The trouble with dumb “smart” gas and electricity meters

The widely trumpeted smart meters for gas and electricity are a fiddly and expensive mess.

Smart meter
The government wants 53 million smart meters installed by the end of 2025
(Image credit: © Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Smart gas and electricity meters sound simple. The devices send regular wireless updates about your energy usage to your supplier, which means an end to the hassle of estimated bills and manual meter readings. They also provide you with an “in-home display”, a small screen that lets you track your energy usage and costs in real time. As well as being a constant reminder to keep the lights dimmed, they can help you spot problems early: it’s better to realise the old boiler is inefficient and needs replacing now, rather than when you get a huge bill later.

But the rollout has been far from smooth. The government wants 53 million of the things to be installed by the end of 2025; energy suppliers face fines if they fail to meet installation targets, so they are pushing them hard. Customers are not obliged to accept the installation of a meter (although accepting one is a condition of signing up for some cheaper energy tariffs). The installation has no upfront cost, but consumers will ultimately pick up the bill, says Will Kirkman in The Daily Telegraph. “The rollout was initially costed at £11bn,” equivalent to an additional “£374 on every household’s energy bills, according to Simply Switch.” That figure has since risen.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.