Update Smart Meter

Mike a small pedantic note. "Refuseniks" were denied permission to leave Russia ( from the Russian "otkaznik" IIRC). Your use implies people refusing to adopt which is the reverse sense of the original use.

Duncan,all well and good in your nice leafy suburban bungalow. Have you considered the great unwashed living in flats or terraced houses trying to sleep with every tumble drier, washing machine and dishwasher in action? And of course I would be fearful of mentioning that currently flat dwellers are unable to charge their cars currently, lest I be accused by the jacket holder in-chief, of starting a fight.

My EV is charged at cheap rate between 1 and 5am. Most people who have Evs will probably have cheap rate charging at home so wont be charging at evening times I hope.

All those things are relatively easy. The difficult thing is educating your other-half.

Believe me, I know!

Your washing machine will go off at the same time as your lights.

i deny there's a climate,

Since the spate of white goods fires a while back we don't run them unattended by a conscious human nose.

Speaking as a Refusenik Denier Conspiracy Theorist, I'd like to say that you will be joined between 1 and 5am by everyone else wanting to charge their EV, wash their clothes and wash their dishes.

I don't think the power network is up to the job.

Martin.

No there isn't. There's an urgent need to get on rebalancing the system. People denying the need to fix the problem are in the majority and the delays they cause will result in a hard-landing. Waiting for the negative effects to become bleeding obvious before acting is a recipe for disaster.

Deniers expect humanity can carry on forever just as we are. Sadly the world has never worked like that. Nothing lasts. Populations always face new challenges. Therefore it's essential to manage problems if and when they arise, preferably as soon as the issue becomes clear.

For political reasons Mr Putin is using the gas shortages caused by post-COVID recovery to force his will on the West. Like it or not we're being made to pay more for gas. Mr P expects the greedy West to crack before he does and he might be on a winner because so many in the West believe themselves entitled to an easy rich lifestyle.

However, the present shortages aren't due to gas fields running dry, they're only due to demand exceeding supply. But it's a taste of what the near future will bring in spades. Demand permanently exceeding falling supply will cause much worse trouble than we're seeing now. The outlook over the next 50 years is grim.

There is an alternative: whilst renewable energy isn't as reliable as burning fossil fuels, it's cheap, clean, and local. Ask this: what would our position be if renewables weren't already providing about 30% of the UKs electricity. Did denying the need for green energy over the last 30 years help or hinder the UK's energy position today?

I suggest denial causes nothing but trouble, a time-waster with no benefit in it.

How about fixing problems rather than hoping against hope that they don't exist?

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 22/08/2022 17:35:07

I used to work for the local electricity network operator.

When smart meters were first being discussed, one of the senior managers came back from a briefing (I think with Ofgem and network operators). A few of the things I remember :

Installation of new gas boilers would be banned and heat pumps used instead.

Smart meters would be used to interact with EV chargers and domestic appliances to in effect share out the capacity available on the network at any particular time. And also variable pricing to go with this.

Smart meters would be used to monitor the voltage and report if the supply went off. This could be integrated into the network management computer systems to identify where faults on the network were.

I retired 6 years ago but it seems like at least some of these are now becoming reality.

Stuart

I think it would be a reasonable assumption to expect EV's to become very smart at hoovering up low demand power in the future even to the extent of waiting around for a cheap rate. In addition we should expect the option of connected EV's to act as battery back up in times of high demand and the user get paid for the service. Whoever said the supply was not up to it was bang on the money which is why intelligent solutions seek to even out demand. I know linear TV is going out of fasion but a simple staggering of bradcast times for Corrie would stop all the kettles being turned on at once. I say this just as an example.

regards Martin

Except that as I understand it for most not well insulated home they don't provide sufficient heat.
One way of balancing out the electricity supply would be to electrolyse water to produce hydrogen during times of low demand and use this as a form of heating. However, the capacity to produce AND TRANSMIT electricity needs to be greatly increased if we are to meet the demand for switching to electricity. it was a mistake in the past not to build nuclear power stations.

Edited By Keith Wyles on 22/08/2022 18:47:47

Paul I didn’t realise the origin of refusenik but having now looked it up you are correct. It also seems that usage has now included the way in which I used it so although the original definition would make my use nonsensical the ever changing English language has also made my use acceptable.

Mike

As noted by the OP we already have this in Ontario. I don't find it a great big problem generally. The biggest power users are laundry (dryer) and stove. Both 230V because of the power they use.

Laundry we do on the weekend (cheapest rate) in any case because we don't want to be quite so out-and-about with everyone and his dog off work.

The bigger problem is cooking .... I don't want to plan my mealtimes around someone's idea of fair rate times. 5-7 pm is mid peak rates and we just suck them up.

Heating is by gas furnace/ forced air. So we have whatever electricity the fan consumes throughout the day. To some extent we can program it so that the very high rates are avoided but it's marginal at best.

My own particular time-of-use rates are here if interested.

The eventual demand for more EV charging will put alot more demand on the grid. Thats not really in question and I cant see any major upgrades getting done soon. I use one of the Chargeplace Scotland chargers once a week to get some free power but have no idea how long that will last.

Some of the smart EV chargers allow charging direct from solar if there is enough energy but this wont really make that much of a difference here in sunny Scotland.

Does anyone know what problem a self-charging hybrid fixes?

Martin.

Better economy than a non hybrid as they recover energy that would otherwise be wasted by using things like regenarative braking. So less fuel burnt for the same given milage.

As they also have an IC engine you still get the range if needed which is one thing the anti electric car people sight as a disadvantage of EVs

Edited By JasonB on 22/08/2022 20:14:48

I know the peasants[US] have always been shafted but this energy price hike has gone to another level of criminality! There seems no way realistically to extract ourselves out of this pile of s**t which we have constructed for ourselves and the latest informed opinion is that IF the government helps out people to pay their bills the cost of energy will just keep rising, think on that tonight as you drift off to sleep.

Tony

We get our gas and electricity via British Gas and have two "smart" meters. Not quite so smart when I have to take manual readings from both over the last 18 months.

Anyone in the UK who hasn't already looked at Peter's rates is advised to sit down first. Also warn your wife that after you have done crying you may be arranging to emigrate.
Interesting that the peak rate is in the middle of the day (office/industry demand?) so could be alleviated with a big push to solar, though at those prices little incentive to invest.

That is less than 1/3 of my current peak rate - on an economy 7 type deal we pay £0.34 /kWh. So much for global parity set by supply and demand lol.

Paul.

I'm not sure (i.e I don't know) how it's billed in the UK but I should point out that those rates are for the electricity alone. There are a bunch of other charges on top of that: Delivery; Regulatory; Sales-Tax. Fairness prompts me to add that there is (currently) an Ontario Government Electricity Rebate.

For example, on my latest bill (1 month):

the total charge for electricity was $78.35

total bill : $141.38 less rebate of $21.27

(The rebate was brought in a few years ago, presumably to mask the large jump in rates at that time and forestall trouble. I'm expecting it to be quietly dropped any time.)

Edited By Peter Greene 🇨🇦 on 23/08/2022 01:50:18

In addition there is the advantage of using purely electric drive in built up areas and queues of traffic which helps the pollution problem by shifting emissions to out of town.

regards Martin