Another Smart Meter thread.

When enough of the population have smart meters fitted the energy companies will roll out different charge rates at different times of the day so when you most need to use energy it will be at its most expensive, it wouldn’t surprise me if the high usage periods will be at a considerable premium over other times, this will only work in favour of the suppliers not the customers. I currently have an economy seven rate and also have 4kwh of solar panel generation coupled to 12Kwh of battery storage, at this time of year when the sun doesn’t shine very often I set my batteries to charge of the cheap rate during the night and currently a cheap rate unit costs 18pence compared to 42 pence for a day rate, currently 12 kWh lasts us almost 24 hours usage so a considerable saving. Prior to the recent energy crisis my supplier Shell Energy was restricting most fixed price deals to those with smart meters, there were however a small number of deals that were available to those not on smart metering, needless to say they weren’t the best available deals, they were trying to squeeze customers to go for smart meters. I am still opposed to Smart Metering, I do not like the energy suppliers being able to selectively disconnect me for power sharing and the latest idea that they can arbitrarily change your contract without notice and put you on prepayment rates, the energy companies have a track record of being less than efficient when dealing with customers, you hear horror stories of how customers have been charged thousands of pounds for energy that they didn’t use, progressing to bailiffs and court action which was only sorted by the energy regulator, I know it can happen only too easily it happened to my daughter and went on for months, this was an energy company who she never dealt with, they were grossly incompetent. I prefer to retain as much control over my energy supply as I can and that currently means refusing a Smart Meter. Dave W

A misunderstanding I think. Smart meters are more to do with customers and suppliers working together to get the best out of a basket of energy sources, not all of which are reliable. Suppliers didn't volunteer to install meters, they've been beaten up by governments planning for the future.

When I was a boy almost all UK electricity was generated by burning coal mined here. Those days have gone, not least because coal has to be imported, and almost all our coal burning stations have been replaced. Electricity generation has evolved significantly and where it comes from and how much it costs is far more complicated than in the past. Ignoring Green issues:

• Coal has been phased out in the UK because it's more expensive than Gas and Nuclear. Coal also responds to peaks poorly, and it's particularly expensive to keep a coal power station idling overnight and on Sundays.
• Nuclear is only economic when run flat-out continuously; it's good for handling the base load but hopeless at managing peaks. Many people fear the consequences of a nuclear accident, and nuclear waste is a problem.
• Gas power-stations are quick responding and cheap to run at the moment. They are an excellent way of making electricity. Unfortunately, gas isn't a reliable long-term source of power. Supply isn't guaranteed beyond 20-30 years and delivery is vulnerable. Russian foreign policy has taken advantage of this already by disrupting gas supplies painfully this year.
• Green sources, despite a chorus of naysayers, now provides about 30% of UK electricity. Green is a major player and the only one with a sustainable future. Green sources are also cheap - sunshine, wind, and water don't have to be mined and transported, and there is no effluvia. But there's a giant fly in the ointment! Most green energy depends on mother nature, meaning power can't be guaranteed to be available at any given time. Some system of storage is needed, and so far, nothing cheap and easy is available, yet.

The effect of this new situation is that the value of electricity is going to vary wildly depending on the mismatch between supply and demand. When demand is low and supply high, electricity will be dirt cheap. Conversely, when supply is low and demand high, the cost will rise sharply. Prices could vary hour by hour.

The present system deals with overloads by firing up gas turbines, buying electricity from abroad, reducing frequency or voltage, and if necessary by disconnecting whole districts, usually starting with big industrial consumers where it doesn't cause too much trouble. This won't work so well when a major proportion of the energy comes and goes in bursts. Smart meters and smart devices allow the customer to pay what he wants and if he must. For example, recharging an electric car slowly on a windy night is likely to be considerably cheaper than a fast recharge on a cold, dark windless morning when everyone wants power.

I don't think Smart Meter information is any different from me normally choosing to buy petrol from my nearest cheap pump, but paying over the odds if I have to buy it on a long journey. I think there's a good chance the customer adapting to when electricity is cheap or expensive will be enough to balance the load. If not, there is also advantage to the community for suppliers being able to selectively disconnect devices such as freezers or greedy individuals rather than cutting a whole district off. Pensioners are a likely beneficiary; 'cut everyone in the street apart from Old Joe'.

