What is a "suitable meter"?

[JohnW2]

No - all that is needed, is a record of how much used, and when.

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.

 

[morqthana]

A recent introduction I understood, to relieve their staffs workload, from people switching too frequently.

I've got an idea.

We could have just one supplier, and their prices could be based on what it costs to make and distribute electricity, rather than a multiplicity of suppliers all trying to profit from the sale and dreaming up a multiplicity of pricing schemes aimed at getting customers of competitors to buy from them instead.

 

[morqthana]

It costs suppliers no more to process and distribute electricity generated from expensive fuel than when it is generated from cheaper fuel, so I don't really see why they should be allowed to make a lot more profit just because the fuels had become more expensive.

Because that's the way the government we had from 2010 wanted things to work.

And the government we have now is too scared to change things.

 

[morqthana]

You need to keep in mind, that suppliers have to buy there allocation of energy, on the spot market, ahead of time, taking the gamble on recovering their investment,

They don't "have to" in the same way that they "have to" take account of when it is day and when it is night, or when it is summer and when it is winter.

The "have tos" you mention are ones where governments have told suppliers "you have to do this for reasons of political ideology". Although they don't articulate the 2nd half of that.

 

[morqthana]

there is a limit to how far government can going in simply telling suppliers to charge less than they otherwise would, since (unless they 'subsidised the difference', with taxpayer's money) they would eventually create a situation in which the supplies 'went bust', because their outgoings were greater than the income they were being allowed to have.

I wonder if there might be scope for these suppliers to save costs by not employing people whose job it is to fight with the people employed by other suppliers to fight with them, and by not spending money on marketing and branding and advertising, and by not spending money on enormous salaries for their senior executives, and by not spending money on dividends to shareholders.

 

[morqthana]

The w/sale prices rises, came hand in hand, with instability, so covering themselves took care of that extra margin. Energy retail is a highly competitive market, with so many companies involved. Increase their prices, expect too big a profit, then they soon lose customers, who seek out a better offer.

I know somebody who used to work for a company closely associated with the regulation of the UK domestic electricity supply industry, and they regularly met with counterparts in other European countries who were, to a man, utterly gobsmacked by the braindead insanity we had wreaked on our electricity generating and distributing infrastructure. Whilst, of course, rubbing their hands as they swooped in to grab as much profit as they could. Profit which can only come, at the end of the day, out of consumer's pockets.

 

[morqthana]

One solution, would be for Ofcom to allow the use of the Internet, as an acceptable option to relay consumption figures, to suppliers. Octopus already do this, using their pink thingummy. I have one, and it works a treat, feeding a constant stream of my instantaneous figures, every 10 seconds, to Octopus, but it is unofficial, I cannot be billed using it.

But they will let me use the internet to relay consumption figures (to Octopus, as it happens) which I've recorded by looking at my meters.

 

[morqthana]

The moment one wants a tariff which (for import and/or export) is 'dynamic' and/or which has more than two 'rate periods', there really is no option than to have what we call a 'smart' meter. I can't see that anything other than what we call a smart meter would be "suitable"! for such a tariff", no matter what Ofgem might say, can you?

Depends on how you define "smart meter".

Mobile phones have no metering functions, and all the mediation, rating and billing is done by the service provider back end systems. All a meter would need to do would be to record usage, and periodically transmit that to the supplier. Apart from that comms link, no real "smartness" is necessary.

 

[morqthana]

Sure, that would be fine for billing, provided that the connection was at least occasionally available. However, one needs much better than 'occasional connection' if one wants to use and manage 'dynamic tariffs, doesn't one?

Could that not be done locally, using an Android/iOS/Windows app which synced with the supplier as often as there was a change, connected to the meter over a local wireless connection of some sort, all of which would allow people to moderate their usage, but none of which was used for billing?

PS - apologies if this, like my previous reply, repeated things already posted by others.

 

[morqthana]

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.

Smart grid - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter#Advanced_metering_infrastructure is a component of that.

 

[ericmark]

We could have just one supplier, and their prices could be based on what it costs to make and distribute electricity, rather than a multiplicity of suppliers all trying to profit from the sale and dreaming up a multiplicity of pricing schemes aimed at getting customers of competitors to buy from them instead.

That makes sense, and I know my father was working in a power station within a steel works, and his job included at time delaying a process, as grid power was expensive at that time, likely talking about 80s and 90s. But the industry has always been charged what it costs.

