You’d Have to be Dumb Not to Know Smart Meters Will Soon Be Compulsory
Last week, the Chief Executive of Centrica/British Gas Chris O’Shea caused outrage when he told a House of Commons committee that so-called ‘smart meters’ should be compulsory. But anyone surprised by this hasn’t been paying attention. The ‘smart grid’ has always required that all domestic and business consumers are fitted with smart meters, and compulsion is the only way that energy companies can manage the scarcity created by the U.K.’s aggressive climate policy agenda. It doesn’t matter how much this policy agenda is wrapped up in fluffy PR, it transforms the relationships between individuals, energy companies and the state.
According to the Times, O’Shea told MPs:
We think that in order to have the proper smart grid that’s required to keep costs low in the future, everybody should have a smart meter. … One of the things we should consider as to whether this is a voluntary programme, or whether it should be mandatory. … If you mandated it, then we could have that programme completed within the next five years.
Other energy retail bosses have said the same thing in the recent past.
Like many of the daftest climate and energy policies, the smart meter rollout was first devised in 2009 by Ed Miliband. Back then, the Government believed that 50 million smart meters would have been installed by 2019, but they didn’t start being rolled out until 2013.
Meanwhile, energy company bosses were candid about the reality behind promised upsides of the green agenda. In 2011, National Grid Chief Executive Steve Holliday told BBC Today :
The grid’s going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030. We keep thinking about: we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be a much smarter system, then. We’re going to have to change our own behaviour and consume it when it’s available, and available cheaply.
In 2013, a National Grid Director, Chris Train, caused controversy by appearing to suggest that electricity use is a ‘luxury’.
The problem that smart meters and the smart grid were always intended to solve was the fact that renewable sources such as wind and solar only provide intermittent energy. Whereas fuels like coal and gas can be stored and burned as required by power stations, neither the Sun nor the wind responds to human needs and wants. So our increasing dependence on these sources via the smart grid requires something to regulate our demand – to encourage our use of power when it is available, and to discourage it when it’s not. That mechanism is, of course, price. The smart meter, then, would encourage rationing through ‘dynamic pricing’. Furthermore, energy companies have lobbied for legislation that allows them to balance supply and demand by switching off appliances – and even supply – remotely. Hence National Grid senior staffers explaining that vast investments are required to achieve the U.K.’s emissions-reduction targets, and that the way we use energy will have to change radically.
Not surprisingly, take-up of smart meters has been far slower than governments have hoped. Nobody wants a device in their home whose only function will be to enable an energy company to charge them five quid for a shower before work. Yet to avoid public pushback, ministers since Miliband have falsely claimed that smart meters will help households ‘reduce bills’ and put the onus on energy retailers to implement the rollout – if they don’t show sufficient effort in enforcement of the Government’s policy, they can then be fined. Thus, the public standing of energy companies has diminished over the duration, fuelling a growing antagonism between customers and retailers, as smart meters and other policies, such as the destruction of coal-fired power stations, have caused power prices to triple since the early 2000s. Energy companies take much of the blame for Westminster’s policy failures.
Don’t misunderstand the point. This is not a defence of energy companies. Of course, companies like National Grid have their greedy eyes on the opportunities created for them by green dirigisme. But only a fool would expect them not to. And one thing that there is no scarcity of is fools in SW1A. Energy companies have been relatively candid, if one cares to look, whereas Energy and Environment Ministers, from Gummer, Yeo, and Huhne, to more ideological zombies such as Miliband and Davey, have promised that climate targets can be hit with no downsides. But whereas the targets are binding in law, the upsides they promise are not. Anyway, rationing is good for you, donchaknow?
Even as Ed Miliband was preparing his speeches to promise ‘lower bills’ back in 2009, his own office, the now defunct Deptartment of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), produced an analysis that, according to the Daily Mail, showed smart meters would produce “annual savings of just £28 a year off a typical annual duel fuel bill by 2020, meaning it will take around 12 years just to recoup the initial installation costs”. Not so, replied DECC officials, “if people were more proactive in using the meters they could actually slash around £100 a year off their bills”. Between 2009 and 2020, however, domestic electricity prices rose by over 30% in real terms, having already risen by a third since the turn of the century.
