By Paul Homewood
I have contacted BEIS for the latest numbers they have on the cost of the smart meter rollout.
They have referred me to this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/smart-meter-roll-out-cost-benefit-analysis-2019
They reckon that between 2013 and 2034, the total cost will be £13.5bn:
Currently we are paying about £1 billion a year in our bills, about £40 per household, as energy companies simply pass the cost on. OFGEM also allow for smart meter costs in the Energy Price Cap.
BEIS maintain that savings from smart meters have already more than offset costs, but their calculations are laughable. The figures below are again for the full period, 2013 to 2034:
Consumer “benefits” are largely based around us all cutting back on energy usage. I certainly don’t know anybody who even looks at their meters on a regular basis, never mind turning heating or appliances off when they see what they are costing.
Even more absurdly, BEIS even include £1.4bn for “Time Savings”. They reckon that having smart meters will save us 32 minutes a year by avoiding a walk to the meter cupboard every three months. (It is curious that government wants us to waste hours a day cycling or bussing to work, but somehow there is no Time Cost associated with that!)
As I have always emphasised, if people really are so much better off, they would be queuing up to pay £500 to have smart meters installed!
The claimed supplier benefits are also a joke. About a third are supposed savings from avoided meter reads. This may have been true of the 1990s, but nowadays virtually everybody sends in meter readings via the internet, not only saving a meter reader being set, but also the cost of manually raising invoices.
As such, customers are already reaping the benefits of these savings, thanks to supplier discounts.
Most of the other supplier savings are based around admin costs, but again internet billing and so on have already massively reduced such costs.
The other claimed savings are pretty ephemeral too, such as “ Carbon Benefits” and “Demand Shifting”.
I suspect the official estimates for costs are also hopelessly optimistic, because there is no recognition of all of the problems already being identified. There are reports, for instance, that many of the older meters will need to be replaced in order to be compatible with new standards.
And as we know, many customers are already reporting that their smart meters do not connect to new suppliers when they move across.
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March 16, 2022 at 12:30PM
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