Prepayment is a problem. It's a good way for suppliers to manage troublesome customers, but they get whacked with big bills because they're unreliable. A Daily Mail reader might approve of foreign layabouts being taught a lesson, but burst into tears when pre-payment is applied to them because they fear change and refuse to cooperate. Unfortunately, ordinary meters are too thick to deal with variable tariffs, and would have to be charged on a fixed tariff, certainly an expensive one. There's no benefit in letting an ordinary meter run on a cheaper tariff than can be managed by a smart meter.

This is only the beginning, but not the first time electricity has undergone major changes. Victorian methods were phased out in the early 20th Century, then a major reform in the 1930's when the National Grid was introduced, another major reform gave us 13A plugs and ring mains in the 1950s, then the demise of coal, and so on. All these changes were greeted with shrieks of pain at the time: the old guard rarely see any advantage in moving forwards, even when the need is urgent.

Interesting times ahead!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 10/11/2022 14:27:33

You're not wrong about there being a desire to move to demand based billing... There was talk on the radio the other night of the government bringing forward legislation enabling that sooner than originally planned to help reduce the cost of the energy bills support scheme.

The thing is, it does strike me that with 12kWH of storage, and solar, you're actually in a position to optimise your use of energy and be one of the consumers who is already equipped to really benefit from demand-based billing (doubly so if the sell price for your solar is also demand based).

It would take a little work to set up an automatic switchover system linked to a web API reading the current prices with your supplier... But it would be a very fulfilling project to minimise the price you buy at and maximise the price you sell at.

Meanwhile the likes of me, would need to save up to add the equipment you already have, just to have those options.

Not true I'm afraid. I was woirking in the coal mining industry for Dowty Mining when the politics over took common sense based on what wa known then. Gas was considerably more expensive than coal at the time, I remember the company producing a case study for not going to gas to present to the government, I often wish I'd still got it, unfortunately lost in a hose move, to remind folks what actually happened. There was very little interest in the green credentials of gas or coal.

Jelly

Unfortunately my solar is locked into the tariff system that the government devised for incentivising people to go solar, I joined right at the end of the programme so the return I get for energy that I send back to the grid is very low but then again the cost of my solar equipment was lower than previous years when the tariffs paid were more, swings and roundabouts. So if the energy companies come up with a better payment system for solar that customers send to the grid a lot of solar producers on the previous tariffs are locked into 25 year contracts like me. Dave W

I have just be quoted on a Group Buy package 16 PV panels and batteries for around £14K. Green or not that is a lot of cash up front and a very long payback time.

Fulminating about not having a smart electricity meter will get one nowhere. It makes a lot of sense to encourage people to use electricity at times of low demand rather than buying expensive gas at peak times and turning off the wind turbines in the early hours. As others have said, if you don't have a smart meter you'll finish up paying a higher tariff all the time. Of course if that's what you want to do it's a free country. Some accommodation will have to be reached for the vanishingly small number of people who cannot have a smart meter for some technical reason.

That is a shame, although I guess it does gives you a financial incentive to use the battery storage to maximise your use of "indigenous" energy and avoid buying or selling unless you have to... which is the very greenest thing you could do.

I can't escape the feeling that giving you a financial incentive to be extra green is in fact an unintended consequence, and if the incentive scheme had been designed to include battery storage more widely, it would have been set up to put any "pay-bliss" on the company's side and not the consumer's.

​

More generally, the "energy market" as it currently works does not objectively make a lot of sense to me, given that it (supposedly) lowers prices via the mechanism of... [checks notes]... lots of needless activity trading things which are effectively imaginary to achieve physical results which would happen anyway... hmmm.

It's existence seems to owe more to an ideological desire for private sector involvement than any economic or engineering realities, and the actual energy suppliers we all pay bills too seem a lot like "Rentiers" (in the technical economic sense) who add no meaningful value.

Jelly

What your basically insinuating is that why did we privatise our energy industry just to give private companies profit and making the end product more expensive, we are victims of political ideology. Dave W

Near enough.

But, National Grid is a private company, as are the various DNO's who move electricity between national grid and our houses; they actually do the things which result in me being able to have electricity, all the digging holes and building pylons, and running control rooms, and sending people to climb up gigantic poles in the dead of night in a raging storm...

All the things that result in the electricity actually flowing, and for that they take a very modest cut of the overall energy cost, for doing what an economist would consider to be "value adding" activities.

And in the main, they do this rather efficiently, and are proud of doing a good job even if it's mostly unsung; so I have no issue with private sector involvement...

