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Pippin
Pippin friendica
Is there a reason *not* to get smart meters installed (gas and electricity, UK)? I can't think of any, but I understand it's a one-way street, and you can't go back if you get them, so I'm trying to consider carefully before just going "yep, come and yank out my dumb meters and put smart ones in".
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Ghost
Ghost • mastodon (AP)
have you got a digital meter already or an old school analogue one? Basically the only argument I’ve heard is that analogue ones become less accurate over time, usually in your favour, meaning if you wanted to be dishonest you could. There’s also the concern that a smart meter has a remotely controllable disconnect relay in it, but after lawyers got involved it was decided it’d be too much of a liability to ever use it, especially given the risk of disconnecting the wrong meter!
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Pippin
Pippin friendica

@Ghost The new house has very non-smart meters, presumably unchanged since the place was built in 1989. They are "digital" only in the sense that they have digits displayed on the front…

I found images of, I think, the same models of meter. If not they are *very* close.

An English Electric type C31 B/M electricity meter.

An Actaris U6 gas meter.

Hmm, I think the risk from remote-off is probably negligible (unless someone was motivated enough to hack the things and turn it off maliciously, but that also seems very unlikely, unless they did so in bulk, indiscriminately). I'd guess the benefit of a slightly under-reading meter is probably offset by the benefit of being able to see your usage in real time, have time-of-day-variable tariffs, and things like that.

@Ghost
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Ghost
Ghost • mastodon (AP)

yeah that’s an old school mechanical meter, and I tend to agree the risks are negligible as even malicious attacks would need to sign the command with 2 TLS certificates for the meter to acknowledge it (not that I entirely trust the opsec to keep the private keys secure).

I generally agree the advantages of a variable tariff are worth it over the under reading, but everyone’s mileage may vary there

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