Smart meter

I also work in energy meters.

Believe me, most companies have enough on keeping on top of where their Smart meters are, never mind what individuals are using electricity for at specific times.

Also, it would be eye opening to most people how much money is spent on pedestrian meter reading and/or just trying to get people to submit their own readings.
 
House we bought earlier this year had a smart meter which works with my energy provider, it's nice seeing usage on half hourly basis. Also nice to not have to send meter readings.
 
one easy step .. would be to get the electricity to homes without loss ..estimated : we lose between 25-50% in production ..a further 10-20% in transport .. would it not be possible to fix this first .. ? not telling us to use less ?
yes it would cost a lot .. but the savings after would be huge not having to have so many production points and the whole lot would be greener ?
 
We managed to dig out our "smart" monitor and as we're no longer with First Utility it doesn't even give us readings. I can almost understand why it isn't communicating with the new supplier but I just can't understand why it won't display what the meters display.

I checked the Pure Planet (new provider) website and they're looking to sort all the naff meters (1st gen?) out and get them working by the end of this year.

Looking at the smart meter situation as a whole, it's an understatement to say it all could have been thought out and implemented a lot better.
 
flea.rider said:
one easy step .. would be to get the electricity to homes without loss ..estimated : we lose between 25-50% in production ..a further 10-20% in transport .. would it not be possible to fix this first .. ? not telling us to use less ?
yes it would cost a lot .. but the savings after would be huge not having to have so many production points and the whole lot would be greener ?
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the laws of physics prevents us just reducing loss over power cables, the longer the “transport” from source the greater the losses (through heat loss due to resistance). This is another benefit of some of our green energy. Solar on our roofs and wind turbines spread around reduces transmission distances.

generation loss is the function of burning fossil fuel and turning a turbine to create the electricity. Both the burning and the mechanicals create that loss.

There are still “losses” with green energy. Solar is not 100% effective at converting light to electricity so some of the energy is reflected and some absorbed as heat.

Wind energy has losses again with mechanicals (friction in the bearings etc) and Inefficiencies with the aerodynamic designs.

These are not an issue as the energy misses conversion but doesn’t have a real negative effect. Burning fuels does though does, creating CO2 and other pollutants as well as worse profits.

As we move towards green generation and energy storage, both of those issues are massively reduced.

:)
 
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stuman said:
the laws of physics prevents us just reducing loss over power cables, Burning fuels does though does, creating CO2 and other pollutants as well as worse profits.
:)
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your 2 points are null and void .. Graphene would be perfect for the transport of electricity .. but as i said very expensive..
co2 is plant food we would all die without it .. but i'll agree on the fossil fuels part ..
the word you chose is "profit" this is one reason we are not moving ahead as we should .. greed ..
 
stuman said:
timed tariffs are not a downside if you make the right choice. You think they’ll be more expensive? Or the electric companies will price out people on flat rate?

having 4 kids, lots of washing, tumble drying and dishwashing? Well if you set them all to go on at cheap times you could reduce the cost by 60% and those items in a normal contribute 80% of your usage.

it saves you time (not a lot) and helps towards the greener future we need.
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Don't think my kids come with timers :) Its also dangerous to have stuff on during the night, ask a fireman
 
LabR@t said:
Don't think my kids come with timers :)
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you have very well trained kids if they are loading the dishwasher, tumble dryer and washing machine!!

something that caught me out…

growing up in the 80’s & 90’s… “turn the bloody lights off!”. In reality new LED bulbs take 8w/h. To run the washing machine can take a 1.6kW. You can keep that bulb on for 200hours or 10ish days solid just from running the washing machine once. If you can defer that to a time where electricity is 5p/hr instead of 13…..
 
I use about £25 of leccy per month and that's with my PC on most evenings and 24/7 over weekends and work holidays. Any savings from having a smart meter installed is going to be pennies.
 
LeeUK said:
I use about £25 of leccy per month and that's with my PC on most evenings and 24/7 over weekends and work holidays. Any savings from having a smart meter installed is going to be pennies.
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Thee will be no savings, as I said earlier in this thread a smart meter does not save you money, all it does is highlights usage and shows you patterns of usage via data maps. The only thing that will save you money is yourself and changing your awareness.
 
