Smart Meters & temperature/BA thread size relationship

I understand that companies servicing 'in-door hobbies' are experiencing something of a lock-down boom - I thought it was just me!.
My workshop is an unheated in-shed space and I am finding that there is a correlation between the size of threads, or nuts, I can handle and the ambient temperature. While I have managed to fit cladding with 10BA brass screws via tweezers and jewelers screw driver today I have found 7 BA stuff, particularly in difficult to reach places, impossible to handle below 5 degrees C. So I have started to make a boiler/engine/feed system frame for my triple expansion engine using 3BA for the first time in my life - but I can get a grip of them!

My problems have started since the family have installed an electrical Smart Meter and I have fallen under its audit - beware!

Tony, you are not alone in being spied on by a smart meter, I keep telling my wife that the government pays for my usage via the winter fuel allowance..... but I don't think that she is totally convinced!

Brian

Hello Mr Coldfinger,

I had an early Smart meter - but it burned out.

I get calls pleading for me to have one - but no-one can actually tell me HOW it can save you money.

As I see it its a clever ammeter, see some of the You-tube explanations.

Brian

Edited.....self moderated....🤔

Edited By John Rudd on 24/01/2021 16:08:25

The money saving feature is only included with the wife option if you have purchased it. See Tony's initial post. I've heard this option is very badly designed and seldom works as expected after the first few weeks.

The savings are huge - No need to pay staff or a third party to read meters, no need to send out cards, no need to accept customer readings or have people on hand to adjust disputed estimated readings - enormous savings!!

Oh - all of a sudden this is about you?

While using an electrical fan heater to raise my workbench area to a balmy 10C is very clearly visible on the meter display in terms of £/min, the short term peak of using both heater and a powerful wood router really got me into trouble. Trying to explain that the rate of expenditure over a period of one minute could not be extrapolated to a realistic annual rate of spend did not convince my critics who seem have become fixated on thereduction of electricity bill - which never registered before the arrival of the meter.

I'm tempted to do some maintenance on my old Fergy tractor where I can use a gas heater the other side of the field.

I just blame my wife for using the tumble drier.

I've had a couple of letters saying we are going to fit you a smart meter [really, I don't think so] & the attendant guff about how it can save you money, I told them the only way you can save me money is by lowering your tariff, Ask my grandkids about leaving lights on & telly with no-one watching!! [grumpy grandad!!hehe]

I have managed to delay the arrival of the smart meter yet again. I told them I was self isolating and they postponed the fitting.

It is a little know fact that smart meters can spread COVID-19.

JA

Eventually you will be charged more if you don’t have one.

Edited By JA on 24/01/2021 18:37:49

I'm not sure I understand this, JA.

If, while it's still not compulsory to have one, you don't want a smart meter, why not just tell them that?

To change electricity supplier as we are often advised to do I had to have my meter replaced with a smart meter. This took my supplier at the time, EDF over a year to arrange. However it turned out the smart meter would only work with EDF so I now read my meter every month and mail the result to my new supplier.

Some friends had a smart meter installed and they were so horrified by the reading when they boiled a kettle they have never used it since and now boil a kettle on there log burning stove---takes ages!

Does anyone know if current smart meters can be transfered to a new supplier?

Apparently the new generation of smart meters are transferrable between suppliers. Still not interested. EON tried to tell me for the best part of a year that I'd agreed to have a smart meter fitted when I signed up to a new tariff, but luckily I'd screen captured all of the on-line agreement and what it actually said was that I agreed "to be contacted about having a smart meter fitted" - not the same thing at all to my mind. I'm now with Shell Power, who also ring me on occasion about fitting one but I just tell them it's not convenient at the moment.

Rob

IF you can avoid using grid energy between 16:;00h and 20:00h it is most definitely worth changing to Octopus Energy on their Agile tariff. Applies to leccy, not gas. Unfortunately, my wife would not oblige, so most of our energy use would be at expensive rates during those times.

A working smart meter is a necessity for that tariff, of course.

I tell them every year that I am not interested in a smart meter. However NO is not a word in their vocabulary. Some times I think that it is because my surname begins with an A.

I fully understand the concept of the smart meter. Once enough are installed variable tariffs will be introduced. After al,l industrial contracts have used variable tariffs for decades. Many times we had to shut down all the computers at work in the late afternoon during winter.

JA

Sounds like Thomas Hardy territory, buying a wife

Not only have I had to wipe down my screen and keyboard, but I inhaled a small but significant amount of Green Jack Baltic Trader ale.

Please warn people before making sensible comments in the future.

In a few million homes they could well actually help stop the spread of Covid rather than spread it. As you can top up Prepaid smart meters with a phone app that stops a lot of people having to go out and get a top up.

.

Answering that point specifically, rather than getting into the conspiracy theory:

It’s you that  saves you money ... by ‘self discipline’

It simply provides information [via the local display unit] at a sufficiently granular level for you to appreciate the cost of your choices.

[ sorry to be a bore ]

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 25/01/2021 09:17:50

Just wait until heating/car/ everything is electric !

Gas boilers alone can be 150kw ++

You'll need smelling salts for the wife when it fires up.