What is a "suitable meter"?

[Harry Bloomfield]

I was thinking about the sort of 'management' eric was talking ('fantasising'? ) about, in which loads would be controlled, in real time, by the meter in response to changing dynamic tariffs.

No need for anyone to fantasize, the minute by minute cost of energy, is well publicised by all of the suppliers, who offer such tariffs. Below is todays rate, for the Octopus Agile tariff. All anyone needs to do, is either manually switch things on at the appropriate (cheaper) times, or automate it, by having software look at the data for the day ahead. Suppliers, always provide the cost/time data ahead of time.

 

[ericmark]

I was talking about an existing E7 supply such as mine, and the 'problem' you mentioned has always existed. It certainly existed in the days when I had an electromechanical time switch (which was often not remotely 'correct'), and I imagine that my current 'dumb' electronic meter has a much more reliable knowledge of 'what the time is' than its mechanical predecessor ever had!

My meter has no communications facility (in the SM sense) so, unless it is getting time information via the supply network (which I very much doubt), it must be autonomously reliant upon it's internal clock - which I presume was 'set' when it was installed?

So we still have E7 without a teleswitch? I was unaware of that.

Below is todays rate, for the Octopus Agile tariff.

The published data about wholesale electric costs, would require some smart device which can start processes when the electric has dropped below a set threshold. And to be frank, the times when electric is most costly is a time when 90% of the time I will have battery left, so of little interest to me.

The idea of a smart meter which can be set to start things when the rate is below what has been dialled in, seems a good idea, I know storage radiators can have a command wire to turn them on the heat, but the rest of the devices seem sadly lacking in any interaction capability.

My dishwasher, tumble drier, and washing machine all have a delay start option. All seem to starts at ½ hour increments, but as delay increases go to 1 hour increments, which is a bit too long, and the tumble drier, and washing machine both rotate drum every so often, so wife sets up and tells me to start it when sun is up.

But the chart does not make sense, they are charging around 6p/kWh for car charging supplies, and without a car I was charged 8.95p/kWh which is below any point on the graph. If everyone was to be charged an economic rate, then all the really cheap tariffs would vanish.

The solar rate for export is a good example of the problem, it should be a far rate, what ever the import rate is, but Octopus 4.1p/kWh if not buying from them, 10.54p/kWh with a 30.68p/kWh if between 4 pm and 7 pm which most solar panels have little output at that time, or 15p/kWh if importing with standard single rate.

 

[JohnW2]

No need for anyone to fantasize, the minute by minute cost of energy, is well publicised by all of the suppliers, who offer such tariffs.

Indeed.

All anyone needs to do, is either manually switch things on at the appropriate (cheaper) times, or automate it, by having software look at the data for the day ahead.

Again, indeed - but it is the latter in relation to which I referred to possible 'fantasizing' (at this point in time) - since, although you, I and a few others are probably capable of creating software and appropriate control systems for various loads, to the best of my knowledge no such systems are currently commercially available, and hence are not currently available to the vast majority of users of such tariffs.

 

[JohnW2]

So we still have E7 without a teleswitch? I was unaware of that.

You can't have read a lot of what I've written during the past 14 or so years, then

I've had (and still have) E7 for about 40 years and I've never had a teleswitch. Originally it used electromechanical time switch and meter, more recently an electronic ('dumb') meter which has an electronic clock in it.

The idea of a smart meter which can be set to start things when the rate is below what has been dialled in, seems a good idea, I know storage radiators can have a command wire to turn them on the heat, but the rest of the devices seem sadly lacking in any interaction capability.

Indeed, and (despite all sorts of other views) I think that really is the ultimate reason for the move to 'smart' meters (which eventually may even become a little 'smart'!).

However, I very much doubt that either of us will be around tio see the appearance and widespread deployment of a significant number of 'smart appliances'. Let's face it, even after they start becoming reasonably available, it will probably be a good few decades before they are 'widely deployed' Certainly not something that you and I really need to think or worry about, other than as an academic exercise!

 

[EFLImpudence]

Would it not be better if you all concentrated on the motives of those who actually decided to introduce smart meters - i.e. THE GOVERNMENT.

