The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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9:28am on Monday, 5th December, 2022:
Anecdote
We had a smart meter installed on Friday.
Periodically, I've been contacted by our enegery supplier and told we could have one, then when I said "sure, send someone along to install it", nothing happened. This is because the first time, the installer appeared and declared that the gas meter was beyond his comprehension and that replacing it would require someone with superior soldering skills to his. A note was made on our record, which was never read until I said "sure, send someone along to install it".
A few weeks ago, I seemed to get a quite bright woman asking if I wanted a smart meter. I was able to explain the problem to her, and she was able to do something about it. We organised an install on Friday, between 10am and 12pm. In the end, they showed up at 11:15am and left at 4pm. Our gas meter (which had multiple pipes made of multiple metals in mutliple guages) put up more of a fight than they were expecting. We were without electricity for much of that period, too, because the installer had brought a trainee along to do that but he spent most of his time learning how to perform the equivalent of a heart transplant for gas meters.
Having now had the meter for a couple of days, I've discovered that it costs 7p to boil a kettle. Our computers, routers, lights and other electrical devices don't add up to a lot, so all that religiously switching off of appliances probably hasn't saved us much money over the years.
Gas, on the other hand, is alarmingly expensive. We use something like £20-£25 a day now that we have the heating on. It's almost worth going in to work, rather than working from home, so we can switch our heating off for the day. I say "almost", because my wife has to spend double that or more for her train ticket to London, so it's still more cost-effective for her to work from home when she can. These rail strikes are saving her money.
Speaking of which, when Boris Johnson stopped people from travelling over Christmas 2020 because of COVID-19, he was pillioried for "cancelling Christmas". It didn't end well for him. The rail unions that are planning to stop people travelling over Christmas 2022 shouldn't expect a great deal of support from the public either.
It's 9:30am and we've used £4.01 of power already. Maybe I should turn my phone off so it doesn't need recharging so often.
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Copyright © 2022 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).