Recently, we have been talking about Smart meters. These are new version of electric meter for household electricity. It will calculate accurate bills instead of estimated bill. Even, Britain government announced target of fitting smart meter in every home by 2020. Moreover, official roll out started as energy companies are asked to replace customers’ old meters with smart meters.
However questions arise when £11bn cost is set on installing smart meters. But it will reduce cost on energy bills by 3% or less. So, what is the need of spending so much on rolling out gas and electricity meter? Until now, around 3.3m first-generation smart meters have been installed in UK homes. Further, it’s looking ambitiously, as around 53m to be fitted in more than 30m homes and businesses by the end of 2020. 
Negative Aspects of Smart Meter –
The downside of smart meter installation is, if you switch energy supplier the smart meters will behave like a normal meter. The roll out process is too complex and expensive. Even, there is a lack of security raised by the single line of malicious code causes power cut and exploding meters or house fires in accordance with security firm co-founder, Mr. Netanel Rubin. Moreover, last month SSE customers charged up to £33,000 a day by faulty smart meters.
Meanwhile, security experts at GCHQ have been involved in the development of the meters and the back office system to prevent the possibility of hacking.
What Can I do for protection against faulty smart meter?
If smart meter installer visits your place for installation, there must be no sales activity and they should provide energy efficiency advice. If they fail to do it, you should inform your energy supplier. You can make choice of how much energy consumption data to be used while billing and other regulated activities. Even, it’s up to you how much data you want to share with energy supplier.
Saving money on gas bills is usually simpler. You can practice some energy efficient steps to reduce cost. Still if you find it not enough for cutting cost, simply switch energy provider by performing energy comparison.
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