Energy / Smart meter ‘saga’ for Lerwick resident – with others also experiencing problems
A LERWICK resident says he has gone through a “saga” to get a smart meter installed in his home – and after three months the piece of kit still does not work properly.
Gary Robinson described the situation as “really frustrating”, having first asked about a meter in 2018.
He finally got a smart meter installed in May this year, but the “smart” aspect of it does not work.
Robinson’s energy supplier Octopus Energy has still not managed to get it fixed yet, but there is hope on the horizon.
Meanwhile Shetland Citizens Advice Bureau manager Karen Eunson said a number of people have reported problems with smart meters in the isles, partly due to connectivity.
She said help is available from the organisation.
Smart meters enable people to see how much energy they are using in pounds and pence, rather than electricity units.
The hope is that it allows householders to make more informed decisions about their energy use. They use a secure national communication network to send data to the supplier.
At the end of March this year, more than half of all meters in Great Britain were smart or ‘advanced’.
There is a national target for every household to be offered a smart meter by mid-2025.
In Robinson’s case, he said his smart meter reads both imported electricity and exported power from his solar panels.
“But the smart side of it doesn’t work at all,” he said.
“I’m told that it works on the redundant analogue television signal, and I guess this is probably the problem all over Shetland, because we never did have that good a television signal.”
He said he has been in correspondence with Octopus for weeks, but despite dialogue there has been no solution found.
In response a spokesperson for Octopus confirmed there were issues with establishing a connection to the smart meter, and several attempts to fix it remotely failed.
After the matter was raised by Shetland News, Octopus then organised an engineer visit to Robinson’s house for later in August.
“Our tests suggest that connection in the area should be strong enough for a smart meter, so we are confident that we can resolve this once our engineer has visited the property,” the spokesperson said.
“Please note that issues with smart meters are vanishingly rare, and can be fixed pretty easily once we have got a handle on what is causing the issue. Our team will continue to monitor the situation, which has been communicated to Gary and he is happy with the outcome.”
Robinson said when he installed solar panels in 2018, he asked about a smart meter, but his then-supplier Npower never came up with the goods.
When the panels were installed he was told that his analogue meter – with the spinning disc – needed to be changed.
A worker then came up to Shetland from the ferry from Aberdeen to install the digital meter – with Robinson told that he was the man’s only job for the whole trip.
When he changed supplier to Octopus Energy he was then offered a smart meter, before being put on a waiting list.
“I got emails and started pushing them by the middle of last year,” he said.
“Eventually they did seem to get things moving this year.”
Robinson added: “I think it’s just really frustrating, and my situation is by no means as bad as the folk that are saying they’re waiting to get any kind of connection at all.”
The Lerwick resident also said the lack of a working smart meter is restricting his choices when it comes to powering his electric vehicle.
“I could go onto a tariff that offers you cheap overnight electricity for charging up the car, but one of the criteria for that is that you’ve got to have a working smart meter that can measure your electricity use in the early hours of the morning,” he said.
Meanwhile Citizens Advice manager Eunson said smart meters can be successfully installed in Shetland, but not everywhere has the connectivity required for the meter to work.
There are also some ongoing problems with older meters too.
“If the connectivity is not there, a smart meter becomes a ‘dumb meter’ and this can cause issues for the householder,” she said.
“Unfortunately, problems with connectivity only seem to be identified once meters are installed. We have been contacted by a few local people having these problems.
“We are supporting a lot of clients with problems with broken historical meters.
“Waiting times for getting broken meters fixed are long and we have clients who have been waiting months to get meter problems resolved.
“There also seems to be a lack of parts for fixing historical meters and this can leave folk with no option but to get a replacement smart meter.
“We also understand that energy suppliers are short of smart meters to install.
“If anyone is having problems with their meter, they can contact CAB’s Energy Advice service for help on 01595 694696 or by email to sicab@shetland.org
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