BigBoy said:
Thee will be no savings, as I said earlier in this thread a smart meter does not save you money, all it does is highlights usage and shows you patterns of usage via data maps. The only thing that will save you money is yourself and changing your awareness.
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But I already have and have always had awareness about my leccy usage and that wasting leccy equals wasted £££s. So the only other argument is "it saves 2 minutes submitting readings" which is not worth taking an afternoon off work for to save.
 
LeeUK said:
But I already have and have always had awareness about my leccy usage and that wasting leccy equals wasted £££s. So the only other argument is "it saves 2 minutes submitting readings" which is not worth taking an afternoon off work for to save.
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you can move to a variable tariff. Which offers differing prices at times of the day, you can then defer your high draw use into those times and save a good amount.

The provider I’m with allows you to download your half-hour usage data for 3 years. I can then compare time of day tariffs to flat rate. It’s about 30% for me.

I can only do this because I have a smart meter.

I have the option of a flat rate, but I also have the option of variable. If you have a dumb meter, you don’t have the choice.
 
just had one fitted by eon smets2 version i hope will not miss having to crawl inside the boiler cupboard with a torch once per month to get the gas reading, the little display works well handy to see the costs in real time.
 
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LeeUK said:
But I already have and have always had awareness about my leccy usage and that wasting leccy equals wasted £££s. So the only other argument is "it saves 2 minutes submitting readings" which is not worth taking an afternoon off work for to save.
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That's fine of your happy the way you are. Come 2025 you will have no choice but to have the meter replaced. Until then it's optional.

You either take the offer now and become another statistic that gets posed up to climate change, c02 emissions, carbon footprint and the like. Or in a couple of years you will have no choice but to have the meter replaced.

Unless your meter was produced in the last 5 years (I doubt it as it would be smart or semi smart if it was) it will under the weights and measure act require replacing in 2025. If your meter is older than 10 years it already requires replacing. There is no option to have that meter replaced with like for like or as we call it a legacy meter. It will be smart you will have no choice.

Part of the smart meter initiative is to replace the hundreds of meters that are out of sync (mechanical meters can read slower or faster when desynchronized) and in the process update all meters to one concurrent standard. There was a similar initiative back in the seventies so I'm told by some of the old guys I work with, but due to changes within the old electric boards 99% of th paperwork was lost so most companies haven't a clue what meter assets they have.

There is a hell of a lot more to the metering initiative than just that smart will save you money!
 
BigBoy said:
Please if anyone has any sensible questions feel free to tag me in them and I will get back to you asap, but you know working, sleeping, kids n stuff.....
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On the TV there are some adverts about how smart meters are helping build a smart power grid, I can not see how this is. Smart meters from what you have said do not provide the supplier with real time energy usage.

Surely if they want to make the grid smart real time usage would be needed and a way to do this would be to monitor usage at substation level of the grid.
Getting real time usage from induvial homes is going to be very hard and add nothing to just doing it at the sub-station.
 
Dalandius said:
On the TV there are some adverts about how smart meters are helping build a smart power grid, I can not see how this is. Smart meters from what you have said do not provide the supplier with real time energy usage.

Surely if they want to make the grid smart real time usage would be needed and a way to do this would be to monitor usage at substation level of the grid.
Getting real time usage from induvial homes is going to be very hard and add nothing to just doing it at the sub-station.
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So, if suppliers can build usage pattern models from active households they can then use the patterns to provide a guide for generation. If you looked at substations you would have to take in to account capacitation as well as supply as each substation has a different level of capacitation it's very difficult to model from that.

The 'Smart Power Grid' they speak of is more to do with in home battery systems and decentralised capacitation. Currently there is no feed in tariff as the 'grid' is saturated during daylight hours. Saturation of the grid is actually detrimental and can even be dangerous. So if there is off grid storage that is not business managed it's a win win situation. The decentralised storage can then be utilised when generation cannot keep up with everyone turning the kettle on after Corri or EastEnders.
 
I'm expecting some difference in terms of accuracy when this gets replaced sometime soon :D

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