Smart Meters

[BigBoy]

erh .. but the reporting of the readings is working to the supplier nonetheless ? which is its principal raison d'etre

yes

an expert will explain, but, is an in house display failure down to the DCC, or moreover just the firmware needs patching.

yes it's a DCC issue but as there are 4/5 variants of the display it's hard for them to keep track of it.

I commented before, limited capability of the inhouse displays (I want an app where I can see a minute by minute graph of usage) is why I'm not interested in a smart meter yet.

This will never happen, there is no provision due to data protection and GDPR.

 

[BigBoy]

Had a email from Bulb yesterday saying they are fitting smart meters in my area and to phone them for an appointment. No thank you. There is no way I am having one until all these problems are sorted out and Bulb were having a lot of problems. It's not as if it will save me any money anyway because gas and electricity use is already as low as I can get it. The biggest reduction was swapping all of the lighting to led bulbs.

A smart meter WILL NOT SAVE YOU MONEY. All it does is highlight usage, so if you are already doing all the things to save money you are ahead of the game!

 

[kinetic747]

erh .. but the reporting of the readings is working to the supplier nonetheless ? which is its principal raison d'etre

maybe an expert will explain, but, is an in house display failure down to the DCC, or moreover just the firmware needs patching.

as I commented before, limited capability of the inhouse displays (I want an app where I can see a minute by minute graph of usage) is why I'm not interested in a smart meter yet.

I'm aware the readings are being taken, well as far as I can tell, perhaps a quick phone call or email from EDF to confirm that fact after installation would have been nice.

 

[pastymuncher]

A smart meter WILL NOT SAVE YOU MONEY. All it does is highlight usage, so if you are already doing all the things to save money you are ahead of the game!

I am well aware of that even though they try pushing that you could save £*** a year. I am a tight git so have done everything possible to get our energy use as low as I can. We have had a British Gas energy monitor for about 9-10 years now so a smart meter would be of no benefit to me at all.

 

[jpaul]

on r4Today news this morning about 8/24 suppliers still fitting smet1, against government advise, 'expert' said they have a simpler setup (avoid DCC registration?) so, if you are not moving atm - have been with bulb a few years now ... then may not be the end of the world.

they still repeat the rhetoric about long term countrywide energy/carbon savings, without any practical evidence of how additional data is already being utilized....
I might have more sympathy if they did ...
I guess installation bandwidth is already maxed out, so no need for preferential tarifs/incentives atm (bar octopus vari, ev tarifs)

 

[ahar]

It's very frustrating to see SMETs1 meters still being fitted - the idea was that as soon as the DCC was up and running (I seem to remember 2015 was the original estimate), all meter installs would be SMETs2 and there would be a slow migration of the non-compatible ones over time.

The business case for doing it was predicated on 3 types of savings:

- Behaviour change; when you saw better how much energy different things took you'd take action to cut your bills

- Different types of tarriffs; in theory it would make it much easier to sign up for spot price tarriffs and by shifting heavy useage energy usage to low price times you could save money

- Micro generation; Smart meters would make it easier to sell energy back to the grid from solar panels etc

Doesn't seem to be going that well unfortunately.

 

[darkgen]

It's been said before and it will said again. Smart meters are a mechanism to introduce hourly / peak / surge pricing tariffs. It is not for the householders benefit. End of.

 

[Steampunk]

It's been said before and it will said again. Smart meters are a mechanism to introduce hourly / peak / surge pricing tariffs. It is not for the householders benefit. End of.

How else are you going to charge all those electric cars and ban gas heating without building any more power stations?

 

[darkgen]

How else are you going to charge all those electric cars and ban gas heating without building any more power stations?

You tell me? Be open, transparent and honest with the populace.

Flippancy forever

 

[b0rn2sk8]

It's been said before and it will said again. Smart meters are a mechanism to introduce hourly / peak / surge pricing tariffs. It is not for the householders benefit. End of.

Pretty much this, it enables more accurate time of use based charging. The main issue with flat rate charging is that it pushes up the prices for everyone because a significant number of people home at 5-6PM put the kettle on, start the washing machine, turn on the oven and in the future plug in their electric car to pack it in. A lost of this can be shifted to other parts of the day with less demand with relative ease, there just isn't any direct reason to do so because the cost is indirect.

This sort of behavior creates a huge peek demand for a very short period of time and its expensive to spin up power stations for just a few hours. A huge amount of money is spent paying power stations to not generate most of the time.

In theory, those that can shift their usage out of peek times with either storage or better management will save a huge amount of cash.

 

[Steampunk]

Pretty much this, it enables more accurate time of use based charging. The main issue with flat rate charging is that it pushes up the prices for everyone because a significant number of people home at 5-6PM put the kettle on, start the washing machine, turn on the oven and in the future plug in their electric car to pack it in. A lost of this can be shifted to other parts of the day with less demand with relative ease, there just isn't any direct reason to do so because the cost is indirect.

This sort of behavior creates a huge peek demand for a very short period of time and its expensive to spin up power stations for just a few hours. A huge amount of money is spent paying power stations to not generate most of the time.

In theory, those that can shift their usage out of peek times with either storage or better management will save a huge amount of cash.

