They may be smart, but the deployment of them certainly isn't.

We had a smart electricity meter from a previous supplier. I liked the fact that it saved me having to read the meter, and when the time came I made sure my new supplier would fit a smart gas meter too. In due course, the man came to fit it, only to find it wasn't compatible with the smart electricity meter. After a long acrimonious phone discussion with his head office, he very decently announced that he would fit both, despite the office trying to get him to come back on a separate day. The two work well and I am now relieved of the task of reading the gas meter too as well as being able to monitor what it costs!

But it seems these are 'SMETS1' meters! These cannot be used by another supplier, so if I switch again - which I normally do every year - I will have to have both swapped again to a 'SMETS2' meters, which are not going to be fitted until October!

How much all this buggering about has cost I have no idea. They are free to the consumer, but no doubt the cost is eventually recovered via higher fuel prices.

The government is, meanwhile, spending loads more cash on stupid ads on the telly, urging one and all to get them installed. The government organisation responsible for this cannot be contacted by you and me and there appears no way that one can establish if a proposed new supplier can use your smets1 meter. Even more money is splashed on urging people to switch, despite the fact that the smart meters are stopping people doing that.Probably easier to stick with the same supplier rather than going through a meter-changing ceremony every year!

Any sensible person would have started by developing a smart meter specification that could be manufactured by anyone, and used by any supplier well before deploying them at all. I suspect this cock-up has cost us all billions already, with more to come. Sometimes I get close to despair!

I changed supplier just to stop scottish power ringing me every 5 minutes asking if i wanted a smart meter ...and of course to save money. Together Energy £400+ a year cheaper.

In most cases there will be no need to physically change a smets1 meter to a smets2, most smets1 can be converted into a smets2 by a remote software update.

One possible instance where this might not be the case are some systems that only do slow updates (eg 30 mins electricity and 1 day gas), I read all the words about this and gleaned nothing so I'm surmising it might be a problem.

There are so many smoke and mirror statements its difficult to understand anything. One company (OVO) is implying that when they convert to smets2 they will no longer support the smart energy analysis tool that give feedback to the customers.

Well, I hope you are right DD.

Interesting that they are remotely hackable though. It is the last thing I'd want of something collecting money from customers if I were a utility! There may well be ways of reducing one's bills by a lot more than Fish's £400+ a year...

The British Gas ones are just about impossible to hack remotely (unless there are backdoors in place), your online account would be hugely easier to hack.

The smart reader is not connected to the broadband internet, it operates over the mobile phone network, they could be put on private channels which adds another layer of security that would have to be hacked.

But British Gas software being British Gas software it can probably be hacked by whispering "let me in" to it, whereupon it rolls over and lets you tickle its tummy.

Ethical Hacking lol...