Westminster’s climate ambitions, epitomised by Ed Miliband, don’t even give us the option of running to stand still. Even less does Miliband’s characteristic dogma and intransigence allow debate and democracy to represent our views.
Legal force was always going to be required to put smart meters into the homes of people who did not want them, and who recognise that such devices are not capable of serving their interests. And that antagonism was necessarily going to require a transformation of the relationship between consumers and energy companies. Henceforth, the latter would require unprecedented statutory powers, including a suspension of the requirement to supply reliable power to customers, who would be paying ever more for an ever-diminishing level of service, while energy company profits were underwritten by the Government. And that is made necessary by the fact that the wind is not always blowing, and today’s generation of politicians are no more capable of responding to reality and the public interest than a wind turbine can move without wind.
There is therefore nothing surprising about Chris O’Shea’s remarks.
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And labour will soon be in power again to accelerate the move to compulsion for initiatives like this.
Gawd help us. Moving from one corrupt, thieving government to another, in the name of so called democracy.
What was that catchy tune associated with Labour – Things can only get better? When will life get better for us – the people on the street – as opposed to those rule making / rule breaking uniparty shysters out only for personal gain when they park their bums on the seats of Westminster?
As for music for the Labour (uniparty) another SAXON track comes to mind.
Ministry of Fools:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvkm75p9upo
I suggest stop paying your electricity bill. It’s easier to do than you might think (though be advised, do some reading, you must do so with your eyes open and at your own risk). When done “properly” it is without consequence or hit to your credit score. If you do it really well you can even get dropped by your current supplier and become “supplierless” while still continuing to receive electricity from the national grid. I would never have thought this way before, but since Covid and the realisation our politicians are working to transfer our hard earned to globalists, I’ve also realised with absolute clarity the social contract is broken. And this one little well behaved lifelong Conservative has transformed into a rebel. Utter piss-taking betrayal will do that to a man.
I have heard of that but only from anonymous folk on the internet. Tempting for sure.
It works and can be done. I helped a poor friend take the approach and simply used Chat GPT to write the required letters. Which it does an absolutely fantastic job of doing. I’m now going through the same process for myself, since I’ve realised the same argument can applied where my supplier is concerned too.
Not sure if you can PM on this platform but I wouldn’t mind some more info on this please? my username at btinternet dot com works for email as well.
Thanks
Sounds like something Sovereign Pete was talked about with Richard Vobes.
The quicker we get this done the better. The plaster needs to be ripped off so people instantly feel the pain and see it for what it is. The irony is that the Labour-light ‘conservatives’ are the elites best chance of pushing through their unhinged agenda with virtually no pushback – just us ‘conspiracy theorists’ atm. The bright red welt needs to be seen to be understood, and Labour will parade the injury without restraint – it’s our only chance of meaningful civil resistance.
That is a good thought process. However, the media will manipulate the ‘benefits’ of such an approach and as has been proved, most are sheep and will follow and be herded for fun.
I do wonder how many of those people railing against Net Zero and the accompanying tyranny are members of a centre Right challenger party. They are all committed to tearing up the legislation that they hate so much. Either put up or shut up is a legitimate response to people railing on about Net Zero.
I was a hold out didn’t see the point/knew where this was going. But last year I moved into a new build property which is a big upgrade on my old house in many respects but it does come with smart meters. What I would say based on 12 months experience with them is that they are never going to work as intended. British Gas has not ‘read’ my ‘smart’ meter for the electricity since Jan 1st. Estimated readings all the way since then, I even had to do a manual reading on the 3rd April after they used an estimate for the day of the price cap change (their estimate which was too high, which would have resulted in me paying for many more units at the old higher rate than was actually the case). I’ve even had another bill since and it’s still using estimates. The gas and the water seem to be fine but if tens of thousands of ‘smart’ meters are like mine, then there is no way the system will be capable of doing what they intend. The technology simply isn’t reliable enough. I suspect that will be the case with a lot of these… Read more »
I expect “smart meters” will work promptly enough when it comes to switching off your supply.