 

[JohnW2]

Indeed, and (despite all sorts of other views) I think that really is the ultimate reason for the move to 'smart' meters (which eventually may even become a little 'smart'!).

Would it not be better if you all concentrated on the motives of those who actually decided to introduce smart meters - i.e. THE GOVERNMENT.

I'll leave you to 'concentrate on such motives' (something which you seem to do very successfully) !

The politicians who make up government obviously will not have had the technical expertise to make the decision, so they must have relied upon allegedly 'expert' opinion (I think probably misguided) that the introduction of SMs would serve some useful political purpose and/or would benefit the population. I would also remind you, yet again, that many countries have moved to similar meters despite the apparent absence of any government involvement in the decision.

As I always say, I do believe that 'smart' meters will ultimately be of benefit in terms of optimisation of energy usage and cost (when they become widely integrated into house-wide 'automation' systems), but I'm not at all convinced that either of us will see even the start of that happening to a significant extent.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

The idea of a smart meter which can be set to start things when the rate is below what has been dialled in, seems a good idea, I know storage radiators can have a command wire to turn them on the heat, but the rest of the devices seem sadly lacking in any interaction capability.

Which is where smart switches, and sockets can come in, combined with a bit of logic.

The solar rate for export is a good example of the problem, it should be a far rate, what ever the import rate is,

How could anyone expect that? The unit price at which they sell to you (import), has to include some profit, cost of transmission, profit for those generating, etc.. What you sell at (export), will go direct to other consumers/customers near you, and they need to make a profit out of that too.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Again, indeed - but it is the latter in relation to which I referred to possible 'fantasizing' (at this point in time) - since, although you, I and a few others are probably capable of creating software and appropriate control systems for various loads, to the best of my knowledge no such systems are currently commercially available, and hence are not currently available to the vast majority of users of such tariffs.

Therein, lies a great opportunity for someone

 

[JohnW2]

Therein, lies a great opportunity for someone

Yes, possibly, but it will become much simpler (hence probably cheaper, and with a large enough market to justify development) once 'smart appliances' become fairly prevalent.

 

[morqthana]

We could, but monopolies always engender concerns. Whilst one could eliminate the 'profit' element, in the absence of 'competition' there is no incentive to avoid the business being ridiculously inefficient - which is a phenomenon we've seen in the past.

I imagine you are thinking of the nationalise/privatise debate, but I'm far from convinced that the former is necessarily the panacea that some people (like my daughters, and quite probably you!) seem to think. For a start, 'nationalised' means 'monopoly', so the above comments apply.

I quite like having a monopoly police service.

A monopoly fire service.

A monopoly Highways Agency.

A monopoly Ambulance service.


Shall we talk about the stunningly successful (in serving their customers) and efficient private-for-profit water companies, electricity companies, rail companies, bus services, ...?

Secondly, taking a very simplistic view of these things, and just 'thinking aloud' ..... if a government wanted to set up from scratch, or 'buy at market value' something which was to be a 'nationalised' UK-wide energy supply or utility industry, it would cost an astronomical amount of money, which would have to be 'borrowed' from somewhere, attracting massive very long term interest (and, ultimately, capital) repayments. If 'privatised', the astronomical amount of money would have been borrowed from shareholders, with the business being run at a 'profit' which was then (after tax) paid as 'interest' to the shareholders, without it necessarily ever be required that the capital of the loan is repaid. ... and I'm not convinced that the latter necessarily has to be a greater 'cost of borrowing' than the former, does it?

Maybe governments should look to greater use of perpetual bonds.

 

[JohnW2]

I quite like having a monopoly police service. ... A monopoly fire service. .... A monopoly Highways Agency. ... A monopoly Ambulance service.

Fair enough, and I could add a few more to that list, but I would hope you would agree that such services are a rather different kettle of fish from the production and selling of 'commodities'. Apart from anything else, the concept of 'profit' (or the lack of it) has no simple (or probably useful) meaning in relation to such services.

In any event, all of those services are 'monopolies' because they are 'nationalised'. One thing they have in common is that they are all desperately under-funded (to the detriment of the service provided to the population) and that because the government does not want to either borrow or increase taxes so as to facility greater funding (and that has been true, to varying extents, for the past several governments).

Shall we talk about the stunningly successful (in serving their customers) and efficient private-for-profit water companies, electricity companies, rail companies, bus services, ...?

