Smart meter and solar panels

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Same here, and we've been able to monitor the position for years without having to pay £500 for a smart meter ..... I'm currently consuming 280W, generating 2.58kW and therefore exporting 2.3kW (82% of generation) ....

I've been a little annoyed that with my number crunching, and general interest in the matter, I still don't know what my consumption and export of leccy are.

However, with the upgrade of my ESE system to SolarEdge, it now monitors the leccy flow on the mains, so also tells me the amount being exported, so I can work out total consumption from import + (generation - export).

TBF to it, it does try to work out consumption too, but often concludes that consumption is zero when export is greater than generation, as it doesn't 'know' about the WNW system, but I can't blame it for that.

I still find the fact that the export readings from a smart meter are not certified for use is daft, seems like an own goal to me.

sevenhills

It used to be the case the water was not measured, you just paid by the rate-able value of our house; I guess the meters cost millions and did not benefit the consumer. But that is privatization for you.

EricMears

sevenhills wrote: »

It used to be the case the water was not measured, you just paid by the rate-able value of our house; I guess the meters cost millions and did not benefit the consumer. But that is privatization for you.

The object of supplying meters would have been to persuade folk to use less water and I suspect that in many cases it has been achieved.

As for "did not benefit the consumer" that's so wrong ! With a water meter and a number of consumption reducing measures I manage to get annual water bills of less than £150; I'm pretty sure that if I was on the rateable value scheme I'd be paying well over £500/yr.

michaels

Don't get me started on water meters, we are in an area of 'water stress' so can not refuse a meter. Our bill will go from about 360pa to best part of 1000. We are just a normal family of 5 who like to shower twice a day, flush toilets and wear clean clothes, hardly any goes on the garden.

Martyn1981

Crikey, £360! Our 'nothing special' 3 bed semi in Cardiff hit about £450 10yrs ago, so we switched to a meter. I think the un-metered price is now £700, but we pay £260.

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Crikey, £360! Our 'nothing special' 3 bed semi in Cardiff hit about £450 10yrs ago, so we switched to a meter. I think the un-metered price is now £700, but we pay £260.

If it 'helps' until 2 years ago we were paying 300 but then despite offwat capping prices we have supply and sewerage from two different companies and our supply company put supply prices up and cut sewerage prices to keep under the cap and our sewerage company did the opposite hence a 10% rise 2 years in a row when prices were supposed to be capped at rpi....

Undervalued

michaels wrote: »

Don't get me started on water meters, we are in an area od 'water stress' so can not refuse a meter. Our bill will go from about 360pa to best part of 1000. We are just a normal family of 5 who like to shower twice a day, flush toilets and wear clean clothes, hardly any goes on the garden.

But, by extension, without a meter you are being heavily subsidised by people with similar habits who live alone......

Sterlingtimes

Is the fundamental objection to smart metering that the objectors do not want electricity distributors to measure demand with a far finer granularity? The idea of the smart grid is to get a far tighter grip over where electricity is being used and being generated with a view to cutting consumption overall.

zeupater

Sterlingtimes wrote: »

Is the fundamental objection to smart metering that the objectors do not want electricity distributors to measure demand with a far finer granularity? The idea of the smart grid is to get a far tighter grip over where electricity is being used and being generated with a view to cutting consumption overall.

Hi

My issue is that we already pay for meters & their replacement within our bills and having done so for years. Statistically, 50% of us already have a considerable £sum in the 'replacement' bank, with the remaining 50% having some lower £contribution saved in the industry's meter piggy-bank .... that adds up to a lot of money owed to customers if they unilaterally decide it's not going to be spent!

The smart-meters cost the industry little more than standard dumb meters and there's little difference in the installation complexity ... the only real difference is the piggybacking comms infrastructure and centralised data processing ...

Now, the project cost is based on the need for the industry to 'buy in' resource to meet a deadline and replace capital equipment which isn't fully depreciated and therefore needs to be written off .... so, £12-£15billion becomes the project cost - and the government has fallen for the logic, however flawed in order to meet an artificially imposed deadline of 2020, proposed by the EU, and here the crunch .... after consulting with the industry and their lobbyists ...

The industry could simply be instructed to replace the existing meters as per the standard replacement schedule ... the savings available through not manually reading the meters should reduce costs & therefore tariffs and the introduction of a centralised shared information resource (DCC) would reduce duplication costs too, but instead, recovering the £500 looks to be the excuse to increase average household bills by ~£100/year to cover 'green & environmental' cost issues (so a £12-£15billion windfall over 5 years!) ....

Someone somewhere (meaning loads of people at DECC/BEIS/Ofgem/Government) have had the wool pulled over their eyes by some pretty 'clever' smoke &mirror merchants in the energy industry .... £12billion? ... £500/household ? ... for a meter with mobile phone wired to it ? ... does no-one else have a basic understanding of value and common-sense these days? ... I put a limited number of bespoke remote data telemetry & monitoring systems in in the '90s and early 00s which were based on mobile phones and they certainly cost less than £500 each, including design, build & installation ...

We don't need smart-meters, the world has moved on considerably since they were mandated by the EU ... distributed generation has seen to that and the government can't stand back and see the whole picture, so haven't go a clue as to how much of the (/our) £12billion the industry's shareholders will be pocketing ....

HTH
Z

Exiled_Tyke

Sterlingtimes wrote: »

Is the fundamental objection to smart metering that the objectors do not want electricity distributors to measure demand with a far finer granularity? The idea of the smart grid is to get a far tighter grip over where electricity is being used and being generated with a view to cutting consumption overall.

My objections are: 1. It's a significant cost for little apparent benefit (and definitely unproven benefit).
2. I suspect the main reason for the push to get these out is so that consumers can be charged according based of the time of day of their consumption which may put charges up to prohibitive amounts and potentially cause new varieties of fuel poverty.
3. This investment would be far better spent elsewhere - e.g. supporting the development of storage