smart meters

[Ed Davies]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

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.

 

But there are probably many rural lines where there's a bigger voltage swing. It's the DNO's problem, of course, but still interesting to consider the consequences.

[ToughButterCup]

3 hours ago, JSHarris said:

[...]

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.

 

How much water is there in a transformer then, eh?

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

 

How much water is there in a transformer then, eh?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_changer

[Archer]

Just to add some benefits of smart meters for the sake of balance - they enable remote meter reading which cuts down the likelihood of errors, especially for more vulnerable people who won't spot the mistake; they allow people to see how much energy they have used and to tailor consumption accordingly; it's a tool to help change behaviour and to enable consumers to save money and understand energy usage; more than anything the smart meter roll-out is helping towards energy efficiency and so climate change. The current generation may not be perfect but there are significant benefits in a national roll-out and even more so in older houses where landlords or owners have already insulated the loft and won't consider more radical measures. 

 

My experience is that (when they work) they do succeed in getting people to save energy. My Mum is paranoid about her smart meter, measures out the amount of water in the kettle before putting it on. On the older district heating schemes there were no heating controls for individual flats and the result is people leaving radiators on all the time, even in summer. 

 

Sorry if this is a little off-topic from the OP, but lots of people read this forum and it would be a shame if they were put off smart meter installations. 

[SteamyTea]

20 minutes ago, Archer said:

they enable remote meter reading which cuts down the likelihood of errors

Last quarter I had my second wrong meter reading in 15 years.  Was the water meter this time.  Funny how both times they have overread it.

I was chatting to the Morrisons (meter readers, not Safeway) man about smart meters a while back.  He said that the data transmission via the radio signal was secure, then it all goes to pot at the data centre.

Mind you, our fantastic leaders have decided that all our data must be shared with all the utility companies to encourage competition.  So the cat is out the bag now.

[ProDave]

On 18/04/2019 at 18:04, AnonymousBosch said:

 

How much water is there in a transformer then, eh?

Not much, but usually a lot of oil.

[Temp]

I'll get one when they can guarantee I will get a SMEETS 2 meter. For some reason we don't get pestered to have one at all. 

[Temp]

 

Telegraph.co.uk: Fix for smart meters 'going dumb' delayed until end of 2020...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/17/fix-smart-meters-going-dumb-delayed-five-million-households/

 

Was meant to be end of 2018 so that's a 2 year delay. Clearly it proving a lot harder to sort out the mess than they thought.

Edited May 17, 2019 by Temp

[ProDave]

The latest smart meter advert I saw last night claiming they are an essential part of solving global warming, I believe needs investigating by the ASA.  I would complain about it to them if I knew how.

 

Why can't they be honest and say the reason for them is half hourly metering so we can be charged more at peak times of the day and that might bully us into cooking our dinner at a different time of day and save the grid from collapse.

[Bitpipe]

24 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The latest smart meter advert I saw last night claiming they are an essential part of solving global warming, I believe needs investigating by the ASA.  I would complain about it to them if I knew how.

 

Why can't they be honest and say the reason for them is half hourly metering so we can be charged more at peak times of the day and that might bully us into cooking our dinner at a different time of day and save the grid from collapse.

 

I think their argument is that they 'raise awareness' of energy usage and encourage consumers to use less by turning off the odd light etc.

 

Still  greenwash but there you go. Sadly my kiosk no longer has any space for a smart meter...

[ProDave]

I found this recent survey

 

7% Claim reduced bills .

9% Claim increased bills.

23% Said main reason for fitting was to reduce bills.

47%  Unlikely to have SM fitted in the next 12 months.

20%  Fairly unlikely.

5%   Very likely.

13%  Fairly likely.

61%  Had no issues with SMs 

45%  Found no benefits from having a SM .

29%  Claimed more accurate readings . 

 

Any actual saving is small and lost in the noise.  I doubt many people these days are particularly wasteful of energy so have little scope for turning stuff off.

 

I have said before, I don't dispute the need for peak rate charging and hence the need for half hourly metering, it just incenses me that they are being "sold" on a false claim of saving the planet.  In fact I was so incensed I have just fired off a complaint to ASA about that advert.  The first time any advert has annoyed me enough to do that. 

 

[SteamyTea]

How many households where asked?

[ProDave]

Just now, SteamyTea said:

How many households where asked?

The  finer details of the survey was not published where I found it. It was conducted by the ECN and published in an electrical contracting magazine.

[Ed Davies]

44 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The latest smart meter advert I saw last night claiming they are an essential part of solving global warming, I believe needs investigating by the ASA.

 

They'd probably argue that they makes large-scale grid renewables plausible. There's probably an element of truth in that.

[ProDave]

Just now, Ed Davies said:

 

They'd probably argue that they makes large-scale grid renewables plausible. There's probably an element of truth in that.

Then let's have an honest debate, you have to reduce peak usage to even out demand, so peak rate metering and charging is the tool to achieve that and encourage you to change your usage patterns.

 

Claiming anything else like it will save you money is just false advertising.

 

I will let you know what I hear back from the ASA.

 

Quite when all of us with electric ovens are supposed to cook our dinner if it is too expensive to do at 6PM I don't know.  So it becomes a bit of an impossible energy time shift.

[Temp]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

The latest smart meter advert I saw last night claiming they are an essential part of solving global warming, I believe needs investigating by the ASA.  I would complain about it to them if I knew how.

 

 

I've made three or four complaints to the ASA,  all upheld. Can all be done via their website. If complaining about an online advert they will ask for a screen shot if you have one.

