Another government debacle! 'smart meters'!

[oranjeboom]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48266605

 

And £11 billion appears to be an underestimate at even 30% uptake!

 

Glad I am still on old tech and won't be switching!

[Jeremy Harris]

Interesting that these things are still being misrepresented as the way to reduce energy use, when that's not their purpose at all.  If monitoring consumption was the way to reduce energy use then a much cheaper and simpler home energy monitor would do the job just as well, with none of the compatibility problems that are dogging "smart" meters.  Years ago, British Gas were handing out free home energy monitors to new customers; we had one and it worked pretty well.

 

Last time I had a call telling me (not asking...) to make an appointment for a "smart" meter install I asked what advantage it would give me over the existing energy monitoring and recording system we have.  The SSE person couldn't answer that, so I just told them that when they could give me a convincing reason for having one I'd consider it.  They've not contacted me since.  When we had the meter changed to an E7 one in January the chap fitting it confirmed that a smart meter wouldn't work here, anyway, and that his head office should know that already.

[SteamyTea]

A quick read of the BBC article seems to show the misunderstanding of smart meters.

Some people seem to think that it is the display in the house that is the smart bit.  I think a bit more education is needed by the suppliers about genuine energy saving.

I also heard on The Today Programme that BAFTA wants climate change mentioned in more programs.  Not more documentaries about them, just general information about things that can be done.  I can imagine the meetings about this with an, as Ed Readon would say, overenthusiastic 12 year old spouting nonsense.

Couple of charts, second ones shows nicely when I am in and out during the day.

 

[ProDave]

Can someone explain the figures?

 

£11 billion smart meter program

 

15 million smart meters fitted 

 

I make that £733 per smart meter fitted.  That can't be right?  If it is, then it is an outrage.

 

I will be a good citizen and continue to refuse one, thus saving (insert name of who is actually paying for them) my £733

[SteamyTea]

Part of it will be for the back office infrastructure, data transmission costs and general redundancy for the systems.  I also suspect that there has been a large cost associated with PR, advertising and general admin.

It is often too easy to think that something should be a lot cheaper than it is 'because I can do it cheaper'.  That is often not the case.  Cost me £15,000 to go to university to learn some things, and I want my money back one day.

[scottishjohn]

 

 politician =smart meter 

both promise to make things better 

both just make things worse +cost us loads of money  in the process

[Temp]

Its what happens when you let an industry that has a vested interest in retaining customers run a program they don't want to pay for.

 

It always struck me as strange that energy companies were tasked with specifying and installing them rather than the DNOs.

Edited May 15, 2019 by Temp

[gravelld]

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

Interesting that these things are still being misrepresented as the way to reduce energy use

 

Actually, I've noticed in the marketing a recent downplaying of this. The adverts now start with "It won't fix climate change but...".

 

Smart meters join the long and inglorious queue of silver bullets, alongside heat pumps, district heating systems etc. Eventually someone will work it out that we just need to build (and refurb) better. Much better.

[Jeremy Harris]

I just wish they'd be totally upfront and honest about the reasons for rolling out effective smart metering, rather than try to hide them behind a load of BS.  There's nothing at all wrong with wanting to try to change the way energy is sold, as long as it's done in a transparent way that allows consumers to still make an informed choice as to which supplier to use.

 

The problem that smart metering is intended to help solve is a real one, and it's closely linked to demand and supply management.  It's not hard to grasp the fundamentals of this; a look at the wholesale price variation through any day will illustrate the problem pretty well.  Wholesale energy is traded on a day-ahead, half-hourly, spot market auction.  Suppliers (those who retail energy to end users) bid to buy energy at fixed prices for 48 half-hour slots the day before they sell it.  The wholesale price variation is pretty large; it varies from rare periods when prices may be negative during low demand/high renewable generation periods (so suppliers get paid to take energy, rather than paying for it) to periods of high demand/near-maximum generation, when the wholesale price may exceed the retail price tariff (so suppliers lose money on every kWh they sell).

 

There are two energy auctions in the UK, and both publish data on past prices:

 

https://www.apxgroup.com/market-results/apx-power-uk/dashboard/

 

https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/

 

This is the data from APX for 15th May sold price and volume:

 

 

Note that the price varies from a low of around £32/MWh to a high of about £54/MWh within the space of a single day.  Converting these prices to "units" as retailed to customers gives a range of between 3.2p/kWh to 5.4p/kWh.