I am actually looking at options for creating a faraday cage in an attractive format like a planter around the box which houses the meter on the outside wall.
Please send details. A bit buggered if the data is sent encrypted down the electricity cable.
But can’t imagine how that could be possible with gas pipes.
So microwaves it must be all the way to the bank.
This is as plain as the nose on our faces. As with all things GREEN, first comes the nudge, where they get all the low hanging fruit with those people easily manipulated into thinking the smart meter is there to save them money and stopping them getting estimated bills, but then comes the PUSH, where those of us who never fell for the energy rationing scam will be coerced into getting one. This country has forced itself in law to reduce emissions of CO2 (Net Zero) so those of us with no smart meter will soon have the knock at the door and it will be compulsory. Some of my friends and family who have one are convinced it is a great idea because they won’t have an estimated bill and won’t be paying more than what they actually owe for the energy they have used till it is due to be paid. —–This is true, but they are missing the real point. A smart meter will know what time of day you are using energy and will be able to charge you according to when you use electricity. So at peak times we will all be charged more. So… Read more »
Many towns have signed up to the U.K. 100 organisation that facilitates councils to go further and faster on their ‘Net Zero and Clean Air targets’ without any discussion with residents. The demi-gods in local councils have took it upon themselves to commit their towns to the constraints of the build-back-better claptrap.
Oldham council have signed up to the 100 Cities project although they have neglected to tell any of the Borough residents. I wrote to my MP even though most of her constituency is in Kashmir. Typically the response was “not me Guv. I do not interfere in Oldham council business.” Yeah, and I’m a muslim. She advised I write to my local councillors. I had already done so. Of the three, all Lib Dims, not one has replied.
On the night of the recent Locals as it became evident that Labour had lost overall control Debbie Abrahams (Kashmir), Jim McMahon (Bangladesh) and Arooj Shah then leader of the Council were spotted diving into a private room for what was clearly an emergency meeting as reality dawned that the muzzy vote had gone rogue and elected their own “Independent” councillors. So although Kneel will win the next election he will not have it all his own way. I suspect however an announcement on Oldham’s 100 Cities jamboree will be kept from the constituents until the election is in the bag, or not as the case may be.
That is where George Galloway has his uses beyond being a mouthpiece for the Gaza geezers. In one of his rants he criticized Charles and his Reset saying how him and his mates want us to own nothing and be happy. I think the way there will be less ownership of property and assets will be when the crash comes. Mentioned as The Great Steal by that Swedish banker.
Raja Miah has worked hard to get the Labour cartel in Oldham ousted from their ivory tower.
I know Raja. Unfortunately Raja has become convinced of his own importance and has managed to upset just about every party in Oldham. He has caused much damage and particularly across the Independent movement. Four years ago he was certainly a valid part of the political framework in Oldham but now he is largely shunned by all.
In France, it is even your legal right to have the “Linky” (the name for the smart meter) removed in favour of one which does not communicate your usage to your provider. And the Linky even works, because it does not use the mobile network to communicate data. It uses the electricity cables themselves. Seems France is several steps ahead in this regard. Both in the sense of individuals’ rights, and in making sure the tech actually works (if you even want it). I am still totally opposed to smart meters for the simple reason that allowing the provider to decide how much of their product/service the consumer has consumed is a clear conflict of interest. I do not believe the energy companies will, as some people predict, use the smart meters to remotely disconnect you at times of their choosing to “save the planet”. No. They will just charge you more. Again, here in France, it is possible to have a tariff which on most days of the year charges a bit less per KWh than the basic tariff. The only catch is that you have to look at their website every day to check if tomorrow is going… Read more »
It is not the provider who is driving this. It is government. The political class are fully signed up to pretending to save the planet in this country and have passed NET ZERO without a single question about cost or viability asked. It was simply waved through Parliament. This means that if individuals and companies do not do everything to reduce emissions, which would ofcourse include having a smart meter, then government could accuse those without the smart meter of breaking the law. —-This is tyranny step by step.
Agreed it’s the government (and useful idiots).
