smart meters

[scottishjohn]

SSE are trying convince me to change to one 

 

advice ?

only things i,ve heard from locals is the elec bills went up after having them fitted#

 maybe old meters tend to read on consumers side?

meter is original one fitted in 1979

[joe90]

My mate had one fitted and announced he was going to save money ?, how? I said, (his wife is like me and knows they won’t, unless you turn stuff off!,!).

[Jeremy Harris]

My view is that you need to look at why we are being encouraged to fit "smart" meters, and who stands to benefit most.

 

The primary reason for fitting "smart" meters (which are really pretty dumb; they are only remote reading and control devices) is to allow better utilisation of the grid.  Right now, the biggest problem the grid has is the very wide demand range, which goes from there being, in effect, a surfeit of generation at off-peak times (so much so that generators can be paid to not generate, and wholesale spot market prices drop towards zero) to there only being just enough generation and import capacity at peak times.

 

This creates a lot of problems for the grid, for generators and for suppliers.  The latter buy electricity on a half hourly spot market, yet sell electricity at pretty fixed retail prices.  Suppliers would like to try to reduce the risk they carry, so would very much like to shift to a retail model that allows variable pricing, perhaps down to the same sort of granularity as the half hourly wholesale market they buy from.

 

Clearly, being able to make the retail price track the wholesale price is a really good thing for suppliers, as they can pretty much remove much of their business risk.  When the wholesale price changes they can just change the retail price, so that their profit element remains the same.  This sounds OK on the face of it, but it presents some potential problems.  The major one is that the peak rate price could (at today's rates) be around 30p/kWh, and the off peak price could be down around 3 or 4p/kWh.  Anyone who has to use electricity during the peak periods could end up paying more.  The real concern I have is that comparing value between suppliers will be even harder than it is now.  With retail tariffs tracking the wholesale spot market from hour to hour through the day, how will consumers be able to assess which supplier offers the best deal?

 

The above scenario isn't yet being discussed, and the granularity of the data collected by Smart DCC at this moment doesn't allow half hourly billing for domestic customers, but the capability exists to roll this out, once "smart" meters become widespread.

 

Another concern that I have is over the security and robustness of the communications and control network.  "Smart" meters have the ability to disconnect the supply to the house remotely.  Right now, the official statement is that this facility won't be used.  One has to ask why the capability has been designed and built in to the meters if there is no intention to ever use it. 

 

My personal view is that I just don't trust those in control of the system to either only do as they are saying they will do at the moment, or make the system sufficiently robust such that there is no chance of a system problem, or a hacker, being able to just switch off supplies remotely.  The track record of the utilities in general doesn't fill me with confidence, neither does the track record of IT projects rolled out by the government.

[epsilonGreedy]

6 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

My personal view is that I just don't trust those in control of the system to either only do as they are saying they will do at the moment, or make the system sufficiently robust such that there is no chance of a system problem, or a hacker, being able to just switch off supplies remotely.

 

 

Last year when I mentioned here that my new site connection had a smart meter this seemed to make @ProDave angry, I forgot to follow up and ask why. Now I understand there is a near political issue at play.

[K78]

I’ve said no. 

[joe90]

And me ?

[scottishjohn]

which is going along with my own feelings 

-no is my first thought and now my second one as well.

certainly if i went pv they would insist for sure,i think my meter,a as its so old would run backwards if i exported

[epsilonGreedy]

I am now quite worried, have we seeded the national infrastructure for a spectacular cyber terrorist attack?

 

If a software Trojan could automatically disconnect millions of homes at peak demand in the evening there would be a horrible surge of excess power on the national grid because the generators would be unable to dialback output quickly enough. Not sure what would happen next, something like the prolonged grid outage in Canada a few years ago? 

[Jeremy Harris]

9 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

which is going along with my own feelings 

-no is my first thought and now my second one as well.

certainly if i went pv they would insist for sure,i think my meter,a as its so old would run backwards if i exported

 

 

You still have the right (at the moment) to refuse to accept a "smart" meter.  How long that will continue I don't know, but I had our meter changed to an E7 one in January, and SSE applied pressure for us to have a "smart" meter, but by repeatedly saying no they eventually gave up and fitted a standard E7 meter.  When the chap fitted the meter he remarked to me that we wouldn't have been able to have a "smart" meter, anyway, due to the lack of a 'phone signal.

 

8 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

I am now quite worried, have we seeded the national infrastructure for a spectacular cyber terrorist attack?

 

If a software Trojan could automatically disconnect millions of homes at peak demand in the evening there would be a horrible surge of excess power on the national grid because the generators would be unable to dialback output quickly enough. Not sure what would happen next, something like the prolonged grid outage in Canada a few years ago? 

 

I'm equally concerned, as although the network that these are connected to (which is just a standard mobile data connection) is supposedly secure, I've yet to see a truly secure public network.

