I recently had my time wasted trying to find the reason why an economy 7 (overnight) immersion heater wasn't heating the water overnight, and it concluded with the customer finding out that their smarty-pants electricity meter had 'tripped', and that all was well because the electricity supplier had reset the meter remotely. It confirmed a rumour that the Companies (the grid) could both turn on and turn off smarty-pants meters at will. This fact started a building site discussion on the future use of this 'technology', with logical arguments being made that, once the uptake of air source heat pumps (ASHPs) and electric cars are widespread then it follows that overnight electricity consumption will be significantly higher than daytime consumption in many residential areas; the argument being that 1 or 2 cars would be charged overnight per household at around 3kW each. Add to this the ASHP struggling to make the quoted heat outputs once external temperatures drop below 5 Celsius and we have a possibly common scenario of the ASHP also being on overnight, adding perhaps 6kW more to each household's load.
At this point the site sparkie interjected with a comment to the effect that the supply cables laid in the street are sized assuming each house consumes only 3kW (diversity, and all that), which raised the possibility of overheated supply cables burning out in many streets.
Would someone qualified to comment care to confirm or deny this 3kW claim?
If this is true I can see one method by which 'the Grid' could protect itself from the embarrassment and expense of repairing melted cables; they could remotely turn off a proportion of the supplies in the street with the hot cable...the result being that some residents may wake up to a cold house, no hot water, and a car that refused to take them (all the way) to work.
Perhaps this is truly one of the advantages of the smarty-pants electricity meter, just not one the customer would appreciate.
MM
At this point the site sparkie interjected with a comment to the effect that the supply cables laid in the street are sized assuming each house consumes only 3kW (diversity, and all that), which raised the possibility of overheated supply cables burning out in many streets.
Would someone qualified to comment care to confirm or deny this 3kW claim?
If this is true I can see one method by which 'the Grid' could protect itself from the embarrassment and expense of repairing melted cables; they could remotely turn off a proportion of the supplies in the street with the hot cable...the result being that some residents may wake up to a cold house, no hot water, and a car that refused to take them (all the way) to work.
Perhaps this is truly one of the advantages of the smarty-pants electricity meter, just not one the customer would appreciate.
MM