How much is a smart meter worth? £28,000,000 aparently???

[Evans Electric]

by the same token you cannot reduce your electricity consumption simply by measuring it with a smart meter.

For some reason I was thinking exactly this today ...no idea why ...the mind of an electrician is strange place to go .   

 

[Blue Duck]

Ooh, I'd better not cook dinner tonight to save energy... I'll eat the cat instead.

I understand the issue that previously existed with people leaving 100w light bulbs on all day long without a care in the world.

But we're more clued up now and have low energy everything but that's not going to stop us from using energy, it's just a way of penalising us for doing the washing.

The money would have been better spent elsewhere, renewable energy sources perhaps? :lol:

And what is going to happen to these smart meter installers when the job is done? 

There is only so much we can order from amazon to support the gig economy.

 

[binky]

The money would have been better spent elsewhere, renewable energy sources perhaps? :lol:

And what is going to happen to these smart meter installers when the job is done? 

There is only so much we can order from amazon to support the gig economy.

Totally agree. If it was a case of just updating the metering on a ad-hoc basis, then that would be fine. Not so many years ago we all got free energy monitors which achieves what the smart meters do at a really cheap  price and most people used those to cut energy use, Simple fact is we have more energy using gadgets than ever...

 

[Evans Electric]

I could  just make the point that not everyone is like us  ( as in Sparkies)   and some just don't care ...specially when employed . 

At one of the printers , ( now gone)   I used to raise the fact that in the summer , like it is at the moment ,  they could switch off all the main lighting  ( which consumed 80A  across 3 phases)   (A load of low bay 400W    Metal Halides)   and hardly see the difference  because of the bright sunlight through the skylights and four big roller doors all open .  

They were never interested until a massive rise in energy prices focused them . 

I also noticed ,   don't know if its the same now,   that at many commercial premises  people just left their desks and went home...leaving dozens of PCs & screens powered up .  When I mentioned it the reason was it took too long to boot up the following day .  :C     I found it  wasteful and a fire risk  TBH.    

 

[Evans Electric]

can anyone tell me how a smart meter will help me in any way? 

Well apparently  it saves you money .....I'm not sure how it does that  but thats what we're told so it must be true.    The money you save goes towards the cost of installing it  although you didn't want it in the first place. 

Oh and it can talk to your gas meter ....so thats nice is'nt it ?  

 

[ProDave]

Apparently it saves you money because you see on a big display how much it is costing to cook your dinner, so you decide to eat raw food instead, or you see how much it costs to wash your clothes, so you don't bother.

No I don't believe that either.

If I had one, it would get lonely. LPG does not have a gas meter, so there, it would be selfish to put one in solitary confinement, so I won't bother.

 

[Blue Duck]

Apologies for linking the daily fail and making you wade through click bait but the lack of a telegraph sub is letting me down.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5902711/Smart-meters-charge-customers-peak-times.html

 

[Phoenix]

I think where we are eventually going with half hourly slots priced according to demand could work out ok, but not with the current generation of smart meters, we need ones with an interface that allows pricing (and predicted future pricing to be accessed). That why you could set your electric car to charge overnight at the lowest rate possible but with the proviso that it must be fully charged by 7-00 when you need to leave, the fridge compressor could shut down for two hours at the evening peak if the door hasn't been opened and the electric car you have just parked up with 40% range remaining could backfeed into the grid during the evening peak, before it recharges later on.

We need to get to a point where demand can be matched to supply; renewable means are generally a bit sporadic in generation, we will need to meet the base load with nuclear generation, and these cannot be run up just when required, so controlling the supply to match demand is a little out of our hands, but demand could be matched with supply.

There was some work done on this about 15 years go looking at grid frequency, the loading of the grid could be judged from the frequency, a slowdown from 50hz to 49.95 foexample woud suggest its struggling to meet demand, where-as 50.05 might suggest there is plenty available, not sure if much ever came of what they did. http://www.dynamicdemand.co.uk/

The hysteresis of it all would need looking at though, if the unit price goes down suddently, the demand would come online, and there would no longer be a suplus and the price would have to go back again, in which case all the loads decide to switch off again....

 

[kerching]

A customer Of mine years ago...energy bills were extortionate

first mistake they made was getting the gas meter changed as it clicked and squeaked!...it wasn't making that noise because it was running too fast!!

one building was heated by storage heaters....fitted a timer and contactor along with an IMI Pactrol .( I think that was its name) so no overnight charge on Friday or Saturday when they were shut. Saved a fortune

each building was fitted with a MBFO contactor .....remote on off buttons by exit. On lock up,all buttons were hit, all non essential power was killed apart alarms, fridges, freezers, servers etc. Didn't save as much as I expected. Fitted an energy recorder on for a couple of weeks.  Reviewed results and found that when they opened up,in a morning at 0600  they hit ALL the buttons and turned ALL the power and lights on for when the staff started to drift in around 0815!    That was quickly stopped!        Then they trained the staff to switch the lights off, that was the hardest bit.  They had an MD meter with the 'red nudge up,arm' they they came and reset monthly. You know, the one with the  seal through the front face that if it fell off you could, if you wanted, turn the MD needle back apparently. Very fragile those seals in the winter months, very fragile indeed

 

[kerching]

I quite like this one....interesting to watch when the footie is on, AND much more enjoyable

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

 

[M107]

I also noticed ,   don't know if its the same now,   that at many commercial premises  people just left their desks and went home...leaving dozens of PCs & screens powered up .  When I mentioned it the reason was it took too long to boot up the following day .     I found it  wasteful and a fire risk  TBH.    

We did a cost analysis of just this practice (the same excuse was also given about boot up time), this resulted in us undertaking a wholesale roll out of laptops with docks + LED monitors & scrapping of towers with the old monitors & a service wide upgrade to win10 ... sadly the fact you are spending doesn't always sit right with a workforce or public when they are constantly told "we have to save, cut spending  we have to save" 

So smaller media device project also enabled us to 

• Get to a single device strategy on laptops & monitors, brings down the cost of supply & the in-house time spent on build/imaging the devices.
  
• change desks from 1800mm curved desks to 1200mm straight desks, smaller equipment meant lots of space left on old desks being filled with personal clutter.
  
• Departmental output went up as we were able to seat collaborating departments next to each other, staff stopped going missing for hours (sometimes all day) on end walking between departments.
  
• Smaller desks means more people in one office
  
• Pulled in people from remote sites to the one big HQ site.
  
• Closed down the remote sites, made a saving on business rates/energy bills & fuel for business vehicles running out of the sites.
  
• Potential for sell off of remote sites.
  
• Sell off of now redundant company vehicles from these sites.
  

And there ladies & gents is how some of the government enforced austerity savings to your public sector were met without loosing front line staff.

 

[Phoenix]

Not sure about the laptop thing long term M107?

Surely interegrating everything into one unit casues costs down the line.... screen goes... need a new laptop, keyboard fails...either need a new laptop or it needs to go in for service, meaning costs and last time over just being handed a spare keyboard to plug in. A laptop screen and keyboard can get tiresome to use if at a desk all day, small screen, less than conformfortable keyboard etc, if anyone complains about this then workplace health and safety rules say you have to do something about it, that generally means external screen, keyboard and mouse, so its effectly being used as a desktop for the staff who never need to take their PC to another location, and generally a desktop would have been cheaper and more maintainable.