 

You're right about the possible impact of some sort of hacked attack that causes homes to drop out en masse, I think.  The grid is getting to be less stable as we lose spinning reserve and rely more on asynchronous DC interconnects, and one consequence of the loss of spinning reserve is the ability of the grid to tolerate large variations in demand that cause frequency instability. 

[CC45]

I said no.

[epsilonGreedy]

On 18/04/2019 at 13:38, JSHarris said:

You're right about the possible impact of some sort of hacked attack that causes homes to drop out en masse, I think.  The grid is getting to be less stable as we lose spinning reserve and rely more on asynchronous DC interconnects, and one consequence of the loss of spinning reserve is the ability of the grid to tolerate large variations in demand that cause frequency instability. 

 

 

Funny story for you.

 

I once helped fit out a canal boat for a senior engineer at what was then the Central Electricity Generating Board. This engineer established folk hero status in power generation circles during a winter storm back in the 1970's . He was a duty engineer at Oldbury and as the storm progressively knocked out supplies to Bristol the whole city became dependent on the output of the nuclear power station. They set up a TV in the control room and tuned it to ITV and coronation street, he then had to anticipate the advert breaks and crank up the output in anticipation of all those kettles being switched on.

Edited May 21, 2019 by epsilonGreedy

[recoveringbuilder]

We had a smart meter fitted when the connection was made , I had said I didn’t want one but they fitted it anyway! But we had no phone at the time so how did that work?

[scottishjohn]

I,ve always had very variable voltage where I am

after a lot of talks they agreed to fit a graph for a day --I kept it for a week ,cos there were no surges in first day 

went from 210-265v twice in that time  just for a few seconds ,then back to 245

 after that i fitted one of these energy saving box,s 

 not convinced it has made any dif to elec bill though --certainly not the 10% they claimed ,and i assumed wrongly it would be soem sort of real regualtion --but no its just a switch  with what I assume is a big resistor -as it does not alter voltage to keep at 216 or 240 --just  changes  when it sees low input from supply to go back to 240

it  drops voltage to 216 -unless a big load  or low input 

no more problems with equipment not lasting very long .It was most obvious when we still had std light bulbs -and candle type ones for wall lights 

they blew every couple of weeks -now of course led types

 

Edited April 18, 2019 by scottishjohn

[epsilonGreedy]

4 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

I,ve always had very variable voltage where I am

 

 

At a national level the main variable is frequency, changes to this figure represent a temporary imbalance between supply and demand. 

[scottishjohn]

can only pass comment on what i have seen --and i believe its to do with local sub station  as we are over 1 mile from it ,as they said they would adjust it when they saw the graph 

[Jeremy Harris]

14 minutes ago, Christine Walker said:

We had a smart meter fitted when the connection was made , I had said I didn’t want one but they fitted it anyway! But we had no phone at the time so how did that work?

 

As long as it can get a mobile data signal it will work OK.  All the meter does is transmit usage data back to Smart DCC and receive data from Smart DCC that can be used to signal tariff changes, or remotely turn the supply off.

 

14 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

I,ve always had very variable voltage where I am

after a lot of talks they agreed to fit a graph for a day --I kept it for a week ,cos there were no surges in first day 

went from 210-265v twice in that time  just for a few seconds ,then back to 245

 after that i fitted one of these energy saving box,s 

 not convinced it has made any dif to elec bill though --certainly not the 10% they claimed ,and i assumed wrongly it would be soem sort of real regualtion --but no its just a switch  with what I assume is a big resistor -as it does not alter voltage to keep at 216 or 240 --just  changes  when it sees low input from supply to go back to 240

it  drops voltage to 216 -unless a big load  or low input 

no more problems with equipment not lasting very long .It was most obvious when we still had std light bulbs -and candle type ones for wall lights 

they blew every couple of weeks -now of course led types

 

 

You can ask for a monitor to be fitted to your connection if you think you're getting voltages above +10% or lower than -6% of the nominal 230 VAC.  We often get long periods with the supply at the upper limit, 253 VAC, in summer, and never get lower than about 242 VAC, even when demand is high, so I suspect that the DNO could take the local transformer down one tap and bring our supply back within a better range.  I'm not sure why we have such a high local voltage, but suspect that it may be down to us having relatively new supply cables, of a larger section than required for our leg from the transformer (two, relatively new, fairly low energy, houses fed from a three phase 95mm² Wavecon that runs ~200m to the transformer, with no other loads).

 

Persuading the DNO to reduce a tap on the transformer isn't easy, though, I've been at them for over a year now with no luck.

[ProDave]

Re smart meters. Say NO. they are not compulsory. Yet.

 

Not all spinning disc meters will run backwards if you have PV fitted.

 

As to your voltage optimiser.  Snake oil as far as I am concerned.  Yes reducing the voltage for say a light buld will reduce the power it uses (at the expense of it being dimmer)  But most of the big loads that take all the real power are used for heating things up, like your kettle and water in your washing machine or dishwasher.  Reduce the voltage and the heater produces less power so it takes longer to heat the same thing up. Result is it uses the same amount of ENERGY.

