and/or get night time energy ( for night storage heaters etc etc ) at day time costs.
Some time switches coped with power cuts by having a spring driven clock mechanism.
When the spring needed winding up a small electric motor did the winding up.
Teleswitch signal being switched off
- Thread starter zebedee2001
- Start date
and/or get night time energy ( for night storage heaters etc etc ) at day time costs.
Some time switches coped with power cuts by having a spring driven clock mechanism.
When the spring needed winding up a small electric motor did the winding up.
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I'm rather surprised, too, but what I said was true.
I'm very 'familiar' with Teleswitches, having seen countless photos of them and having engaged in many discussions about them - particularly about the 'impending' switching off of the radio signal they utilise ("when the last spare valve dies") - and event which seems to have been 'impending' for very many years!
However, it remains the case that, in relation to the two E7 systems I've had, and a good few I've seen in other houses (which must be at least 'many dozens'), that I don't recall having personally ever seen 'in the flesh' an E7 (or similar) system which uses a Teleswitch.
I would imagine that they would only still be in service in installations that still have an electromechanical meter, since I would have thought that any electronic meter (and obviously also 'smart' meters) had there own in-built way of 'knowing the time'.
Kind Regards, John
Indeed. I had always assumed that it was 'all', rather than 'some', since in the absence of such an approach, the suppliers would have had to send people out to reset the time on each and every time switch every time there was a power cut!
I initially thought that it was just a 'back-up clockwork mechanism', which came into action only if/when there was a loss of power. However, when I discovered that they 'wound themselves up' (fairly noisily!) in the middle of every day, it became apparent that the clocks probably always worked 'by clockwork', with daily winding-up by electricity.
Kind Regards, John
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Another con. Spare valves are readily available and possibly still manufactured. And of course solid state transmitters are easy enough these days.
All agreed (as discussed to death in the past)
The valves in question were water cooled, a water jacket around the anode removed the heat. They were mad e to order and certainly not readily available. As I recall the valve transmitters have been replaced by transmitters using semiconductor power stages.
https://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminiscences/Droitwich/droitwich_calling.htm
I'd be surprised if they can't also record maximum demand (which is routinely surcharged on industrial installations) and so people could pay more for all consumption over about 3kW. This would mostly be heating and car charging anyway.
Not outwith the realms of technical possibility that a not-too-smart charger could send data back down the consumer cables to the smart meter so permitting the meter to monitor charger use.A 'smart' meter, as we know it, alone could not do that. They can record energy usage during umpteen different time windows but, within any time window, all they can measure is total energy usage, so they wouldn't know how much of that total was attributable to EV charging - to determine that would need some sort of 'smart chargers' (or an additional meter!) that could measure their own usage and report it to the meter - so you can probably factor in another few more decades for rollout of 'smart chargers' if they go down that route
As you imply, they are presumably going to have to find some way of recovering the equivalent of the (enormous amount of) fuel excise duty they currently receive. They may try to do it, as you suggest, by taxing the electricity used for charging but I suspect that, as 'smart cars' come along, fuel excise duty and vehicle 'tax' will probably be replaced by a single usage ("per mile") tax/charge - which may, in some senses, be fairer than the present situation.
Kind Regards, John
Most definitely not "without the realms of technical possibility" - but even if 'not-to-smart', they would have to be smart enough to do that - and, to the best of my knowledge, none of the chargers currently installed, or now being installed, have such a facility, do they? - and if they were not designed with such a future requirement in mind, it might well be necessary to replace (rather than 'upgrade') them all - so, again, probably another 'few decades'?
Kind Regards, John
Maybe - I'm sure sopmeone will know, but 'recording maximum demand' and recording 'consumption over some threshold' would appear to be too very different things. In any event ....
I don't have EV charging but for the first 2-3 hours of the E7 cheap-rate period, it's not uncommon for me to have an immersion heater (running 'flat out') a tumble dryer, a WM and dishwasher (plus some other loads) running simultaneously. At peak that could easily be 10 kW or more, and I'd be pretty upset if I had to pay "vehicle fuel tax" on 70% of that
I really cannot see how such a system could work unless/until EV chargers are able to send information to the meter (or if the EV charger was totally separately metered).
Kind Regards, John
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