Careful what you wish for ...

In Germany, this thinking has let to one of two things: mandatory smart meters, which may spy on you, and require an Internet connection. Beefing up the cost by a factor of, idk, a lot.

My local provider (luckily) has opted to install "semi smart" meters right before the smart meter became mandatory. Those do not need Internet connectivity (and thus, are only somewhat more expensive than the old ones). The "semi smart" part is, they allow renters to read some power consumption figures. How, you ask? do you press a button? Ask again. The meter has an encapsulated (notoriously shitty) photo diode. You need to flash a code with a flashlight to it! Only then will it display the power figures for the last week on the LCD display. Madness.

In the same vein, landlords will soon be required to provide a monthly overview of heating costs, e.g. by email. Guess who pays dearly for this service with no choice? Renters.

Bottom line: Those of us who are already on top of costs get expensive, mandatory and ultimately useless services. Those who didn't care about running the heater while the window is open probably won't care still.

> In Germany, this thinking has let to one of two things: mandatory smart meters, which may spy on you, and require an Internet connection. Beefing up the cost by a factor of, idk, a lot.

My house (in CA - but not PG&E) has a 'smart meter'. Which means that they don't have to send people every month on every single residence to collect usage data for billing anymore. Cost has decreased for them. They do require internet connectivity, but it's the power company's responsibility (they have spread wifi access points across the city for this purpose, that also doubles as free wifi).

What 'spying' are you worried about with your meter? What can it report, other than your power usage, that the power company would know anyway? Presumably it even is located outdoors?

> In the same vein, landlords will soon be required to provide a monthly overview of heating costs, e.g. by email.

Well, too bad they have decided on a crappy implementation.

> What 'spying' are you worried about with your meter? What can it report, other than your power usage, that the power company would know anyway?

Traditional electro-mechanical meters keep a running sum of power used, but can't tell the power company exactly how much power you were using at every minute of the day. Such a log, although still crude, gives the power company much more insight into your daily routine than they ever had before.

> Traditional electro-mechanical meters keep a running sum of power used, but can't tell the power company exactly how much power you were using at every minute of the day. Such a log, although still crude, gives the power company much more insight into your daily routine than they ever had before.

Using traditional summing electro-mechanical meters assumes that electricity is priced uniformly at all times of day, and encourages over-consumption during times when spot market electricity is most expensive, the cost of which ends up being shifted to those who consume energy at lower spot market price times.

Smart meters allow for time-of-use rates, which are a more economically (and in CO2 emissions) efficient way of pricing power.

They do expose more information about the times of day that individual consumers use electricity to electric utilities, though. A consumer who is concerned about and also is proponent of market based pricing mechanisms could install battery storage to mask their usage profile, and even use it to do energy arbitrage.

That is convoluted. Then again, it's Germany. Here in NL most places have a meter that beams usage to your utility, which send me handy montly reports. By default it's only allowed to transmit twice per month, but you can allow it to be done daily or near real time (some energy co's require it, they'll charge you different hourly rates). The privacy around these numbers are guarded: they may only be used to calculate your bill.

> The meter has an encapsulated (notoriously shitty) photo diode. You need to flash a code with a flashlight to it! Only then will it display the power figures for the last week on the LCD display. Madness.

That's simultaneously terrible and quite neat.

well its bullshit, there are some shitty ones but also some really good ones.

besides a smart meter is only required for certain people. only a digital meter will be required for most people. a digital meter will be smart if it gets a communication unit, however most digital meters lack these. (you need the com unit if you have more than 6kW/year, produce more than 7kW to the grid or if you have a wallbox/heat pump/etc)

however some power providers will force a smart grid (digital meter + com unit) on you and you can't deny it (you can't deny digital meters aswell) however they are not as smart as they could be and most of the time you need to send your total kW amount to the provider anyway...

(btw. your power provider and the grid provider are not always the same so it might be that you send the amount to the grid provider or you have a smart meter and the grid provider forwards it to the power provider and the grid is basically a municipal one so it might happen that each county/city might have a different one (my parents live 30km afar and have the same power provider, but we have a differet grid provider)) (smart meter usage or not is bound by the grid provider so you can't just switch it, since you would need to relocate...)

They do. All new smart meters come with an IHD (In Home Display). It shows real-time use in kWh or £.

> All new smart meters come with an IHD (In Home Display).

Not necessarily. My local utility (Xcel Energy in Colorado, US) is in the process of moving to new smart meters, and as far as I'm aware, there is no IHD. My apartment complex was converted a couple months ago; I can get hourly usage via the utility website on about a 3-4 hour delay, but no realtime usage.

I'm assuming, if you're in the US, your IHD wouldn't be displaying in £ either :-)

Let me be clearer. Every new install of a smart meter in the UK is supposed to come with an IHD.

Mine didn't, the meter was installed as part of the house build last year.

That would work for the total consumption, but if you notice that that is too high, you will still have to run around with a power consumption monitor to identify the individual culprits. Of course, a display saying "you are currently using 1300 Watts" would be easier than having to estimate it from how fast the wheel on the meter is turning, but replacing every meter everywhere is not the most environmentally friendly thing to do either...

> if you notice that that is too high, you will still have to run around with a power consumption monitor to identify the individual culprits

Or just the good old method of turning things off individually, one at a time.

I’d think panel support would logically have a probe per circuit, so you could get the complete breakdown if and when necessary.

Though obviously it’s still only on per-circuit basis, and if an idiot wired your house that may be less useful than the platonic ideal of house wiring.

Leviton offers what you describe:

https://www.leviton.com/en/products/residential/load-centers

There's an energy monitor with 16 CT clamps included, you put one on each of the circuits coming from the fuse board. 16 is more than enough for most UK houses, which would at least let you know which circuits are consuming the power.