In reply to Jim C:
> Not sure what a Smartmeter would do more for me ?
It would allow more granular load shedding - at the house level - in times of energy shortage. So if you have any vulunerable people in your house and they are registered with the grid, then that's a bonus.
Firms have repeatedly said there is no remote disconnect feature, but that's wrong. The smart meters have a "pay as you go" mode - another arguable benefit is being able to switch modes without meters - and therefore have a disconnect relay in them.
Mind you, crediting the government with being able to get the IT right for a needs-aware house level granular load shedding is quite, erm, optimistic.
More likely someone (e.g. North Korea) will hack the central capita control site, command all meters to PAYG (or worse, depending on how many vulnerabilities exist in their software) and then permenantly revoke most of their supplier keys...
As of 2016, GCHQ intervened in the design of the smart meter security features so this is less likely than it was a year ago, although sucks if you have a pre-GCHQ smart meter...
Post edited at 08:22