Just giving my first hand experience of another “western” country.
Of course they will turn off the supply. What else can they do. There have been more than enough studies to show that interruption of supply is bound to happenduring periods of low or high wind, at night and on dull winter days and when the French cut off the interconnector. Batteries will only allow an orderly shut down and then only if many many more are installed and replaced every 15 years. Of course they may not last 15 years. Loss of supply will be done according to the elite view of the worth of different demographics. Westminster and Chipping Camden will retain supplyhospitals will keep supply until the system screws up and “underprivileged areas” will retain supply. Think what a loss of electricity at no notice means. No internet or telephone, no charging for mobile devices, maybe loss of 4G signal. If you live in a flat or some houses, water will not be pumped. No cooking. No fridge or freezer doors to be opened. No cup of tea or coffee or hot water bottle. The loss of electricity could go on for days at least during periods of extended still winter weather, especially if the French government… Read more »
One benefit of losing power will be your only news will come from dead tree sources, all loyal to the elite with protected electricity.
And remember that these days the network providers, either by cable or 4G etc, need a power supply for it to work. Maybe they do have some short term batteries at some locations, but not like the old copper cable phone lines with a thumping big 50V lead acid pack at the exchange.
If you do not have a Linky, the supplier will physically read your meter once a year – legal Right to enter the premises if the meter is indoors – for which they charge 80€.
Linky only reports electricity consumption using the grid transmission lines, it does not regulate tariffs – Heures Pleins/Heurs Creuses – which is controlled by a separate switch in the distribution board activated by a signal over the grid.
All agreed.
Happy to pay the 80€. One gets what one pays for.
It is a double scam where the ‘cheapest’ tariff will only apply to those using direct debit payments so they have control over your money as well.
Or to those who watch the telly and cook their dinner at 3 in the morning. But even they won’t be safe from the “dynamic pricing” if the wind happens to not be blowing.
Translation of all this shyte: rolling blackouts whenever and wherever they see fit and you won’t have the slightest say in it!
That will quite probably happen anyway, with or without smart meters.
Brownouts are already getting more common.
Just makes it a more detailed and area specific shut off, all the way down to naughty non complict companies or individuals!
Who wants to forecast when this will start. I think Milliband wants to be the Minister wit done it. Just to make his old dad proud. 🥹
Highly likely 👍
“Dynamic Pricing” ——Pay more at peak times and if the wind isn’t blowing, which is often.——–Isn’t it pathetic that the UK always has to pretend to save the planet harder and faster than everyone else? Well if we cannot be “world leaders” in anything much anymore I suppose we can still be “world leaders” in impoverishing our own citizens with crippling energy prices and rationing.
The utility providers are keen on them, and take every opportunity to advertise them on their sites. What they do not explain is the prospect of variable pricing every half hour or so, rather than the standard two rate (day & 7 hours night rate). However, at my place which has solar PV connected under the Feed-in tariff, the firm that was pushing “smart” meters didn’t want to know. Installing a smart meter would result in real measured export, rather than deemed 50%, so they’d have to pay even more at certain times of year. In any case, the concept of doing remote reading is incompatible with any Feed-in customer, because they can’t remotely read any generation meter, only the import/export, so they still require manual reading by us at the same time to be able to do the sums under the contract. The overall scheme these days is even more complex than that, though, in that there is a split between the District Network Operator (DNO), and the utility firms that use the same physical system. Each householder has a deal with whoever, not the DNO (some places might still have a utility firm & DNO under the same… Read more »
Thanks for this, JohnK. Seems that Incompetence strikes again!
What about us Dumb People
It is all very well all this talk of smart this and smart that but some of us hoi-polloi are a bit dumb! People with cognitive difficulties, arthritis etc. find the whole world of smart digital is beyond them and they are being left behind. My wife and I do not have and cannot use Smart Phones and as such are already having to mark certain car parks as unusable as we do not have the ‘app’ whatever that is?
