Nest, Hive.............am I missing something?

'You can control it from your phone'.....................and why would you want to do that? is it because once in a while you may save 50p on the gas?.............that'll be worth the £3/4/500 investment won't it?

Or have I missed the point?

Same as a smart meter..................most normal people switch the lights etc off if they want to save on the electric................they don't need a spreadsheet to highlight where a fiscal advantage may be acheived spread over the financial year?

Have I gone mad? or is everyone else a lunatic?

I can reduce your gas bill by 100%, all you have to do is send me £20, and I will reveal this secret.

Form a queue!

Smart meters are really dumb, a customer contacted me on Sunday night recently to say his boiler wouldnt work.

Went out to fix, his hob wasn't working either. I thought his ecv was off but no........
Battery flat in smart meter = no gas in house.

Smart meter? No.......

The biggest advantage I can see is the ability to turn the heating on in advance if you come back to the house earlier than usual. Doing so doesn't save money of course but them most things in life don't save money.

Smart meters are a stupid idea . Smart controls are lifestyle dependent. I have plenty of customers that save a fortune using them. Even the ones that pay me to use them for them.

As @Dan Robinson says above, smart controls are very much a lifestyle choice and are usually adopted by customers of a certain age bracket (below 55, I'd say).
Heating schedules can be tweaked at leisure, without stooping over in some dark, confined space and boiler-specific products have the advantage of remote monitoring by customer's engineer which is useful for many reasons.

basic control properly set and used will save far far more money than expensive control systems that will never ever pay for them selves
will they pander to your liking for flashy gadgets well maybe but save what they cost never

Smart meters can be handy, i purchased my own due to discrepancies with my bill and the smart meter supplied by the leccy company isn't smart enough to deal with my solar panels that it may go backwards?! (somewhat ironic). I discovered quite a few devices that weren't going into standby and collectively how much chargers etc left switched on were using. They can be quite a revelation in highlighting power hungry devices. Glancing and seeing a meter in the red can be a useful tool in money saving.

plug in monitors are far more useful than the the monitors supplied with smart meters as you can have rouge around 60w readings that are not actual consumption so people start assuming the tv on standby is using the 60w rather than the actual 1w a new item will be using

it is not all about saving money, tenants in private lets dont get to choose a smart meter but if it is a pre payment one they can top it up online or via their mobile if they have the app, a person living on their own and doesnt have a regular lifestyle can switch their heating on when on the way home so the home is warm when they get in, not everyone has a robot lifestyle, most of my hive installs are for elderly people who cant work programmable roomstats and with hive or nest they can switch the heating on and off from their phone without getting up

DIYedboy said:

Or have I missed the point?

Click to expand...

Nothing missed.

Hive and the rest are intended for persons who are incapable of switching things off.
The 'features' of being able to control the heating and other devices from your phone are just novelty items which just add to the pile of things to waste time staring at a phone all day.

No one needs to switch their hot water on and off when in the park (this was in an actual Hive TV advert).
Switching the heating off automatically when the phone leaves the house can save money - but only for those who can't be bothered to set the existing controls properly, and it relies on everyone using the house to have the app installed.
Switching heating on before returning is not a feature either - heating systems do not take hours to heat the house, and if entering a building from outside it will initially seem far warmer than it is, since even with the heating off or at a low level it will still be significantly warmer than outside.

Even for those that save money on the gas, it's still a fail. This very site has many examples of people 'upgrading' from older version Hive / Nest / others, spending £100s more every couple of years to get the latest model.

None of this is automation - it's just remote control of things for little or no reason.

Smart meters are no better - the only savings there are for people who are unable to realise that leaving things switched on wastes electricity.
A separate energy monitor does the same thing at a fraction of the price of a smart meter and doesn't need someone to install it either.

The real purpose of smart meters is to enable time and demand based billing - where you pay different prices depending on the time of day and on how much power is being used. Eventually pricing on what the power is being used for - such as charging your electric car.
That will result in most people paying far more.

DIYedboy said:

'You can control it from your phone'.....................and why would you want to do that? is it because once in a while you may save 50p on the gas?.............that'll be worth the £3/4/500 investment won't it?

Or have I missed the point?

Same as a smart meter..................most normal people switch the lights etc off if they want to save on the electric................they don't need a spreadsheet to highlight where a fiscal advantage may be acheived spread over the financial year?

Have I gone mad? or is everyone else a lunatic?

Click to expand...

You spot on.The world is going gaga.dont need fancy controls to turn the heating down and save money.