They want to install Smartmeters

[SimonH2]

The ultimate possibility is, of course, for 'unit rates' to vary from hour-to-hour - which could, as some people fear, eventually result in significant rises in electricity costs for people with some patterns of usage.

I think "possibility" is vastly understating it given how much of the spec is written around the ability to do just that - and how it will be the only way to keep the lights on when demand exceeds supply when TPTB decide it's getting too expensive to pay to keep the likes of Fiddlers Ferry available.
And of course, the remote turn off if temporary rate hikes don't work.

We all know that if the real reason was just to give users more information then much of the comms infrastructure just wouldn't be needed.

 

[JohnW2]

I think "possibility" is vastly understating it given how much of the spec is written around the ability to do just that - and how it will be the only way to keep the lights on when demand exceeds supply ...

What often gets overlooked is that there will probably be winners and losers. Unless we ever develop realistic large-scale means of storing electricity, it will always be the case that they will want to make as much 24/7 use as possible of what generation capacity they have, so people who can shift usage to what would otherwise be periods of 'under demand' are likely to end up paying less than if everyone was paying the same, and paying the same throughout the 24 hours.

Seemingly ironically, my supplier (E.ON) seems to be moving in the direction of less encouragement of the use of electricity during periods which I imagine are still those of lowest demand (small hours of morning). When their tariffs were 'revised' (increased) earlier this year, the change in tariff structure was such as to almost halve the saving I was previously getting by having E7 (with 45%-50% of my usage being at 'cheap rate', as has been the case for a number of years).

Kind Regards, John

 

[Alec_t]

For anyone with paranoid tendencies a smart meter would be seen as a tool for spying on householder activity and detecting when premises are unoccupied. A dishonest employee of an energy supply company could pass on info to burglars.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Nothing so nefarious is needed.

We can pretty much guarantee, I expect, that security on the meters and the comms will be reprehensibly lax, and a doddle to hack.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/search?query="smart+meter"


https://www.bing.com/search?q=smart+meter+security+concerns

 

[opps]

For anyone with paranoid tendencies a smart meter would be seen as a tool for spying on householder activity and detecting when premises are unoccupied. A dishonest employee of an energy supply company could pass on info to burglars.

Or... the provider could legally sell info to doorstep marketing firms to let them know when are likely to be at home. They also, theoretically, know what you watched on tv last night and can sell that info.

 

[JohnW2]

For anyone with paranoid tendencies a smart meter would be seen as a tool for spying on householder activity and detecting when premises are unoccupied. A dishonest employee of an energy supply company could pass on info to burglars.

Those with paranoid tendencies will always find things to worry about, and one can very rarely totally reassure them, since very little is impossible, no matter how unlikely.

For those who use a landline phone to a significant extent, dishonest employees might gain access to the phone usage records and thereby determine when a property is probably unoccupied. In my case, I already have a 'smart' Calor gas tank ('smart' in the sense that it transmits gas usage data by telemetry to the supplier), which will indicate when my gas usage stops or falls to an unusually low level.

More locally, if one 'does as one is advised', and cancels milk/newspaper deliveries etc. (and maybe even mail deliveries) when one is going to be away, that again creates a further number of people 'in the know' about non-occupancy. At least in the past, some people even informed the local police if their house was going to be unoccupied for an appreciable period of time, and the really paranoid might fear that corrupt people employed by the police service might pass that information on to criminals.

Kind Regards, John

 

[pilsbury]

On the news just..... Smart meters are saving the average household £11/year. They are meant to be saving the average household a whopping £26/year. A report suggests they are woefully behind the 2020 deadline, obsolete technology (first generation) are being installed. Firms are telling customers their prices will go up if they don't have one or their old meter is dangerous and will catch fire just to make the quotas. Sounds like a cluster f**k to me. No smart meter is going to get my kids to turn off their bedroom lights. I think I'll put off installation till the last minute.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

On the news just..... Smart meters are saving the average household £11/year.

That's the figure I'd like to multiply by the number of households in the UK and compare it to the total use of Cardiff, Aberdeen & Manchester....

 

[JohnW2]

Very rough figures ...
There are about 27 million households in UK, hence £11/household/year equates to around £297 million per year
Cardiff has about 126,000 households, with an average electricity spend of ~£700 per household per annum. Household electricity costs in Cardiff are therefore around £93 million per year
Aberdeen has about 107,000 households, with an average electricity spend of ~£700 per household per annum. Household electricity costs in Aberdeen are therefore around £75 million per year
Manchester has about 277,000 households (***), with an average electricity spend of ~£670 per household per annum. Household electricity costs in Manchester are therefore around £152 million per year.

£93m + £75m + £152m = £320m - not a million miles away from £297m.

*** we don't know whether they are talking about Manchester city, Greater Manchester or what.

 

[JohnD]

I wonder what it will cost to install 27million new meters

Plus, say, 10 million more to replace the early ones that don't work right.

Paid for by the customers, but the benefits accrue to the industry.

 

[JohnW2]

I wonder what it will cost to install 27million new meters ...

Probably less than you would think, since a lot of them seem to being installed at or around the time when a 'routine meter replacement'*** was scheduled - so that the only real additional cost is the marginal difference between the cost of a smart and a non-smart meter.

Paid for by the customers, but the benefits accrue to the industry.

If one were to believe the claims that it will reduce what consumers pay to the supplies (whether by £26, £11 or 50p per year), there will actually be a negative 'benefit' from that, leaving the only possible benefit I can think of as the reduced cost of meter reading (which could easily be more than cancelled by the admin/operational costs of the smart meter system).

*** I don't really understand why 'routine meter replacements' are now so common. For the first 30 or so years of my life, the meter I knew (my parents') was never replaced. During the subsequent 30+ years, I think my meter has been 'routienely replaced' 5 times - all by the same supplier.

Kind Regards, John

 

[SimonH2]

I don't really understand why 'routine meter replacements' are now so common.

Because the old Ferraris disk meters were reliable, but the electronic ones aren't? Given how they are being sold, l really can't see more than a small proportion of installs coinciding with routine changes - if they did, there wouldn't be the need for the additional installers they've been training.

 

[JohnW2]

Because the old Ferraris disk meters were reliable, but the electronic ones aren't?

Quite possibly - or, more likely, uncertainty about how reliable thay are. None of the meters I've had replaced have shown any signs of having become faulty or inaccurate.[/quote]

Given how they are being sold, l really can't see more than a small proportion of installs coinciding with routine changes - if they did, there wouldn't be the need for the additional installers they've been training.

Well, I can only speak of my experiences with my supplier. If they are going to be taking longer to roll out smart meters to most of their customers than the apparent 'between-routine-replacements' interval (seemingly 5-6 years) then they will not necessarily have installed appreciably more meters during that period than they would have done had they never installed any smart meters.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Very rough figures ...
There are about 27 million households in UK, hence £11/household/year equates to around £297 million per year
Cardiff has about 126,000 households, with an average electricity spend of ~£700 per household per annum. Household electricity costs in Cardiff are therefore around £93 million per year
Aberdeen has about 107,000 households, with an average electricity spend of ~£700 per household per annum. Household electricity costs in Aberdeen are therefore around £75 million per year
Manchester has about 277,000 households (***), with an average electricity spend of ~£670 per household per annum. Household electricity costs in Manchester are therefore around £152 million per year.

£93m + £75m + £152m = £320m - not a million miles away from £297m.

*** we don't know whether they are talking about Manchester city, Greater Manchester or what.

But we do know they are talking about gas as well.