 

Looking at the average price/volume over the past year illustrates the wide price variation from month to month through the year more clearly:

 

 

The lowest price equates to around 4.3p/kWH, the highest around 6.3p/kWh, but there will have been daily wholesale price swings that are far in excess of these average figures.  If you watch the daily figures each day you can spot periods with a negative wholesale price (happens when the baseload is too great for the demand, as some baseload generation can't be just turned off) and periods when the really expensive generation systems have to be fired up (coal, and even perhaps the fields of big diesel standby generators).

 

The energy retailers currently set a tariff for a period of around a year, maybe longer for some fixed tariff options, in advance, so they are taking a risk that the prices they set will be high enough for them to make a profit, when they really don't know what the wholesale price will be. 

 

Right now customers have a relatively easy time, as they don't have to worry about whether there is enough generation, whether the network will be able to deal with the variations in demand etc.  By enabling a metering system that can vary tariffs on the fly, as wholesale prices vary, consumers will take on the risk that the suppliers currently bear, and suppliers will be able to make a profit no matter what the wholesale market does.  Whether this will change consumer behaviour or not I don't know.  I do know that in some areas of France they have had variable rate tariffs for some time, and that does seem to change how people think about, and use, energy.  Some friends who live there always watch the news every evening to find out the electricity price periods for the following day, and then plan to use things like the washing machine during that day's cheaper tariff period.  Seems sensible and pretty simple, and doesn't need "smart" meters...

[gravelld]

So doesn't the question become - why aren't the suppliers paying for this reduction in their risk? Why are customers paying for them (through levies on everyone's bills)?

 

Why was the "green crap" levy removed, but the "energy company CEOs' bonus crap" retained?

[ToughButterCup]

3 hours ago, JSHarris said:

Interesting that these things are still being misrepresented as the way to reduce energy use, when that's not their purpose at all.  [...]

 

They really do take folk for idiots don't they? And its so easy to Google (other search engines are just as good , if not better)  the subject and read the critiques. 

[scottishjohn]

Its asking a lot ,but surely these "smart mters"  should be linked to price structure for  cheap energy periods and also be able to turn on things like washing machines when it is cheap and off when  its not  

 that no doubt will be smart meter version 42

if it did it on its own ,then you have a real reason to have one 

maybe should be thinking about a big space for the consumer unit for the future when its a computer as well as a fuse box?

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by scottishjohn

[scottishjohn]

@JSHarris

how much do you think elec prices have to rise to make micro generation a real must have in new builds 

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, scottishjohn said:

surely these "smart mters"  should be linked to price structure

Ideally yes, but a lot of people, millions in fact, just do not understand how that works in practice.

It is not unknown for people to misunderstand Economy 7, and that is as simple as it gets.

 

There was talk that smart meters could automatically connect and disconnect some appliances, but that is just not happening.

Now we are talking of Vehicle to Grid stuff going on.

[jack]

25 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

... and also be able to turn on things like washing machines when it is cheap and off when  its not  

 

The problem is that 99% of appliances wouldn't be able to take advantage of such functionality if it existed. There's simply no way of signalling most appliances to start, other than manually setting a delayed start time.

 

I couldn't even find a dishwasher that would take hot fill, so it sits there using resistive heating to heat cold water even when I have a full tank of hot water generated from an ASHP.

[AliG]

This has reminded me to order my smart meter in London.

 

I live in an apartment building where the meters are in a cupboard that I don't have access to, so it will mean I don't have to ask someone for a meter reading.

 

Laziness seems to be a big benefit that isn't mentioned.

[Jeremy Harris]

The idea of being able to switch non-critical appliances on only where the demand is low is great in theory, but pretty useless in practice, at least until either "smart" appliances become available (i.e. ones that can be remotely switched on and off) or until we change the wiring systems in our homes to allow circuits to be individually controlled (not sure that's going to happen any time soon).

 

Appliance manufacturers, as @jack says, aren't doing much.  If anything they are going backwards.  Years ago we had a washing machine that had a very simple mechanical delay timer, so that no matter what, it could be set to switch on at a set time (we always ran it during the E7 off-peak period).  The last three washing machines we've had have timers that only work if the power is on; any glitch and they just shut down and don't come on at all (really, really infuriating if you live in a place where power cuts are commonplace).

