording sent to BG customers.
It remains a mystery to us as to why Bentley seems incapable of elaborating on any of his spurious and unfounded claims. Plenty of people have asked him for more info but haven’t received anything of substance in response.
Thanks for flagging it.
£11.7billion,and the country is going bankrupt if what we are told is true.With not having one in my house I’m saving the country money.
Is the opt-out – reported in the Telegraph early last year http://www.telegraph.co.uk/financialservices/utilities/Business-energy/9053100/Smart-meters-for-energy-to-be-voluntary.html – still valid?
And will they ban sales of tin foil in case enough of us decide to wrap any mandatory meters up in it?
@George Woodward – the energy companies have been putting ‘invisible charges’ on our utility bills for years and years – all because the infrastructure is crumbling and following Mrs Thatcher’s “car boot sale” of all England/Wales national assets (and the associated massive director’s payouts in the 1980’s and 1990’s) – the only money left to fix it – was from the punters.
Trust me – the Government aren’t paying for these diabolical things – we are!!
Why can’t a system be devised that doesn’t require the meter to be radiating RF (and using power) day and night? Imagine a meter reader carrying a transmitting/receiving device that could activate the meter’s transmitter and request identification details (address, account number etc.) along with the meter reading. This could be uploaded back at the office for invoice purposes. Meter readers would no longer need access and the meter would only need to be “live” for seconds every month or quarter. Maybe that’s too simple and the “authorities” wouldn’t be able to spy on us…
That’s how some Water Meters work. They claim real-time reading is required at the micro/home/appliance level and this is quite simply bunkum. Worse than bunkum, actually – because this non-solution is so incredibly damaging to our health and that of our natural environment. No mention of the effects of EMFs on bees recently. Our pollinators are under attack from EMFs.
Nobody mentions health affects, which there is a list as long as your arm,its all fraudulent, i’m not having one, am afraid theres more to all this technology than they are letting on , like new world order, cutting down population, stopping the children of today becoming parents in the future. we maybe the last of all people on this planet. there will be no one to follow on after us. My great grandmother said electricity is the work of the devil, she was right, we need to go back in time. to survive, or is it to late for us.
This is good news on the surface.
However, my dad works for one of the energy companies, ironically as a meter reader, and he was told his company is training people now to install them.
Now, it PROBABLY is true that the scheme is being put back by a year, but I wouldn’t put it past them to start it earlier than they are announcing to give people less time to complain.
I don’t know if it tallies with other information you guys at stopsmartmeters.org have, but might be worth bearing in mind.
In any case you guys have my complete respect and admiration and I really wish you all the best with the work you are doing. Even if you don’t get to stop them, the more people you educate about smart meters now the less people will suffer and the quicker the general public will start ripping the things out when the shit really hits the fan in the future when it becomes undeniable what these things can do.
There is also evidence that when they get installed, to save costs, the installers are under such pressure of time that the system is much less safe than before – this research indicates that moving the meter leads without checking the security of the other ends can leave power connections dangerously loose. Right now installers are told not to waste time on the terminals at the customer end.
Not only costly, but a fire risk as well.
http://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/electrical-professionals/product-safety-unit/tightness-of-meter-tails/