Esb smart meter

It is strange you can't go back to a standard tariff.

After the installation of the smart metre, our electricity bill has jumped from around €150 for a two-bed appartment to €600 for the billing period to date. Note €150 is for two months, whereas the €600 is for less than one momth I don't go for conspiracy theories but this is incredible.

Last bill prior to the installation was my own reading. My bill before that was estimated. In general, the estimated readings were higher.

Totally share this frustration on not having real-time monitoring ability. I just called ESB Networks out of curiosity to ask if I could access the data from the meter and they said no, and also that there was some sort of app in development-seems like a good business opportunity for app developers actually. So it seems to be the case that ESB Networks and my supplier (Bord Gais) get sent data at half hour intervals from a meter attached to my house, but I myself have to wait until Bord Gais make my data available before I can access it. Not ideal.

However, I have to say that in my case, my smart plan is saving me a heap of money, but mainly because I have an electric car. The EV accounted for exactly 33% of my total usage between December 13 and August 16, and with the new plan it is basically costing me about 80 cents or so to charge sufficiently to drive 100km. Averaged out over the whole year and taking into account the absurd price increase of 30% to come on Oct 2, I'll pay about €140 to drive about 12,000km for an entire year. So essentially I have almost zero cost to drive the car as long as I charge it between 2-5am. The data file I get from Bord Gais also allows me to kind of roughly guess how much energy specific applicances use, so if I add the dishwasher, washing machine and dehumidifier (to dry clothes) together and run them from 2-5am or at least for a portion of that period, I get about 1.5kWh, or about 13-14% of daily use. So I now have the situation where up to 40% of my electricity is only costing me just under 6 cents per unit. Without the EV it might be a different story as I doubt the EV rate would offset the increased day rate, but at least with the data I get from the supplier, I can actually work this out. I think though going back to my first point, what is really missing here is the ability to do all of these calculations before you switch supplier. You need to know how much electricity you use, when and what specific devices account for the spikes in usage before you can really work out if a particular plan will save you money and right now you can't really do that unless you are willing to spend a few hundred Euro on some sort of device which involves installing clamps on the different circuits or on the main tail to the meter-but having a smart meter you shouldn't have to do this as it's effectively duplication. But overall I would say if you have an EV then definitely you will want to change to a smart plan with an EV rate. Apart from these plans, current smart plans are totally useless and probably will end up costing you more money than if you had the standard rate.

As an aside, the data analysis I've been doing has made me realise how absurd the whole idea of converting the national car fleet to EVs is. My car has a 58kWh battery and my average daily usage since I got the smart meter has been 10.9kWh, excluding EV charging. The car has a range of 425km, which is realistic enough for this time of year. So basically, I can power everything in my house for 5-6 days with the same energy it takes to move my car 425km. We really need to rethink this whole private car ownership thing if we are to have a sustainable grid in the future...

That’s 10% higher charges for those with smart meters on smart tariffs between 5-7 pm.

Were your previous bills actual/customer or estimated readings? If they were based on low estimates this would have been corrected when the smart meter was installed & this might be why the bill is so high.

If these smart meters can tell whats plugged in, is it possible if your car is charging they can add more tax to each unit? To cover the loss of taxes on petrol/diesel.

Looking at the ESB website they say "Smart meters enable you to see which appliances use the most energy, and this allows us to help you choose the best rate"

I'm sure you are right but it wouldn't surprise me if the meters could tell by frequency or if a EV charger is active or some other way.

I was shocked when I seen this rte article thinking the cru can now interfere with a private contract and force higher rates on consumers on a whim.

But it states it’s a recommendation and it’s full of holes, the article says a corresponding 10% cut in off peak rates will balance things out - is the reduction on all hours except the 5pm to 7pm or is it perhaps the cheaper hours post midnight, who knows

if they ever wanted an article to scare people into NOT moving to a smart plan then this is it - it reads on first glance the the gov can force unit price changes when they cannot (I would think)

of course there are few suppliers and they could adjust prices as one and blame the cru

It’s crazy that this was even mentioned now with such a low uptake of plans a change in usage by the people on these plans to avoid price rises will make little difference to energy consumed

i don’t have a smart meter or plan and will avoid as long as possible

So the rate from 19:00 to 08:00 is 24.39c. That being the case why the need to split the times?

Do smart meters often stop giving readings for 10 days? I mean the Electric Ireland website isn't showing any of my readings for the last 10 days.

I'm worrying that the meter has stopped communicating and I'll find out that Electric Ireland have stuck me on the day rate when I get a massive bill.

I suppose I could call them up, but it takes hours to get through to them and no-one on the help line ever seems to know what they're talking about.

The same happened to me for most of August, the problem was Electric Ireland's and not my smart meter, there's a signal indicator on the meter display which is similar to the indicator on your phone which should show if you have network connection.