 

1 minute ago, AliG said:

This has reminded me to order my smart meter in London.

 

I live in an apartment building where the meters are in a cupboard that I don't have access to, so it will mean I don't have to ask someone for a meter reading.

 

Laziness seems to be a big benefit that isn't mentioned.

 

 

Won't make much difference, I think.  I joked with our meter reader a year or so ago about smart meters doing him out of a job.  Apparently they won't, as there's a statutory requirement for smart meters to be manually read at least as often as the standard meters we have now.

[AliG]

At the moment though if I need a reading I have to ask someone to get it for me and they often forget.

 

It has often delayed me changing supplier as I can't give them the reading.

[Alex C]

It will be interesting to see how energy suppliers deal with supply of power for electric cars when they really take off as this will make turning on washing machines remotely pretty insignificant. I expect smart chargers that use power during peak production periods will become popular and help smooth out supply on the grid. A relative is on a board for a power company in NZ and even there they are taking the demand for power for electric cars very seriously as they know the infrastructure just won't be able to cope at the moment.

[Jeremy Harris]

A while ago I did some very quick and dirty sums that indicated we had about enough spare capacity to charge around 2.5 million EVs without doing anything about smart/sequenced charging.  EV owners who charge at home already have a strong incentive to either charge at off-peak rates (easy, every EV I've seen includes an off-peak charge timer) or they may fit something like a Zappi EVSE and charge from excess PV generation if they have it.  We have a fair bit of spare grid capacity to support off-peak charging, enough to not have to worry about the network infrastructure for a fair time.

[scottishjohn]

57 minutes ago, jack said:

 

The problem is that 99% of appliances wouldn't be able to take advantage of such functionality if it existed. There's simply no way of signalling most appliances to start, other than manually setting a delayed start time.

 

I couldn't even find a dishwasher that would take hot fill, so it sits there using resistive heating to heat cold water even when I have a full tank of hot water generated from an ASHP.

I just connected mine to the hot tap 

[jack]

16 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

I just connected mine to the hot tap 

 

I did consider this, but from memory it would have voided the warranty.

[AliG]

40 minutes ago, Alex C said:

It will be interesting to see how energy suppliers deal with supply of power for electric cars when they really take off as this will make turning on washing machines remotely pretty insignificant. I expect smart chargers that use power during peak production periods will become popular and help smooth out supply on the grid. A relative is on a board for a power company in NZ and even there they are taking the demand for power for electric cars very seriously as they know the infrastructure just won't be able to cope at the moment.

 

I was trying to decide the best way to use our PV. I was going to get an iBoost type of device.

 

However, we have 3 MVHRs and a pool pump that all run constantly. We also have quite a lot of networking equipment, Sky boxes etc. Thus I reckon we have a pretty solid base demand for electricity that probably uses most of our PV. Actually I need to check what this level is when everything else is off.

 

On top of that I have reduced the maximum charge rate on the car to 3kW. Thus the car charges slowly over a number of hours and should take up any spare capacity.

 

If you can use the PV to offset real electricity demand it is better than using it to heat hot water which is cheaper to heat either via gas or an ASHP.

 

Because of this constant electricity demand I decided that even charging at night I couldn't move enough of our demand to off peak to justify using economy 7.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, AliG said:

 

I was trying to decide the best way to use our PV. I was going to get an iBoost type of device.  

 

If you can use the PV to offset real electricity demand it is better than using it to heat hot water which is cheaper to heat either via gas or an ASHP.

 

 

The iboost or similar will only put excess to HW when nothing else is using it and it would otherwise have been exported so "real" use gets priority which of course is the best use for your PV power.

 

So far I am finding about 1/3 of what I am generating ends up as hot water.  Even then, at this time of year at mid day, the immersion heater cannot soak up all we generate if the house is not using much, so some still gets exported (in my case for no payment)

[Jeremy Harris]

Right now we're exporting about 3.5 kW, the dishwasher's on, the house cooling is running, the washing machine finished about an hour ago, the hot water systems fully charged and my car's fully charged.  We'll be exporting for at least the next three hours or so, maybe more, and at a guess between one third and a half of today's generation will be exported to the grid.  I could easily use another 10 kWh of storage, probably a lot more, as it's not unusual for us to generate around 30 kWh/day.