The prices have always gone up/down during the day, and the question is do you want to take the risk? And it is a bit like a lottery, how much risk do you want to take?

This time of year, I hardly import any energy, in fact today exported 17.2 kWh, but come the winter, my solar panels do very little. Solar production for the whole of December was 97 kWh, but November 149.7 kWh and January 193.7 kWh.

So in December, off-peak would be good, but in January there were some bad days, where it was not fully recharged with solar, but many days were like this that second flat bit means I was exporting, at that time for no payment. The EV tariff I was on locked me in for 12 months, or pay £75, so not happy with off, peak.

As to reading the meter, never did find out how to read off-peak used. Could on the phone, couple of days latter, as to IHD most of the time it is in the green, but there are no marking on the green segment to say how many kWh that is.

Best option is to look out of the window, to see how much sun. But don't really want to take a chance, prefer someone else does that, so at moment on a single tariff, and I will see how it goes. Today, 15% to spare (only go to 10% that held back for power cuts).
The solar at moment is doing all my needs. It will not in the winter, but at 8.95p and every night come rain or shine, using 6 kWh would be OK if paid more the 8.95p/kWh for export, but Octopus flux charge 17.1p/kWh night rate, and give 10.54p/kWh for export, but standard rate I get 15p/kWh for export, and by 4 pm solar production has nearly stopped so not going to see many kWh at 30.68p/kWh.

The same can be said for economy 7, one has to use 50% of power off-peak, for it to be worthwhile. Personally, I don't heat rooms not in use, this is difficult to do with storage radiators.

Today I heard the central heating fire up, looked and found wife's bedroom cold, so since not in bed turned heating off again. Can't do that with storage radiators. So maybe panel radiators would work out cheaper?

 

[morqthana]

Indeed - but has that ever happened?

Some (many? all?) suppliers no longer offer 'new' dual-rate tariffs - but for those who, like me, already are on a long-established E7 tariff, there has never been any suggestion of my supplier saying that I "can't have it any more" - and nor has there (yet) ever been a problem with my changing to a new supplier and still sticking with my E7 tariff..

Even if gthe day ever comes when they say (truthfully or not) that my meter needs replacing and that they can no longer get dual tariff meters (that hasn't happened yet), they could still install a 'smart' meter, without its communication facility' and just use it as a ('manually read') dual-tariff meter.

Isn't the problem that without some kind of time signal (GSM,RTS,whatever) the meter doesn't reliably know what time it is?

If all we need is to supply an official time to a meter, why not GPS? Yes, I know that's not 100% any more than GSM, but it's probably better. And as for security, if "they" manage to hack/compromise/corrupt/disable GPS then trust me, we all have much more pressing problems to deal with than what our electricity bill will be next quarter.

 

[JohnW2]

Because that's the way the government we had from 2010 wanted things to work.

2010 has little to do with the issue I was talking about, which has been with us since the year dot.

When progressive increases in the (production, wholesale or whatever) cost of some commodity are essentially due to across-the-board inflation (i..e. affecting incomes as well as prices), then the concept that those in the supply chain can/should expect a 'mark up'/profit which is roughly a fixed percentage of their costs (manufacturing, buying or whatever) is, at least in my opinion, not unreasonable.

However, when there is a very sudden and large increase in the (manufacturing/buying/whatever) costs of a particular commodity which is not mirrored by corresponding increases in incomes etc.) then I think the 'fixed percentage mark-up/profit' ceases to be reasonable, particularly for 'essential' things like energy/utilities - but there has rarely been any intervention to 'disallow' such a happening.

Following a prior proposal from the then opposition, the government we had in 2022 did make a gesture in this direction by introducing a 'windfall tax' on the producers of gas and oil, but I'm far from sure how/if the money so collected was (and is) being used to alleviate the 'cost of living crisis' for the general public.

 

[JohnW2]

Isn't the problem that without some kind of time signal (GSM,RTS,whatever) the meter doesn't reliably know what time it is?

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?

 

[JohnW2]

I've got an idea. ... We could have just one supplier, and their prices could be based on what it costs to make and distribute electricity, rather than a multiplicity of suppliers all trying to profit from the sale and dreaming up a multiplicity of pricing schemes aimed at getting customers of competitors to buy from them instead.

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.

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?