 

Typically they will ask the advertiser to justify their claim. If it's a complex technical issue they may send you the advertisers reply for you to comment on.

 

One problem is that the advertiser can drag out the process, sometimes for a year, and then withdraw the advert. In such cases the ASA don't always publish a decision so there is no bad publicity for the advertiser.

Edited May 20, 2019 by Temp

[Ed Davies]

11 hours ago, ProDave said:

12 hours ago, Ed Davies said:

 

They'd probably argue that they makes large-scale grid renewables plausible. There's probably an element of truth in that.

Then let's have an honest debate, you have to reduce peak usage to even out demand, so peak rate metering and charging is the tool to achieve that and encourage you to change your usage patterns.

 

Who said anything about evening out demand? That's not necessarily what you want with renewables, rather you want to match demand to available generation which might not itself be all that even. E.g., charge cars and various heat stores while the sun shines or the wind blows.

[SteamyTea]

10 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

Who said anything about evening out demand?

I agree.

We are still a long way off from needing to do this as we don't have enough renewable capacity and storage.

At the moment we tend to just fill in the gaps with extra gas powered generation.

Not many of us take full advantage of variable pricing, less than 10% of households, and I am not sure if the current systems of generation, distribution and billing could actually cope if we upped that to 30%, let alone 90%.

But if smart metering can help automate the billing side, that is a good thing, seems to work with mobile phones very well, not as if we have to have a man come around and look at our call logs and data usage and then send us a bill.

Just a shame that we cannot keep IT systems secure, that is really the main issue I think we need to get right first.

[newhome]

There is still no smart meter developed for my setup. Long may it continue. It says 

 

For example our installers may not have reached the area where you live, your meter type may not be supported by a smart meter equivalent yet or your property type may have some physical barriers preventing a smart meter install such as poor signal strength. 

We are however committed to installing a smart meter to every home and small business by 2020.

[newhome]

47 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

But if smart metering can help automate the billing side, that is a good thing, seems to work with mobile phones very well, not as if we have to have a man come around 

 

The current billing is as automated as I want it. I take a reading every month, it creates a bill. Simples. The ‘man’ that comes to read the meter (never seen one to confirm sex ?) leaves a card for me to do a self read and enter it on a website so no different to me taking my self triggered reading.  No one has been in the house to read the meter here in years. With Scottish Power being one of the most hopeless companies I’ve ever had to deal with the thought of them automating anything further when their website and app is just appalling is frightening. 

 

This is their amazing app. They can’t even get the text sizing right!

 

[ProDave]

To be honest I never saw anything wrong with taking a quarterly reading and paying the whole quarters bill on one go.  There was not exactly anything difficult about that for the customer or the supplier. (other than they has to wait a quarter to get paid)

 

Now we have the silly situation that if you want anything other than the default expensive legacy billing, then you have to go to monthly readings and monthly payments.  That's 4 times the work for the supplier, 4 times as many readings to process and 4 times as many bills to produce.

 

Then add in you have to pay the same amount each month so they estimate how much you will use in a year and divide that by 12. so they have to manage an account that might be in credit or might be in debit and they might have to adjust your monthly payment.  MORE work for them.

 

And the end game is half hourly billing? I can see the admin charges (standing charge?) rising significantly to cover all this extra admin. 

 

The whole system is bonkers.  If I could find someone that even took a monthly reading and then billed you in full for that month with none of this rolling credit nonsense I would.

[Jeremy Harris]

We've been with British Gas, SSE, Iresa, Octopus and Bulb in recent years.  All have been equally incompetent when it comes to running the IT side of their business.  Octopus were perhaps the worst, with SSE coming a close second.  Bulb are not too bad, their systems looks OK but they made really major billing errors on our first bill, charging us far more than we'd used, using a tariff that charged the same unit price for both peak and off-peak at rates that didn't match any of their advertised tariffs.  They did sort things out very quickly, though, and have since been OK.

 

None of them inspire confidence, least of all SSE, who took three years to sort of a range of billing errors, even after they had admitted that the problem was their end.  As soon as SSE sorted out their problems we switched supplier, as frankly I just couldn't face having to deal with SSE any more.

 

Worst in terms of general customer service was a close run thing between British Gas and Octopus, but the latter get my vote for being the worst mainly because of all the "love and peace" hippy crap and their refusal to use a proper form of address to customers. 

[ProDave]

When you can get past (ignore) the fact Octtopus's website looks like it was designed by someone in Primary School, it does actually work. I submit a reading each month and within a few seconds the bill for that month is there, and so far has been accurate.

 

And they do allow YOU to set the level of the monthly direct debit unlike IRESA who you had to request a change and it never happened.

 

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, newhome said:

I take a reading every month, it creates a bill. Simples

Yes, be we are, I suspect, well about average intelligence and capability.

I have an old digital meter, it flicks between t (total kWh), 1 (day kWh) and 2 (night kWh).  It is not the easiest thing to read as you have to have your wits about you.  And that is after remembering where you have left the cabinet key.

I did have to call them several years back to check that 1 was day rate and 2 was night rate as the website did not use those numbers.  I have just tried to log into my account as my bill is due, and guess what, they hare having trouble and I have to try again later.

 

 

[joe90]

In fairness I recently changed to Octopus and based on the info they received from the previous supplier (green energy) they asked to up my direct debit, I replied saying that ours was a new house and still drying out, using immersions prior to getting my ASHP up and running so previous usage was unusual. I asked to simply pay for what I used and agreed to send in meter readings and they agreed.