PLAIN DUMB!
Rolled out amid huge fanfare in an £11BILLION project, smart meters will cost each household £420 – and experts dismiss them as just...
A dog’s breakfast . . . misconceived and astonishingly expensive GORDON HUGHES Professor of Economics
BILLIONS of pounds are being spent on installing ‘smart’ energy reading meters in homes that will leave householders out of pocket. Energy firms are hoping to fit all 26million homes with these new monitors in an £11 billion project launched three years ago and ending in 2020. But experts fear the scheme is a waste of money with meters vulnerable to hackers.
The devices do away with estimates for bills and meter readings, as usage is read remotely by the supplier using radio waves. The smart meter also comes with a hand-held display that can sit in the kitchen and show how much energy a home is consuming.
Television adverts featuring ‘Gaz’ and ‘Leccy’ relentlessly promote the virtues of the smart meter. But they are not as consumer-friendly as Gaz and Leccy are letting on. EVERY household, whether they want a smart meter or not, is being forced to fork out £420 to help fund the £11billion smart meter project. The cash is being pickpocketed from our energy bills – rising up to 10 per cent this year to an average £1,150.
Gordon Hughes is professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh and a former senior adviser on energy and environmental policy at the World Bank. He says: ‘The introduction of the smart meter is a dog’s breakfast. At best it is misconceived and an astonishingly expensive project. For those claiming it will bring major savings, I say they need to grow up.
‘Studies confirm that after just a couple of weeks the novelty of a smart meter wears off and people go back to their old energy usage habits. A smart meter might end up shaving 1 per cent off a utility bill – a tenner a year.’
With the cost per household of the project estimated at £420, it will take decades for smart meters to provide savings to households.
Alex Henney also believes the introduction of smart meters is a waste of money. He is a former government adviser on energy privatisation and ex-director of London Electricity. In a written statement to the Parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee four years ago – a year before smart meters started to be installed – he wrote: ‘The British roll-out of smart meters is one of the most incompetent, one of the most expensive, and definitely the most complex. The project is likely to be a shambles with negligible consumer benefit.’ Henney stated civil servants ‘cooked the books’ to give meters a net benefit of almost £5billion – but independent analysis found it would end up costing the nation at least £4billion.
Even the Government’s own savings projections look poor value for money. It claims meters may provide households with initial savings of £23 a year. But £13 of this annual saving is expected to come from the money that energy companies will pocket by no longer having to send meter reader workers out to come and visit.
The rest of the meagre savings are predicted to come from homeowners looking at their energy display monitors and realising the cost of many energy-sapping devices around the home. For example, televisions that still burn up electricity when left on standby. THERE are fears that the new smart meters can be hacked, giving criminals the opportunity to raid people’s bank accounts and plan burglaries.
Jim Dee is head of forensic and counter-fraud services at accountancy firm Crowe Clark Whitehill. He is also visiting professor and chair of the Centre for Counter Fraud Services at the University of Portsmouth. He says: ‘As with all wireless technology, there is a risk that smart meters will be hacked. It is not a question of making them secure but of providing greater resilience. Hackers use viruses that can adapt and mutate over time to break in to smart meters. Even the latest technology is vulnerable.’
He adds: ‘There is a line of code in smart meters that can be deciphered. Fraudsters could then commit billing fraud, leading to money being taken out of households’ bank accounts. Hacking a smart meter also enables a fraudster to discover when you are out, making it a tool for a burglar deciding when is the best time to break in.’
Dee, co-author of a recent fraud
report that shows cybercrime costs the economy £193billion a year, believes arsonists could even take advantage of flaws in the technology. He says: ‘There have been instances where fires have been caused due to sudden increases of power to a home. Smart meter technology could possibly be abused in this way.’
Earlier this year the BBC Watchdog programme investigated whether there were links between fires caused at 18 homes after smart meters were fitted. A SMART meter enables energy companies to read usage wirelessly using radio wave signals through a ‘national communication network’. Yet industry insiders are concerned the technology is not foolproof and the wrong meter – or reading – could still be taken by an energy firm.
Research by scientists at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, found meters can in some cases produce readings up to six times too high – though the ones it tested were not used in the UK. The issue was caused partly by LED bulbs and dimmer switches distorting the shape of the electric current read by the meter.
Earlier this year, some meters in Britain – supplied by energy provider SSE – gave false readings due to a computer glitch. One stated a household was consuming more than £30,000 worth of gas and electricity in a day. SSE did not bill the customer for the mistake. A spokesman for SSE says: ‘The issue affected a small group of meters and was investigated as a matter of urgency. We continue to monitor the performance of our meters to ensure they are operating correctly.’
But Hughes fears such assurances are not enough. He says: ‘It is most difficult to make a system of this kind genuinely secure. It could be a real menace if it is ever connected to the internet.’
The professor believes part of the problem is that smart meters are being forced on the industry by the Government without proper consideration of the commercial implications.
For example, the wirelessly controlled smart meters are not the same for each provider, making it hard for consumers to switch energy firms. A further layer of confusion is added if meters are installed by a third party.