We could talk about that, but in the same discussion would have to talk about the success and efficiency (or otherwise) of the non-private and not-for-'profit' companies which preceded them.

Maybe governments should look to greater use of perpetual bonds.

Maybe. I don't really understand enough about these things to be able to comment very intelligently. If the bond is such that it pays regular interest (annual/whatever) then if the rate of that interest is high enough to attract investors (who would otherwise invest in shares), I would suspect that the cost might well be in a similar ballpark to dividends paid out of (taxed) profits.

I am again out of my depth (and therefore may be talking nonsense), but it seems to me that one advantage of dividends paid to shareholders over interest (paid to banks or bond-holders) is that the former is flexible/'discretionary' - i.e. if, for whatever reason, a private company 'falls on hard times' (hence makes little/no profit) they can then pay little or nothing ion dividends - whereas with interest payments (to banks or bond-holders) have to continue unchanged, regardless of circumstances and the company's 'ability to pay' (without increasing its prices to customers.

 

[ericmark]

The Abermule train collision was a head-on collision which occurred at Abermule, Montgomeryshire, Wales, on Wednesday, 26 January 1921 was one before, and the token system was invented to stop it every happening again. But the improved service has an automatic system, clearly nationalising and denationalising then nationalising again takes its toll.

The South Wales steel works was closing, calls to nationalise fell on deaf ears, then same with one in Yorkshire, can't have the Jarrow marches again can we.

Nationalising is often a knee-jerk reaction, Police and armed forces are about the only ones where they did not take over an existing system.

 

[plugwash]

but I'm not at all convinced that either of us will see even the start of that happening to a significant extent.

We are already starting to see it for EV charging, and I suspect we will see it for space heating as we slowly transition from gas boilers to heat pumps.

Beyond that, you very much get into diminishing returns.

View attachment 381141

The recent train crash in wales was not a failure of the signalling per-se. Neither was the previous crash in salisbury.

In both cases, the trains were correctly commanded to stop (first by the driver, and then by train protection systems), but slid past the locations where they were supposed to stop. In the salisbury case this resulted in one train hitting the side of another at a junction, in the welsh case it resulted in a train entering an occupied single track section and a head-on collesion. So neither brake demands from the driver, or those from the train protection systems were effective.

 

[JohnW2]

We are already starting to see it for EV charging, and I suspect we will see it for space heating as we slowly transition from gas boilers to heat pumps.

You are undoubtedly right, but I strongly suspect that that 'slow transition' will be so slow as to be of pretty limited interest or concern to 'ageing me'

 

[ericmark]

However, I very much doubt that either of us will be around tio see the appearance and widespread deployment of a significant number of 'smart appliances'. Let's face it, even after they start becoming reasonably available, it will probably be a good few decades before they are 'widely deployed' Certainly not something that you and I really need to think or worry about, other than as an academic exercise!

I note the tumble dryer I have, now has a Wi-Fi option, but using the simple built in delay start, I could not even find out what the time is. The smart meter shows one time, and my IHD shows another.

In winter no problem, we all use unified time constant (UTC) it was called Greenwich mean time (GMT) but the observatory was moved, so there was a name change, I am sure they use UTC, but just looked at my IHD and it says 13:22 so clearly BST.

An internet search

Economy 7 off-peak hours take place according to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) between, for example, 12:30am-7:30am. This means when the clocks change in spring to BST, the off-peak hours will change to 1:30am-8:30am as the clocks spring forward but will then change back to 12:30am-7:30am when they fall back in Autumn.

Our EV Fixed tariff and Heat Pump Fixed tariff automatically adjust, so you do not need to adjust your usage timings when the clocks change during the year.

Oh, that is very helpful, more hunts and

EDF clearly documents that the EDF GoElectric hours change from 12am-5am GMT to 1am-6am BST (even when using smart meters), while Octopus clearly documents that the Octopus Go hours stay 00:30 to 04:30 whether GMT or BST.

Never mind old teleswitching, even new "Smart" meters it seems don't know what the time is! When using BG EV tariff I set it 1 am to 5 am to be on the safe side.

But it does seem "Smart" meters are that "Smart" they can't even tell the time?