Smart meter

This morning we had our arranged visit for the installation of a smart meter. Now I realise that a lot of people are adverse to having one fitted maybe because it monitors every activity regarding fuel usage, but I cannot see that it is anywhere as intrusive as an Alexa or a mobile phone which manage to track your every movement, my poor carers get tracked by GPS by the app that my care company use, so for me a smart meter is the least of my worries.

 

Richard arrived nice and early at 8:30 (good job I had finished my breakfast), he wanted to get underway with his days work just in case my there were any problems and guess what, in 10 minutes BINGO! The smart meter needs to be attached to the wooden back plate, which he expected to find as that is what the electric meter should be attached to, unfortunately it wasn’t so after a quick look round the flat hubby found a piece of wood and Richard was able to drill the wood into the wall, and hey presto we were back on track.

 

Hubby and Richard then had a quick chat about tails, (I believe this is to do with fuses and the main supply). Basically the fuse board was moved from the kitchen to the corner of the lounge when the flat was rewired. I suppose like anything we all do things differently and as we then pointed out just because it wasn’t how the meter man thought it should be done doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We lost power for about 15 minutes and then the electric side was done.

 

 Now on to the gas, Richard kept looking outside at the weather, unfortunately it wasn’t going to change, the rain kept coming, he really needed to bite the bullet and man up and go outside. It wasn’t long before he came to our patio door again and said “look at the state of this”. I let him know that was the joy of living by the sea and said “it never leaked”.

 It didn’t take long for the smart meter to be fitted outside and then all that was left to do was for the two smart meters to start talking to one another. Just another 15 minutes and they were. It was now time for Richard to wind his way to his next appointment, we thanked him very much, he had been very helpful in posing for pictures for my blog and he even said please make sure you let people know that only have a smart meter installed if it is the SMETS2 technology has moved on and if it’s one of these meters it will not need to be changed should you change your energy suppliers.

 

I am sure the novelty will wear off but I keep getting hubby to look at it and tell me the cost when we switch on a light, boil the kettle or switch on the telly.

 

So far today we have used 20p of electric and 2p of gas. Let’s hope that the meter will encourage us to be smarter with our fuel usage – food for thought. It’s even said congratulations to me!