[londons_explore]

Meter inaccuracies are sometimes over and sometimes under. Losses are always under.

Across enough thousands of meters, you should be able to separate the effects. I suspect the hundreds of millions saved if a country switched to cheap less accurate meters would easily pay for other methods of policing/detecting theft. For example, 'radar' down the electricity cables can see how far away every switch, device and wire is. It would be pretty straightforward to put radar devices at a few places on the public network, then effectively triangulate to some house who is stealing power because when they turn stuff on and off (which the radar can see, together with the cable length), no nearby customers meter sees the increased load.

[vegardx]

I don't really understand the argument you're trying to make. You want us to use less accurate meters and then pay a premium to cover those inaccuracies, which is supposed to be cheaper than just buying accurate meters? And then use some technology that doesn't seem to exist to detect losses and theft? If it was this easy we'd already be doing it.

These meters are more expensive, but not that much more expensive. The majority of the cost, by a long shot, comes from installing them. These meters also offer a lot of other capabilities, which greatly improves the reliability of the network. If you spread the cost of these meters over the projected lifespan we're talking about cents per month.