Re: 3% energy saving
If enough of us switched supplier every year and the meters aren't transferable, I wonder if this is the first real example of an energy saving product that never covers it's own manufacturing costs?
The closure of the UK government's Department of Energy & Climate Change should result in a major rethink of the organisation's shambolic and costly £11bn Smart Meter programme, campaigners have urged. Last week DECC was merged with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to form the newly anointed Department of …
I just got around to replacing some halogen bulbs in the living room - seven of them at 70W each - with seven 5.5W LED bulbs (they've finally got bright enough in the form factor we can live with) and at the same time four 50W halogens in the kitchen with four 4W bulbs... ok, there's still the fridge, oven, and washing machine, but I reckon I'm over 3% right there.
The person who manages my demand is *me*. The job of the power company is to calculate an average price for me which works for both them and me. This is called 'budgeting' and it seems to be a foreign concept to economists, who really ought to know better - they seem to work on the basis that price is the only driver when selecting whether and how much to use a service. I won't choose to sit in the dark because the power is expensive, or stop baking a loaf of bread half-way through, nor let the fridge warm up.
If the power companies aren't able to manage a peak demand, they need to get their act together and build some bloody nuclear power stations. I'll pay - over time.
B) Or something like
Commodity balances for electricity (Table 5.1)
5.4
In 2014, total electricity supply was 359 TWh, a fall of 3.8 per cent on 2013
.
Of this, just over 93
per cent of UK electricity supply was home produced and almost six
per cent was from imports, net of
exports. For electricity, supply is totally driven by demand – the impacts of improving energy efficiency
and warmer temperatures, left final consumption in 2014 at its lowest level since 1995 (see paragraph
5.10).
Table 5A below summarises the trend in total generation and supply over the last three years.
I worked for one of the Big Six energy companies when smart meters first raised their heads, so to speak, and there was universal glumness. We knew we'd have to eat most of the costs, and the end consumer, save for a handful, would not give a toss and wouldn't adjust their usage or even look at the thing from one year to the next. Our telephone survey confirmed my own thoughts: people only brightened at the thought of no more estimated bills.
This forum has continually argued against these meters (mostly) because they are technologically deficient. Yep. Hit the reset button, and without the EU update your meters to 21st Century standards (which aren't yet set). So make a standard that's exportable, please, because the whole rest of the world is going to get "Comcast"-ed into buying set-top boxes that are deficient in every way.
But you gotta admit, it's time to update electrical meters. A KW hour at 1 pm is worth more than a KW hour at 1 am.
"A KW hour at 1 pm is worth more than a KW hour at 1 am."
If you have fast-acting nuke plants (LTFRs can load-follow, which means no need for OGT stations) then unless the actual distribution network is overloaded, that's not necessarily true.
In any case if, you've checked your power bill recently you'll probably notice that "line charges" account for more than half of the bottom line figure (but power charges have not decreased over the days when line charges were rolled into the unit price)
"True, but I have no intention of sitting up until the wee small hours to put on a load of washing or cook dinner, and I very much doubt if Mrs Commswonk would do it either."
The solution, of course, is an "Internet of Things" remote controlled switch operated at set times by an app on your phone and controlled by a Google cloud system in another country.
But maybe not, I'll be fucked if I'm going to have a fucking washing machine doing a full spin cycle and dancing around the kitchen at 3am when I have to get up at 6:30 to go to work!
Icon - what I look like if I don't get my sleep ------------------>
Get yourself some solar panels and the test becomes much easier. You then run the washing machine or dishwasher when the sun is shining and there are kilowatts of electricity available to you that won't cost you anything. If they do variable-tarriff smart metering, it is probable that the same rule of thumb will work well (because there is lots of solar electricity generation feeding the grid these days).
What the government should be doing is investing in energy storage so that the large amount of exported electricity hitting the grid on sunny days becomes a solution rather than a problem.