[Temp]

I'm saying no. At least until they can guarantee to give me a Smeets 2 spec meter.

[Jeremy Harris]

5 minutes ago, ProDave said:

As to your voltage optimiser.  Snake oil as far as I am concerned.  Yes reducing the voltage for say a light buld will reduce the power it uses (at the expense of it being dimmer)  But most of the big loads that take all the real power are used for heating things up, like your kettle and water in your washing machine or dishwasher.  Reduce the voltage and the heater produces less power so it takes longer to heat the same thing up. Result is it uses the same amount of ENERGY.

 

They are very definitely snake oil, in my view, too.

 

For a fair few resistive loads, like boiling a kettle, more energy will be used if the voltage is dropped, as every second longer that a kettle takes to boil, because of the reduced supply voltage, means another second of heat loss from the kettle.  The same applies to any other appliance that takes time to get to working temperature.

[Ed Davies]

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

I'm equally concerned, as although the network that these are connected to (which is just a standard mobile data connection) is supposedly secure, I've yet to see a truly secure public network.

 

The security of the mobile phone network as such ought not to be too relevant as the data sent in each direction between the meter and the control centre is encrypted and signed. GCHQ intervened in the design process to fix some loopholes in that protocol because they were worried about the potential national infrastructure vulnerabilities.

 

Whether the data centres will be kept adequately secure in the long run is a different question, though. If they ever leak the private keys needed to control peoples' meters things will get interesting.

[scottishjohn]

23 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

They are very definitely snake oil, in my view, too.

 

For a fair few resistive loads, like boiling a kettle, more energy will be used if the voltage is dropped, as every second longer that a kettle takes to boil, because of the reduced supply voltage, means another second of heat loss from the kettle.  The same applies to any other appliance that takes time to get to working temperature.

agree totally --

yes SHE can tell when its on low volltage cos of the cooker . but failures of oven thermostat was a yearly occurence  then --not now 

but since fitting --which is a few years ago now ,well before leds were sensible price ,it did make things last longer by reducing the over voltage . candle bulbs were lasting 2 weeks ,no matter what make and cost .

 and even after they supposedly tweeked the sub station it was just the same --so the box was fitted

and i did say i could see no difference in energy bills . niether up or down 

most of the time its on 216v  

one wonders if the new smart meters actually do a compensation for over +low voltage --to charge the correct amount?-maybe thats how my friend who says bill has gone up since smart meter  fitted is complaining?

all normal household goods run happily on less than 240 anyway  and i don,t think it was the high voltage really causing the problem ,but the way it spiked high back low ,then high again in a very short time period--which is what the graph recorder showed .

It would spike high  - then it would drop from the normal back slowly  to very low -then wallopp right up to over 265.

all I can say is my bit of "snake oil " has curred the problem over the last 10years .

I did expect a bit of electronic  control to give seamless steady   steady voltage  all the time . 

Edited April 18, 2019 by scottishjohn

[Ed Davies]

Good point, the ESQCR specify the nominal voltage (230 V) and allowed tolerance (+10/-6%) but don't say anything about the rate of variation or similar within that band. I expect quite a lot of equipment would be unhappy if the supply kept changing between 216 and 253 volts every few cycles even though that's literally within the spec. E.g., if you're living in the same road as a bunch of @ProDaves who all turn their immersions on and off at that sort of rate.

[ProDave]

Zdb at my house is 0.2 ohms. (Ze at the incoming supply a little less)  so my immersion heater pulsing on and off may make the supply pulse up and down by a shade over 2 volts.  I can't say I have actually noticed any effect.

 

If everyone in the street had PV and the same burst firing controller as I used, then they would not be synchronised so when mine is on, someone elses would probably be off.  So they would probably just even out and it would just be like we are all running low power loads.

 

Now if everyone used phase angle control (like old fashioned light dimmers) to regulate the power to their PV dump controllers then that could create a much worse situation for supply stability.

 

 

 

[ProDave]

58 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

 

all I can say is my bit of "snake oil " has curred the problem over the last 10years .

I did expect a bit of electronic  control to give seamless steady   steady voltage  all the time . 

Your bit of snake oil will have done what it is good at, regulated the voltage,  so your light bulbs last longer.  I would not have an issue if that was the feature they were advertised for and sold for.  I call them snake oil because most of the advertising claims they will save you money on your electricity bill, which is mostly wishful thinking.

[scottishjohn]

51 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Your bit of snake oil will have done what it is good at, regulated the voltage,  so your light bulbs last longer.  I would not have an issue if that was the feature they were advertised for and sold for.  I call them snake oil because most of the advertising claims they will save you money on your electricity bill, which is mostly wishful thinking.

which in truth was all i bought if or --anything else was a bonus

I certaintly would not be reccomending  it for any other purpose -