Electric Smart Meters

Hats off to National Grid algorithms that have been so lucky to win ,every year , so far.

Gets a bit more tricky though in the future, with old 'nukes' falling off -line and new ones, way behind

completion dates and 'wind' needing at least four times existing installations to provide 100%.

Last Sunday wasn't bad, 37% wind with 30GW load.

No gas 2030 getting closer every day.

The big lie regarding end users saving money is exposed here. Suppliers-charged-14p-day-rent-smart-meters.

Martin C

Dave (Moderator). I fully agree with the need to reduce wasteful power use. I live in Brasil (note they spell it with a 's' in the early 2000's. Their main source of power is Hydro Electric and successive drought years had significantly reduced capacity. All households were required to reduce consumption by 20% compared to the same period the previous year. Penal rates would be charged for any excess and disconnection threatened.

We achieved it. People found that that a freezer was not really needed and Christmas lights were replaced with glittery tinsel. Consumer goods were turned off when not required and street lights were switched off in the early hours.

The point was, the stick created a social change that stays with me today. I'm not sure smart meters in their current guise is sufficient of a stick but to have a real impact we need to change attitudes. Wasting power should be as much a 'no go' as drink driving. some modern innovations need careful rethinking:

Smart meters could be part of the answer, but are not yet imo.

Stuart

All households were required to reduce consumption by 20% compared to the same period the previous year. Penal rates would be charged for any excess and disconnection threatened.

H*lls Bells! That was crazy - no doubt some households would find it quite easy (the wasteful ones). But penalising those that were already frugal with electricity usage was probably very unfair.

If we were faced with the same problem, most of the savings in our household would be required from only one of the two occupants!

If you have any type of gas or electricity meter(not just a smart meter) then you have to pay for it. Looks like smart meters cost about five times that of an ordinary meter and there is also a charge for the Data Communications Company (DCC) to read the meter remotely and pass the data to the electricity supplier. So yes, it looks like you might be subsidising us a bit thank you.

One benefit of having Solar panels and a smart meter is the delight in seeing the little pylon symbol on the in home display and knowing that the electricty you are using is free and some is going back ito the grid. Nice little earner for the elecricity company pay me about 4p per unit and sell it to others for about 14p per unit. Last month 64% of what we generated went back to the grid.

Peter

My smart meter display has conked, it shows stupid price readings and does not update.

Talked to the electric chat line because I am deaf I cannot phone. and got nowhere.

They are not interested in your display - only to achieve their target of installations and getting to the point of being able to charge the customer on TOU tariffs. I suspect you have two Hopes of any action. No hope and Bob Hope - and he died years ago.

The government should take back the whole industry. At least we would all be ripped off equally. The existing profits would surely make it a cost effective exercise.

Clive,

I'm with British Gas, my display crashed so rang them up, I was advised to turn it off for 24hrs, after 24 hrs we turned it back on and it was working correctly and that was before Christmas and has behaved since, it made me wonder if the meters were getting an upgrade.

Martin P

Hi 'not done it yet'.

Yes 20% reduction was crazy and most unequitable. We were lucky in that we had just moved there a couple of months before the restrictions started and the previous occupants of the house we rented had granted us a massive usage to make our cuts from!

Being Sao Paulo (then the murder capital of the world) saw some innovative engineering solutions. 'Cats Whiskers' proffered, these were illegal taps into overhead power cables which ,should some earnest official try to disconnect, risked that official getting shot. So the whiskers grew.

But most people managed and power consumption did fall dramatically.

Stuart

Easiest and quickest way for the UK to save energy is to turn off alternate floors of office lights.

London city for example with its towering office blocks lit up like a xmas tree for most of the night probably most of them empty as the occupants have either gone home after their days work or are now working from home....

Those that work nights simply "hot desk" to a floor that is lit.....

Regards

Derek

Yesterday was 1 April!

JA

Mmm! I've got a feeling we've been there with British Road Services, British Railways and the Coal Board to name but three.
There's only one flaw in the argument - there aint no profits when you get there.

Any government has to implement anything via civil service - a bunch of book-passing desk jockeys. No hope there methinks. The less the government is involved in anything, the better off we will be.

If the government were really interested in saving energy they would alter the clock twice as we did in WW11. The Europeans do it without any problems. John

The wage bill of admin staff in all the current energy companies, plus the profits made by those companies must provide a sound financial footing for at least one unitary company to be initiated. Competition has not delivered.

A standard charge programme and standardised meters that actually work for the consumer and not just for the supplier, surely would be feasible. Add to that some possibility of actual conversation with the sole supplier and you must have a winner? (for the consumer)

Second generation smart meters don't need to be changed when you change supplier, and seem to be all together better

Smart Meter Roll-Out - Which?

note the recommendation to make sure your supplier isn't using up old stock meters.

My supplier fitted smart electricity meter, but then gave up on the gas meter, some trifling problem with the mounting bracket, the electricity retailer says it is a network issue, the network says it is the retailers problem, be sure of one thing, I'm not paying to have it fixed, I have no problem reading the meter once a month, and in reality they don't need variable tariffs on gas throughout the day as there is massive storage in the gas pipeline network.

Of course the bureaucracy says you can't have smart electricity and dumb gas, so they wasted their time, and this isn't even civil service. No doubt someone with a degree in latin would sort it out

I've got a serious thought - quite rare.

How about reviewing the need 'advancements' that add little to life but consume more power. I'll start with a couple:

1. Cordless charging of smart phones - it uses more power than plugging it in so why do it?

2. Electric cars - Don't get me wrong here they have great potential to reduce our carbon footprint IF the power source is green, but the loss of energy in converting fossil fuel to electricity then using that to charge a battery and finally getting the battery to power a motor is evidently not efficient. In the UK I THINK we are moving in the right direction here, but not every country is.

As some serious thoughts in this thread indicate, the power of technology to reduce power consumption is potentially incredible so why do we persist in moving in some directions that are wasteful?

Stuart

Nope, another misunderstanding. Ignoring the slur on desk jockeys, heroes one and all, the Civil Service has been reduced by over half since Mrs Thatcher's time, and has only increased again recently due to getting Brexit done. There's a certain irony in that!

Nowadays at least half of government spending is conducted via agencies, contractors, privatised services, and NGOs who don't automatically adopt Civil Service core values 'integrity, honesty, objectivity, and impartiality' or have to be politically independent. Like the TUC, the Civil Service isn't as influential as it once was. Anthony needs to look wider for an explanation!

Critics have radically changed the Civil Service over the last 40 years through a series of efficiency schemes and other reforms. Despite the old Civil Service being largely demolished, Anthony is still complaining and the amount of money spent on public services has continued to rise. That many public services are now outside Civil Service control strongly suggests Civil Servants weren't the problem. Could be a case of 'For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong!'

Unfortunately, it's much easier for folk to blame someone else for difficulties than it is to understand complexities, like balance of trade, market trends, budget shortfalls, borrowing, legal requirements, international power relationships, realpolitik and a bunch of other factors. Usually a mistake to blame a group, whether it be bl**dy students or the Illuminati because it leads to solutions that don't solve the problem, which is stupid. Engineers know better than to waste time and money fixing the wrong problem, but politicians often get clean away with it!

The civil service has always been under the direct control of the government of the day; if the Civil Service was failing, for whatever reason, the government had the power to fix it ...

Dave

As Dave has pointed out the transfer of agencies from the Civil Service to Private Enterprise means that the whole culture has now changed with Profit now being paramount, is that good, does that bode well for the future? Dave W