In passing does anyone know why NiFe batteries are not on anyone's radar? Their disadvantages (bulky/heavy, electrically leaky, lowish self-limiting maximum discharge rate) are not significant if the application is to store solar energy in fixed battery banks for a mere few hours or days on a scale ranging from a garden shed to a power-station-sized warehouse. The advantages are cheap and abundant raw materials (nickel, Iron, caustic potash), extremely long service life, and being extremely forgiving of "abuse" such as overcharging, overload, or discharge to "flat". They are reputedly as good as new after a decade sitting around in a discharged state. They can be short-circuited and will survive the experience. They're expensive to buy right now, because they are not manufactured in anything like the same volume as lead-acid batteries (which have a service life of only a few years even if they are used optimally).
"You then run the washing machine or dishwasher when the sun is shining and there are kilowatts of electricity available to you"
Have you quantified how much power you get off a rooftop panel? (Hint: It's not enough to run a washing machine with integral heater, except on the very biggest installations)
WRT NiFe: you've stated why they're not in use: Compared with lead-acid, they're vastly more expensive. There's probably more potential in flow batteries.
I have a 2.75kWp roof array, South facing, almost perfect inclination. On a sunny day in summer it outputs 2.4kW (precisely as predicted in advance by the supplier from its geometry). The washing machine is rated at 2.5kW. So it is (almost) enough to run a washing machine, despite being less than the 3 to 4 kWp which all but the smallest houses have roof space for. (I have three panels less because of a loft conversion and not wanting to have panels over the windows).
re NiFe: the raw materials are all cheaper than for lead-acid. The higher cost is because there is no mass manufacturing. But if they were being used for grid-scale storage, whether in millions of garden sheds all over the country or in power-station-size warehouses, that would generate the economy of scale, and the hugely longer service life makes the long-term economics better. Manufacture of NiFe is pretty low-tech, compared even to lead-acid, let alone LiPo. Elon Musk is doing a good job with Tesla / Powerwall / LiPo. It's obviously in his automotive interests to do everything he can with LiPo technology, and I wish him well.
But a "Smart" meter would be able to communicate with your fusebox at your choosing and turn on a breaker or the device itself when prices drop to $0.0X per kwh. That's what current rollout meters do not do, but which wouldn't even be hard to program; trigger a relay when a datum point is reached?
Anyhow, that's how I'd do it if I had the skills. Six or eight programmable relay leads and IoT protocols for those who want a "wired" (WiFi) house.
And I'm American, so I don't know Mrs. Commswonk, but we'd ask her son, or granddaughter to do it for her, right?
Anyhow, please don't "shoot" me. I'm just thinking aloud. I just haven't heard of a good, robust, secure SMART meter yet, and it's 2016, which just kinda strikes me as ridiculous as Comcast set-top boxes.
Ignoring all the (various) security implications...
I still fail to see why seeing some live estimate of what I am spending on fuel will make the slightest difference to my fuel use ...
I can however see it having an effect on energy wasting muppets with wasteful activities such as patio heaters, having house heating at scorchio levels etc. who might finally get a clue that they may as well just cut out the middleman and burn bundles of notes, but most people tend not to be wasteful of fuel use as they already know its very expensive so smart meters seem overkill for a tiny percentage of wastrels.
I can however see it having an effect on energy wasting muppets with wasteful activities such as patio heaters, having house heating at scorchio levels etc
Well I can't; to the best of my knowledge patio heaters run on bottled gas so "smart metering" them might be a bit of a challenge. Come to think of it smart metering only applies to electrical supplies so anyone who has the house heating a bit high by burning gas is only going to find out how much the pump is consuming.
Hard to believe it's been ten years since David Miliband decided to patronise us all with his Utopian plans for carbon credit cards and citizens environmental contracts. What we need is some kind of government wiki where we can debate these ideas in a mature, sensible fashion.
Like last time.
In Saturday's Times Matthew Paris was musing on the Conservative party's nut-cases (that might not have been the exact term he used) who will never be content with anything - Brexit won't be exit enough etc. It struck me that one way to deal with them would be to "promote" them to a department with a death march project and then, after the next PAC/NAO report condemning the lack of progress, publicly label them as incompetent and replace them with the next in line. It might seem cynical to do this rather than put someone competent in charge but the definition of a death march project is that it's unsalvageable so this simply re-purposes them.
I think Leadsom has been set up to fail with both smart meters and the rural payments scheme on her plate.
I think Leadsom has been set up to fail with both smart meters and the rural payments scheme on her plate.