But what will happen in practice is instead of the carrot of cheaper prices off-peak, they will use the stick of more expensive prices at high peak. The energy cartels will not be doing anything that reduces profits, and they are not introducing smart meters for the benefit of their customers. Studies show (probably already quoted in this thread) that smart meters don't save consumers money.

 

[jpaul]

take away the conjecture ...
nothing has happened in countries texas/california/sweden that have 90%+ deployed them 4+ years in
https://assets.publishing.service.g..._international_experience_of_smart_meters.pdf

....
With respect to the uptake of time-of-use tariffs more broadly, it is considered that numbers in this area have been relatively small, and that the major A5.2-42 utilities do not face significant incentives to encourage customers to move on to these tariffs. As of April 2015, only 3.4% of PG&E’s residential customers were on time-of-use tariffs, while SCE Corp and SDG&E had only 0.52% and 0.6% of customers on these tariffs.79

It is interesting to note that for this reason the California Public Utilities Commission has in July 2015 issued a decision80 which will mandate that starting in 2019 all customers will be moved onto time-of-use tariffs on an optout basis. This is expected to provide in the region of 3 GW of demand response in peak times, out of a total peak demand of around 48 to 50 GW, therefore constituting around 6% of peak load. It has not yet been decided what exact form of time-of-use tariff might be used for this purpose

The uptake of time-of-use tariffs on an opt-in basis appears to be relatively limited so far. Texas has around 12% of domestic customers on
different forms of time-of-use pricing, however as a substantial number of these were placed on these tariffs automatically, it is accurate to say that we are not aware of any jurisdiction which has more than between 5 and 12% of consumers on voluntary time-of-use tariffs.

Static time-of-use, such as those with daily peak and off-peak tariffs, or free evenings or weekends, appear to be the most popular variety of timeof-use tariff, with dynamic time-of-use or real-time pricing currently taken up in few places. An exception to this may be critical peak pricing and critical peak rebate tariffs, however, where prices or rewards for not using energy closely reflecting wholesale prices are offered during a capped number of potential stress events per year
.....

so customers have not been self-motivated to move onto time-of-use plans ...
maybe those countries have better energy planning (Chinese reactors) than us so less need to coerce customers

 

[TheVoice]

I have to keep telling Scottish Power I don't want one, their in-home display looks like something from the 90s. Meanwhile SSD get a decent-looking little wireless device with a full colour display. Given the only incentive for the customer is being able to better monitor their energy usage, at least give me something that can do that properly.

 

[BigBoy]

But what will happen in practice is instead of the carrot of cheaper prices off-peak, they will use the stick of more expensive prices at high peak. The energy cartels will not be doing anything that reduces profits, and they are not introducing smart meters for the benefit of their customers. Studies show (probably already quoted in this thread) that smart meters don't save consumers money.

Smart meter installs cost the provider £400+ per hour per operative the costs to smart metering far out weigh any gains, that's whey the Industry has waited until they had no choice but to do it.

 

[kinetic747]

More time has been allocated due to all the problems. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49721436

 

[BigBoy]

More time has been allocated due to all the problems. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49721436

Nothing to do with problems, it's purely because the uptake of meters is so poor. Customers just don't want them!

 

[kinetic747]

Nothing to do with problems, it's purely because the uptake of meters is so poor. Customers just don't want them!

So you don't see the continued installation of SMETS 1 meters as being a problem? I held off getting one from EDF for ages despite weekly emails and phone calls pushing one, I relented once it was confirmed it would be SMETS 2. The fact it doesn't yet have full functionality 2 weeks later is an annoyance, despite the fact the display is a novelty more than anything else.

 

[Steampunk]

The perception is that they don't offer the customer any benefits, and they don't work properly, especially if you switch suppliers. Until they fix all that and get a better reputation, why would customers want to help the companies that keep jacking up their power bills and get nothing back?

Sure, you can get some better rates, but that's just seen as blackmail, along with all the pestering and lies about having to have a meter installed. It's all been handled very badly, but at it's core the customer doesn't see enough benefit.

 

[jpaul]

...maybe they do ... Bulb seem to be hiding their light ...
https://bulb.co.uk/smart/

Off-peak Rate
pence per KWh
Peak Rate
pence per KWh
Overnight Rate
pence per KWh
East England 11.28 41.44 7.59
All prices include VAT at the applicable rate and are rounded to two decimal places. These will appear differently on bills and statements. During the weekend, the Peak rate does not apply. Off-peak runs from 7am-11pm and Overnight runs from 11pm-7am. Our standing charges for gas and electricity are both 20.44p per day.

but I need an accurate measure of my use during the day to determine if it would be economic - catch 22.
edit: but with an electric hob going on ~6:30 every evening that might be a killer

However .... I had thought installation was being done as fast as the installation bandwidth permitted ... not that ready customers were the limiting factor

 

[kinetic747]

Quick update on my situation with EDF. Smart meter fitted on 4th September and still no electricity readout on the remote display. Logged into my account and an estimated reading was taken for gas on the 24th September. Contacted EDF again on Wednesday and they apologized, said it's being looked into and they'd be back in touch within 24 hours. Nothing so far.