When you think of SMART meters, you probably think of gas and electricity meters. But SMART water meters are rolling out now too. The water industry is, as you'd expect, keen to push them. And, unlike with energy meters, typically they don't need to enter your property to fit one, so you have little scope to refuse one if you're in a "water stressed" area or where meters are already compulsory. But what advantages do they bring for the consumer? Let's have a look at what the industry consumer watchdog CCW says the advantages are: 1⃣We are promised more accurate bills based on actual water use. In some cases this might be true. Certainly if, like about 40% of households, you don't already have a meter and are charged a flat rate. But for those who do, water meters are generally installed outside of properties and water companies are already at liberty to read meters whenever they want. So currently many inaccurate bills are the water company's fault. More accurate bills are clearly a good thing, but many of us could have had them before. 2⃣The water company can alert me to leaks on the consumer side of the meter, to prevent waste. This does seem a clear advantage. Real-time data should make this possible. We have leaky taps and careless children in this house. But it only helps with leaks on the consumer side of the meter. What about the vast amounts of water lost by leaks elsewhere on the network? We are paying for those too. 3⃣"Better for the environment"? No mention of the waste of throwing away the old meters, or having to create new ones, or the additional radio signals adding to the electromagnetic soup we all swim around in. And, as I pointed out above, water meters don't get read very often already - I don't remember ever seeing a water company van - so I can't imagine there's a big reduction in CO2 emissions from this anyway (not that CO2 emissions are something to worry about, but that's for another time) 4⃣"No manual readings" - I don't do any water meter readings today! This is not an advantage for me. It's a cost saving for the water company. 5⃣ Easily track my water usage. This is a possible advantage. But I'm not sure I want to be spending my life worrying about water usage. I just want it to be cheap and unrestricted. It falls from the sky! We are surrounded by water! 6⃣"If I already have a meter, your bill will only change if usage is different". This is simply not true. My bill has been going up lately, a lot, even without using more. So those are the supposed advantages. Let's have a think about what the disadvantages might be. 🚿Firstly, let's talk about what we all want from water companies. I don't know about you, but what I want from my water company is a cheap, reliable water supply that doesn't get restricted unless we have an actual drought on the scale of the 1975-6 one. Are SMART meters going to help with that? No. Let's look at other possible downsides: 👎Costs of the SMART meter rollout. Clearly, the costs of the equipment and installation will be borne by the customer, one way or another. Last thing we need. 👎What will these meters enable water companies to do? One thing they will surely enable is billing based on time of day or day of the year. Water can become more expensive in June than in January and more expensive in the evenings and mornings than in the middle of the day. This is not an advantage for the consumer. It allows centralised control of our behaviour. 👎Real-time water meter reading data involves a number of data privacy concerns. Lack of water consumption at a property suggests it is empty. Valuable knowledge for a burglar. How securely will this data be held? It's not as if theft of secure data is unheard of. What else will our water usage data be used for? Will we be informed of what it is being used for? Will be able to give consent? 👎Reliability of meter readings. We have seen with SMART energy meters that incorrect readings are often a problem due to faulty meters, poor network coverage or network outages. There's plenty of new scope for incorrect billing. Despite all the hype, SMART meters won't do much for water consumers. In particular, they won't deliver lower bills, or more reliable supply, or fewer "hosepipe bans". Most of the advantages fall on the supplier side. Exactly the same as with SMART energy meters. If you already have a water meter and it's outside your property, there's probably not a lot you can do to oppose SMART metering. But if you don't have a meter at all, and you're on an unmetered tariff, and you're not in a compulsory metering area. I suggest resisting getting one for as long as humanly possible. My rule of thumb is that anything with SMART in the name is most likely a negative for the public. Hasn't failed me yet!

Have a great day Lydia 🥳