The forced marketisation of the energy supply to consumers was predicated on both financial instruments and assumptions about how markets function which:

• are strongly associated with a specific theoretical school of economics which plays to specific politicians' and time period's ideological biases (and it's cross party, because Regan, Thatcher, Major, Clinton, Blair and even Ed Davy all subscribed to these ideas),
• but when taken against measurement of real effects in the economy (econometrics, a subfield of applied mathematics and economics), do not hold true in reality, unless specific artificial constraints are imposed by the government through fiscal policy.

So in that specific sense, where the existence (and sometimes efficiency of) natural monopolies was disregarded in order to have a market for the sake of having one, when simply imposing sufficient protective regulation to stop the monopoly holder abusing the public, would have been more efficient, and resulted in more money for everyone in the end...

All because "Markets Good, Regulation Bad" in the minds of some influential people in recent history. So in that specific way I do feel like we are victims of politics.

But my objection is at least as much rooted in techno-economics, as coming from a political place... notwithstanding the fact that those two topics are very hard to fully disentangle, even if one is a field of engineering!

Edited By Jelly on 10/11/2022 19:51:43

Edited By Jelly on 10/11/2022 19:53:30

A point raised further back and I have seen elsewhere....

Where do ideas like selectively denying anyone their supplies, or even selectively cutting off specific items in a home, come from?

I would be very surprised if any of the public utilities have a legal right to do that on a pure demand basis if the customer is fully paid-up. Accidental or externally-enforced failures are one thing, but deliberately cutting off an entire supply to a home? No lighting, heating, electric kettle or microwave use? Without regard to the potentially dangerous consequences - let alone inconvenience to someone already paying a hefty direct debit for each supply?

Even more so, switching off specific domestic appliances such as freezer (low power anyway) or washing-machine (or lathe!) - but how can that happen without an individual so-called "smart"-meter on each 13A outlet or even the appliance? And where do your draw the minimum power-limit that would exempt perhaps a 'phone-charger but not a tumble-dryer (or 6" lathe).

For a real world perspective on how autocratically British Gas [in our case] can behave in respect of switching people to pre-paid meters even if they DO pay, see here:

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=176729&p=4

Nigel

Public Utilities, that includes energy suppliers, have recently been pushing for vulnerable customers, that includes retired persons and of course those who have disabilities and or special needs to register with their suppliers. Have had our water supplier and energy supplier recently contacting us about registration, I assume this is to build a countrywide database so that when selective disconnection becomes a reality they have an idea of which customers should receive a continuity of service. Dave W

I recall now having somethjng about this, from British Gas - my supplier of both gas ans electricity. It talked only or priority help in the case of breakdown.

There is a still a major flaw in the "selective cuts" model, and this being an engineering forum I would think it one that is obvious to us even if not to all those of the general public it is probably supposed to frighten!

That’s a little more accurate Henry. Thatcher had a dash for gas and a dislike for the coal industry which was mainly politically based although all interested groups could see that deep coal mining in the UK was getting to the end of it’s life. The closing of the coal fired power stations is a direct result of the worse Hydrogen Carbon heat balance of coal as opposed to gas. For the same energy release gas emits less CO2.

Going back to the smart meters the regulator caps the max per kWh so the only thing the supplier can do to change behaviour is to offer discount on off peak use. Quite sensible in my book. From an engineering perspective the more control you have the better you are placed to optimise the system.

regards Martin

I wonder if the great unwashed change over to "Off peak" usage, how long it would take for this to be less economical? Remember when Diesel was cheaper than Petrol Etc.?

Regards Ian.

A 24” main recently burst and soon drained the local distribution reservoirs. Thames water set of a couple of distribution points for bottled water and were apparently delivering to their list of vulnerable customers. I don’t recall ever being asked about my status as a customer but they must have assembled a list somehow. Apart from being retired I am fortunate to be fit and well and would not regard my wife and I as vulnerable in any way. Of course that can always change in the future.

Mike

Wether you judge yourself to be fit and able when over 65 you may as well take everything the suppliers will give you. People far younger will no doubt taking more than we ever will from them if they can, and who knows what the future will bring.

I well remember the spiel of how 'opening up the markets' would result in great competition and thus lower prices for all. Instead we've ended up with the 'big six' of everything, with them shadowing each other's prices & tactics.

There was a time when "the great unwashed" meant the majority of the population; now, we are all taking too many hot shower and baths for that to be true - hence the energy crisis!