I have looked at you tube videos of Smart Meters and I doubt I could manage one, I cannot operate touch screens and I cannot interpret small screen information nor can my wife. Increasingly those of us in the dumb group are getting left behind, the world of smart and digital requires a level of hand manipulative ability and cognitive understanding that is way beyond that of many of us in the increasingly larger group of the digitally excluded. However TPTB are in a frantic rush with all this smart digital stuff and seem to have no time for inconvenient people who cannot manage the technology.
Well said – I am reminded of my late parents. They wouldn’t have had a clue how to “download an app” to park.
I share your pain, but I also know that a handful of extremists managed to drive out a schoolteacher and his family from Batley so some people have the power to effect great change.
Recently I went into complete meltdown at my GP Surgery following yet another problem with a repeat prescription.
The Surgery Manager phoned me within 30mins to talk over how the situation could be resolved.
My friend also went into meltdown on behalf of her elderly father which resulted in action to help them both.
It is v hard, as I am normally quiet and polite, but the Country has changed and I can see I now have less rights than someone coming off a boat.
Ain’t that the truth!
Are you a member of a centre Right challenger party? That would be a way to help fight back against the tyranny in our midst.
If my mother can manage it, any older person can. Not that you should. She drunk the Kool Aid starting with the climate hoax.
Can we stop calling them climate targets?
It’s just more Orwellian language.
Firstly, they are carbon targets. The link between carbon in the atmosphere and what the climate will be is completely hypothetical and so far unproven.
Secondly, they haven’t set any “climate” targets. As far as I know there are sone temperature targets, for the whole planet, which is a nonsense concept. Imposed on us by global bureaucrats. But in any case the climate is more than just temperature and they haven’t defined what they want the climate to be, so there are no climate targets.
Not that they could shape the climate to their hearts desires even if they wanted to.
So we don’t have climate targets. Stop using their language. It validates their madness and tyranny.
Correct. The “climate target” is really an “energy reduction target” since when we stop using reliable sources of energy production like coal and gas and use wind instead there won’t be enough energy to go around. ——-The climate change thing is simply the very plausible excuse and the sad thing is that the vast majority are falling for this crap.
Seconded.
Through the covid vaccines I have woken up to the extreme extent globalists are dictating policy and ensuring a firehose sized money siphons is being attached to our pockets. And now I see it all. The whole fascism 2.0 scam. Fascism 1.0 was driven by nationalist minded governments. Fascism 2.0 is driven by globalist (entirely non-national) business. At least fascism 1.0 had the benefit of exploiting nationalism, so retained some marginal benefit for the common man by keeping the wealth in country. Anyway I now, somewhat to my surprise, find, though once I was true Conservative respectful of the law, I now have no sense of loyalty or duty to be a well behaved citizen. I feel lied to and stolen from. Stolen from by the government paying for vaccines with my taxes, stolen from by energy suppliers who implement dark patterns to try to keep their customers on more expensive tariffs. Stolen from by the energy supply system, where though I am fed propaganda lies (wind cheaper than fossil fuel), the cost of renewables has been pegged to the cost of gas (rendering any politician uttering the wind cheaper than fossil fuel trope an agent of deception) and all… Read more »
Or, as I like to put it, be an alien, wherever you go. The system cannot cope with aliens, and just rejects them.
Another chap I met who lived in his van all around Europe during the scamdemic and had no trouble from any angle said it something like this (with some paraphrasing from me):
“Governments and their agents are simply too busy terrorising their own citizens to bother with me, a foreigner. As soon as they see my passport they just wave me through; to them, I am the property of an unrecognised operating system, and they don’t have the right program to process the file they see in front of them.”
Yet if you are a Dinghy Diver arriving here, you have more rights!
“ And they have even become brazen in their refusal to do so”…..A prime example of that is how Andrew Bridgen is treated in Parliament. And remember Boris & Justin discussing how big their plane is? Sometimes it is in plain sight.
Excellent post.
We do have a responsibility to break laws if we can.
Always use cash and help to facilitate tax dodging whenever possible.
Scottish Power sent me a letter, “As you’ll know, your [dumb] meter is currently supported by the Radio Teleswitch Service [no, I didn’t know]. But you may not be aware that the service is due to be fully decommissioned by the industry provider in 2025 and that the RTS service is not being replaced. This means you’ll need a new meter to continue using your electric storage heating.”
