These seem like fairly reasonable concerns to be honest, it would be remarkable if ESB didn't consider this possibility when they designed the system though
The option should be there for people who do not want the granular detail of their usage sent to ESB, but rather for the meter to act as a modern but like-for-like replacement to the manually read meters where it sends just a single reading once a week or month.
These seem like fairly reasonable concerns to be honest, it would be remarkable if ESB didn't consider this possibility when they designed the system though
The option should be there for people who do not want the granular detail of their usage sent to ESB, but rather for the meter to act as a modern but like-for-like replacement to the manually read meters where it sends just a single reading once a week or month.
'Dr Eoin O’Dell of Trinity College Dublin warned of “mission creep”, with data intended for use by electricity suppliers ending up being accessed by gardaí, Revenue or social welfare officials to check if and when people were at home'
The argument isn't that the meters themselves will save money, rather that access to more detailed information will encourage people to change behaviour.
The smart meter doesn't save any energy, sure how could it, what it does is let you see your consumption live and potentially make changes to how you use electricity to save energy/money yourself.
I put in an energy monitor myself a few years ago as I was considering solar panels. In my experience seeing the dial in the app turn red and rocket from 0.2kW (€0.03/hour) to 5kW (€0.85/hour) certainly made me think before I stuck on the oven ages before I needed it, boiled full kettles unnecessarily, left the immersion on etc. I have little doubt most people would end up saving themselves a few quid through visibility of their consumption realtime.
My solar system came with an inductive pickup that clamps onto your incoming mains cable, so through the solar system app I can see import/export/generation etc.
I know most older systems didn’t have this kinda thing though, so what I used was one of these - https://efergy.com/engage/. Same as what comes with solar PV now, a simple clamp around your incoming mains cable in the meter cabinet and a few minutes later you see live usage in the app. I enjoyed playing with it!