Brian Gaff wrote:
According to EDF, the current smart meters cannot cope with Economy 7
systems like mine.
However since all this about how hackable the current ones are and how the
comms has had to be redesigned etc, I really feel they should lay off
installing them till they are sure they work on all systems, cope with mixed
tariffs and are not hackable.
Brian

You seem to overlook how things are done these days.
EDF and the like subcontract out the installation of smart meters to
another organisation because they don't want the head count of the extra
fitters on their books. The subcontractors are incentivised to fit
meters at a certain rate under the terms of the contract. The Contract
will also have punitive terms in it to stop EDF (or others) doing
anything to slow down the rate of installation. there will also be
cancellation terms so the fitters get most of their costs of disposing
of staff in the event of termination.

The net effect of this is that it takes someone with real balls to call
a halt to the fitting contract or delay it until Smets2 meters are
ready, approved and the fitters have been retrained on how to commission
them.
In fact the contract terms are often written such that it costs more to
terminate the contract than let it run on or modify it.

You might think this is cynicism but in a past life I've been involved
with govt contracts that were like this and even when a requirement had
changed, it was decided that the original deliverables were still to be
made and a new contract issued to modify the equipment to a new requirement.
Such is the nonsense of firm price contracting over the far more
sensible predecessor of cost-plus contracting where the customer (govt)
could modify the requirements during the contract and the contractor was
paid his audited costs plus a modest margin on the capital employed
during the work.