So legislation is not always needed to induce people to accept smart meters.
I suppose one could install a diesel generator.
It’s taken a long time for them to actually shut down the old Droitwich long wave transmitter, from which the old radio teleswitch service is transmitted. Some years ago, I used to have that to control one of the older twin rate meters, for Economy 7, but they (can’t remember which firm it was – either nPower or SSE) replaced it with a more modern fixed time one (not a smart meter) with it’s own built in clock. Not sure if they are still available, but I guess they want to install one which is also a “smart” one. The thing to watch is what time it is set up for.
In the old days, with tele switch, it varied around the year, in line with GMT/BST changes; the one I had was 01:30 to 08:30 at this time of year, but now the one I have is fixed at 23:36 to 06:36 GMT (the clock is about 6 minutes out) all the time.
And they just don’t replace the analogue meters. Just like their plans for the ICE cars.
“You’d Have to be Dumb Not to Know Smart Meters Will Soon Be Compulsory”
… or hide for months at home frightened of a Cold virus, wear a piece of cloth/paper over your face believing it will stop you catching a Cold, believe ‘safe & effective then ‘get it less serious’ and be inoculated with an untested, experimental,pharmaceutical, believe that shutting down the economy will not cause inflation and economic problems, believe CO2 (only from fossil fuels) drives global warming climate change, believe buying a BEV or heat pump will stop this, recycle plastic to save the planet, ban straws to save fish, vote for Labour as a better alternative to Tory, to believe your vote can change anything anyway, to support a war against Russia, to support Hamas.
Dumb is not in short supply. Which is why we are where we are.
Saw some graffiti once saying…..’Smart phones dumb people’. I have one but get the sentiment.
“ where we’re headed, says Ben Pile”
Also was that not in the UK FIRES Report, enforcement of Smart Metres. Something the then Deputy Chairman of the Conservatives Lee Anderson would deny on Twitter.
” National Grid Director, Chris Train, caused controversy by appearing to suggest that electricity use is a ‘luxury’.”
I suppose it is in a third world country!
“Energy companies take much of the blame for Westminster’s policy failures”
Failures?
It is not just the smart meter that will become compulsory. The smart meter is only one cog in the GREEN wheel. Every other cog will be compulsory as well. The electric car, the heat pump, the insulation, the no meat, the no flying, the no gas central heating, and even I suspect no complaining global warming being a socialist scam or we will be dragged off to the climate change gulag.
Road to Dystopia Ivor Cummins, Not watch all but so far great presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk8ZPZS_P7Q&t=2714s
“smart grid that’s required to keep costs low in the future”: low for whom?
If you hadn’t already decided not to vote Labour think on this: Ed Millibacon will be in charge of all things “Green” and your bills will soar far higher than the aircraft only the rich will be able to board.
I was reading about meter boxes a few weeks ago. The lock on my electricity box doesn’t work very well. I found out that I own that box as do all homeowners. The electricity company owns the cables and the meter but the box is not theirs. Therefore, can they even open that box without your permission?
There is, however, a law which states that the meter has to be replaced after X years (I can’t remember how long). Personally, I’ll refuse to have one fitted as long as possible. If I wished to live as a Caveman I’d go off to the woods and invent a wheel.
Depends on the country. I would say among the British population that concern with liberty is rather low.Your fellow countrymen will accept greater and greater surveillance and it is wise to form a pre-emptive strategy in this regard because it doesn’t require a great deal of resistance. 3 percent can easily defeat 90 percent if the ragtag band of rebels are full of spunk and guile.
Go to the mountains. Pyrenees is where we are. A lot of anarchists here. Quiet, resourceful folk with a twinkle in their eyes. No BS and just enough primeval energy to know they could be very dangerous if necessary.
Many have parents and grandparents who took flight from tyranny in Spain. They know the signs. They’ve told their stories well.
But choose your range. The Alps would, I imagine, be a completely different story.
Never forget the immortal Charlton Heston quote ” From my cold dead hand”
How did it work out with the mandatory death jab?