On the whole I do think smart meters are the way to go, i'm fed up of having my
my consumption over estimated , and the company are very reluctant to reimburse the difference.
BUT; The old disk meters are good for one reason, and that is how they handle "Power Factor".
For non electricians you may not know that any appliance that has an inductive or a reactive component it will change the way it consumes the mains electricity.
There is a difference between the apparent power and the real power it consumes. and its all to do with phase angle difference between the Voltage and the current.
The old style wheel meters respond to rela power - so you pay for what you genuinely use, but the smart meters can be switched to work on real power or to apparent power. Presently the legislation says they have to be switched to real power which is good, but when teh retail price regulations for electricity are reviewed, the generating companies will almostcertainly be pressing to switch to apparent power.
Does it make a difference? - yes it can. Items like kettles and most forms of resistive electric heating will be fine and will have a Power Factor (PF) of 1 , but items where there is inductance or reactance components close to the input can exhibit significant phase differences resulting in low PF values which are less efficient.
Filament bulbs are pure resistive loads and have PF of 1, but most LED lamps will have integral current limiting circuit which will be a capacitive dropper, and many have a PF of only 0.5. Despite this low PF, they are still way more efficient at producing light than filament bulbs.
Virtually every electronic device you purchase these days will have a power supply device either as a "wall wart" or built into them, for smaller items they are usually capacitive droppers of for bigger items they are Switch Mode Power Supplies. Both these methods exhibit poor power factors, and we are getting more of them all the time.
Contentious manufacturers can fit components to correct the PF, but it will make the product a little more expensive, but it would also keep your measured consumption as low as possible.
Phone and other USB chargers cordless vacuum cleaners, TV's chargers and of course ever more powerful computer systems. Most of us will have something approaching a 500W or more of non resistive power supplies.
If the power industry does switch to Apparent power costing, many of us could see our bills increase.
Be warned, There are scam merchants already out there trying to sell plugin systems with claims they will reduce your electricity bill. These often have no working parts. Other have made an attempt, but until you know what your PF actually is you won't know what values these components should be, and of course your use of appliances is continually changing so unless they are smart (which they are not) they could actually be making the situation worse rather than better.
PF correction is best applied at the device that using the current.
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