That may or may not be true, but I'm not sure that I would place much store in Mathew Parris's musings. He penned a fairly nasty piece in the Spectator which mainly served to define him as a bad loser. It attracted some critical correspondence to the Editor.
Anyway if Andrea Leadsom wants to get a bit of credit she could do much worse than simply ditching the smart metering scheme sooner rather than later*. And the rural payments scheme can easily be described as an inherited mess over which she could exercise no control.
* Like, er, immediately.
"The thing about most EU legislation and rules is that they are onply implemented if the national government WANTS to implement them."
Well, not quite. Each member state has to implement the legislation, but has leeway in how strictly in waht form they are implemented. The French tend to lean towards the "meh!" end of the scale while the UK is more germanic than the Germans, hence all the "blame" being put on Brussels. Not to mention that as the 2nd biggest economy in the EU, the UK has a significant influence on creating the EU legislation in the first place (in fact it's often UK lead legislation that our own gov. then "blames" on Brussels)
"It struck me that one way to deal with them would be to "promote" them to a department with a death march project and then, after the next PAC/NAO report condemning the lack of progress, publicly label them as incompetent and replace them with the next in line."
Why do you think TM put The BoJoTM in the FO?
If you say that you aren't doing something because you'll be leaving then you will have invoked article 50 and you then have 2 years to complete the exit.
It is therefore wise to pretend that nothing has changed until article 50 is formally invoked.
Yes this is stupid, but then so is Brexit.
What exactly is Smart about these meters, do they actively save me money, do they adjust my supplier to the cheapest available on watt by watt basis, or do they simply tell me I'm using electricity, which I already know... ...no it's ok I know the answer, they don't do anything useful for me at all, just make the meter reader redundant (I assume someone still reads the meter, though they keep trying to get me to do it !!)
Posting anon because I work on the project and would probably get into all sorts of trouble otherwise.
DECC are not the people in charge of Smart Meters, DCC are (https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/).
Communication with the DCC is via a defined standard (https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/implementation/design-and-assurance/interface-specifications/dcc-user-interface-specification/)
Smart metering equipment must comply to GBCS so is intrinsically inter-operative (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/380611/GBCS_v0.8.1.docx). There also SMETS and CHTS if you really want to party on with your standards hat on.
No-one has a proper smart meter, they don't go live until next month.
What is smart about it? So it tells me how much energy I am using... so what I can tell by the speed of the spinning wheel now. Worse it takes power to tell me something I don't need to know.
TBH its a bit like the energy comparison on a washing machine... I need to wash my clothes, I will change the machine when it breaks, I will buy the cheapest... regardless.....
Oh, and my current washing machine uses hot water from my hot water tank, heated directly by gas... more efficient than the EU mandated cold fill on modern machines...
Think logically.... my gas boiler burns gas to heat water and the machine uses it. Your shiny new machine uses a power station to heat water to steam, which it uses (not very efficiently) to drive a turbine, which (not efficiently) generates electricity which is then transported by a lossy (electric cables lose energy) system to my house where my washing machine uses a not particularly efficient system to turn th electricity to heat.
"a not particularly efficient system to turn th electricity to heat."
I'm not sure about this last bit. Turning other forms of energy to heat seems to be something that happens particularly easily, especially when you don't want it. (Burnt fingers from the gear on my strimmer).
TBH its a bit like the energy comparison on a washing machine... I need to wash my clothes, I will change the machine when it breaks, I will buy the cheapest... regardless.....
Buying the cheapest is seldom, if ever, the most economical course of action. You need to consider Total Cost of Ownership: the cost of the power used, the cost of spares, the cost of waiting in for the repairman, the cost of waiting for the replacement to be delivered, the cost of disposal of the old machine ... it all adds up.
You're right, though, it is a bit like the smart meter discussion ... the decisions are all based on carefully considering only a few of the relevant data, and that without understanding them.
"Oh, and my current washing machine uses hot water from my hot water tank, heated directly by gas... more efficient than the EU mandated cold fill on modern machines..."
Yes but does it 'run the tap' until the hot water comes through? Most of the hot water taken in will be the neo-ambient water in the pipe from the hot tank or combi-boiler.