Do smart meters cost you more

Jesus, new to this thread and my head is spinning. Nearly finished a new house and need to sort a supplier before I can get connected. Just wondering would it be best to just go on a standard rate plan and review usage after a year. Seriously worried about bills, house is fully electric; heat pump, MVHR, hob/oven etc so I’m going to be using serious juice.

You pay X amount per KW. You are charged the same KW rate no matter what meter you have. Lots of tin foil hats out there. Some claim smart meters release radiation yet have no issues holding a mobile phone to their head. Many claimed all the trees would have to be cut down because 5G signal needs a clear line of sight. Yet I have strong 5G around most of Dublin & I haven't noticed large amounts of trees being cut down

I will say to be careful what plan you sign up to but this has nothing to do with the meter itself

My annual usage gives me no reason to change from a flat rate. The small savings on night and off peak is well cancelled by the increase in day rate. On top of that you have the anxiety of any irregular daytime use, electric lawn mowers, pressure sprayers, daytime instant showers /immersion etc, being billed at prohibitive rates. Don't even mention heat pumps on a cold day. I don't want to cook my dinner after 8.00 pm, or have this rate thing playing in my head.

Charging an EV at night is about the only advantage that could swing it. If your daily motoring is average, say 60km, then you will need about 14kwh nightly to recharge (85% efficiency meter to motor, and typical EV consumption of 20kwh/100km). At 25c night rate this is €3.50, instead of close to double that at day rate at home or even more at a charge station. I don't have an EV, but I'd save little if I did. For 60km daily travel, in a C segment car, 3 litres/day diesel costs about €4.60, marginally more than the €3.50 EV charge cost at night rate, and a lot less than if I charge at a kiosk or on inflated day rate.

The utility compamies do the math to make sure you get very little advantage. Doing two or three clothes washes after 8.00, then putting them on the clothes line in the middle if the night? Nah.

And no, your old meter was deadly accurate.

"I will say to be careful what plan you sign up to but this has nothing to do with the meter itself"

Well it does..... you cant get a D/N rate if you have a smart meter.

You can only get a D/N and peak rate.

As it was explained to me, you cannot switch between flat rate to D/N once its installed. You have option to remain on your current plan( 24h or D/N ) or you can go for "smart".

Not sure if you can roll back to your original plan ( wether it was 24h or D/N ) once you sign up for "smart", have a feeling its one way ticket...

No one is on an MCC02 day night rate on a smart meter yet.The hardware rollout to allow this (RM107 meter type) is beginning in q3 of this year.

But sleeper says plenty of people are.........

Oh I know you are correct.

I'm just wondering about the "Plenty of people" that have MCC02 on the smart meter.

Just to confirm my sister was on day night meter & got a smart meter installed in January. She is still being billed day & night tariff. She is with Energia. She checked her most recent bill & is still day & night. She is only half way through her 12 month day night contract

I'll tell her she is a liar.

Good man yourself

Or just read the bill and see what the MCC code is. It's not hard.

I'm not slanging anyone, merely pointing to the facts contained in the recent decision paper on MCC02 and smart meters, necessitating a whole new meter type (RM107) vs existing smart meters (RM106) to allow the continuation of MCC02 day night rates

The only difference I see is that smart meters have an extra peak time measurement from 5pm to 7pm. Otherwise Day is 8am to 11pm, Night is the inverse. If a utility offers a plan where the 5pm to 7pm peak is charged the same as the rest of Day rate, then this smart plan is identical to a Dedicated Day/Night meter. You'd need to trawl all the utilities' plans to see if they offer that on a smart meter but....

I decided to read up some of the technical details, this apparent block on Day/Night priced smart tariff, the need for two different meters to allow a customer to be charged just two rates, not smart meters 3 minimum. It would seem utilities are prevented from offering same rate daytime tariffs, they're directed to charge more for Peak, as this is mandated by all sorts of rules and EU directives. The virtual suppliers are billed at peak for any customers on smart plans, so they're to be seen to impose that on you, though they could obviously build it into the rest of the Day rate. You can stay on flat rate,or you can have smart rates with a peak. Now they need to change the actual meter to make it record the peak as just Day, so that Day/Night customers can retain their two tariff bands, and the utility will not have a peak rate recorded against it for those customers.

I don't pretend to grasp the administrative or technical details or implementation of this, with issues like 'crossing registers' and 'non simultaneous something or other' preventing what appears to be a blindingly obvious solution, have a tariff where peak and day are the same. Just reading this 'Market change request' paper

https://rmdservice.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/MCR1225-MCCO2-Meter-Exchanges.pdf

which addresses the need for a smart meter to read Day/Night, boggles the mind. It's Pythonesque, I'd expect to see rules about tariffs depending on your brand of shoes or something.

This other boards thread is useful to help unwreck your head a bit.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058278418/meter-tariff-compatibility

I'm retired, I really can do without reading tech papers anymore, or grappling with all this bureaucracy, but we live in an era where petrol prices can jump at certain times of day (in Germany anyway), and a flight price can jump if you dare to flip to another tab, or dither too long on the one you're on. No surprise that smart meters are dumb as fk.

I'd need to shift my life by 12 hours, sleep during the day etc. for dumb meter tariffs to make any sense. Maybe that's on the cards, you'll be required by directive to live life in shifts.

But it's much more complex than that. If it was simple, your utility provider could just implement Day/Night from Smart (Day, Peak, Night) readings by adding Peak and Day together, and charging the Day tariff for both, but they're going to be billed at a Peak rate for Peak usage because the Network provider sees all smart connections as 3 or more bands. It's to do with how ESBN read and forward the data, and how these virtual suppliers, such as BGE, pay wholsale for their customers usage. Its crazy, if we were back in the 80s, just the ESB, and no separation between it's generation arm and the consumer arm, then it would be simple, and you'd probably be back to the pre Ukraine tariffs of 25c/kwh. not the 42c+ we're all paying. Deregulation is a gougers charter sometimes, smoke and mirrors everywhere.