Smart meter U-turn?

MeterMan

Any electric meter can be physically bypassed.

You can't be reliant on a customer to have wifi and the internet in order to facilitate a smart meter installation. There are plenty of homes who do not have and do not want the internet.

But not all failed smart installations are down to poor signal. Majority of them are down to insufficient space in order to fit the meter on the wall as current gen smart meters are predominately larger by a factor of 2.

EachPenny

MeterMan wrote: »

Having been directly involved in smart metering from 2011, I have always know that the meters where voluntary and very unlikely to become mandatory because there are lots that can't be changed for very specific reason based on the position of the meter within a property.

The wording may have changed because now the government realise that it would cost even more money if they where mandatory, if they you had to have one by law then who would fork out for the remedial work needed to be done before a meter can be fitted?

MeterMan wrote: »

You can't be reliant on a customer to have wifi and the internet in order to facilitate a smart meter installation. There are plenty of homes who do not have and do not want the internet.

But not all failed smart installations are down to poor signal. Majority of them are down to insufficient space in order to fit the meter on the wall as current gen smart meters are predominately larger by a factor of 2.

You need to appreciate the political definition of 'mandatory' differs from the common use of the word. In political terms 'mandatory' means "must, unless you cannot". Good examples of this are the 'mandatory' wearing of seatbelts and the 'mandatory' wearing of motorcycle crash helments. No politician is going to make a policy announcement which details the exemptions because the exemptions are often made up on the hoof when the need arises.

With smart meters the installation problems you refer to can be overcome - it is just a case of waiting for the technology to develop and for the political will to enforce it. Lack of space? - wait 5 years and the meters will be half the size. No mobile phone signal? - add a femtocell to the cost of installation (so cheap the phone companies give them to customers). No broadband? - install smart meter only broadband FOC. All of these technological developments would involve costs a fraction of the average cost per household of the smart meter programme. With your experience of smart meters can you think of a location you've seen where there is absolutely no way a smart meter could ever be fitted?

It is useful to compare the smart meter programme with digital TV:
1) Start with the launch of an 'experimental' service with the early-adopters rushing to get on board.
2) The service rolls out - voluntary, but "so much better" than analogue TV.
3) Govt announces a switchover - sometime in the future. More people go digital because of incentives (getting what you cannot get on analogue).
4) Upgrade the technology, but older equipment used by the early adopters becomes unusable.
5) Govt announces switchover date - but this is a "good thing" because the airwaves will be freed up for other services.
6)As the end of analogue TV approaches the 'hard to do' households are helped, with free equipment provided if necessary.
7) Analogue TV services are switched off - Digital is no longer voluntary.

Thus a voluntary service becomes mandatory - and nobody notices the costs involved because it is hidden in your license fee and the costs paid by most individual households for new TV's, digital boxes and aerials.

BTW, water meters have been required by law for a very long time. Some people say they are mandatory.

[Deleted User]

teddysmum wrote: »

Next get rid if the windmills that don't work if it's too windy.

It's an easy jibe isn't it.

So how much of the time do storm force winds actually account for, 1%? 10% perhaps? The power available from the wind increases with the cube of the wind velocity, so to design a turbine that can cope with say twice the wind speed during a storm would require a machine not twice as big, but eight times larger, and presumably a price increase commensurate with that. And what do you get for all that money? Well, not eight times more electricity.

Designing a wind farm that will get you the maximum amount of electricity for your bucks entails designing for the most common wind speeds, not the strongest ones. Anyone with an iota of common sense (which includes most engineers, but few of the general public) can see that it is simply not cost effective to build wind turbines that can generate power from storm force winds.

[Deleted User]

Anderson describes smart meters as "a regressive tax that would hit the elderly poor the worst". Yes quite, but how come nobody has noticed that standing charges are also a regressive tax that rewards the rich and profligate at the expense of the poor and frugal. It's about time those were banned too.

EachPenny

jack_pott wrote: »

The power available from the wind increases with the cube of the wind velocity, so to design a turbine that can cope with say twice the wind speed during a storm would require a machine not twice as big, but eight times larger, and presumably a price increase commensurate with that. And what do you get for all that money? Well, not eight times more electricity.

Going somewhat off-topic here, but the alternative approach would be to design the turbine with variable-pitch blades which can be adjusted to reduce the amount of energy harvested from the passing wind as wind speed increases. Variable-pitch blades increase the overall cost of the machine, but may be necessary anyway because you need to be able to stop the blades turning during high wind events and a braking system (which adds more cost anyway) will only have a limited ability to overcome the rotational kinetic energy being supplied by a fixed-blade system.

The problem is the economics of wind generation. Unless you have very cheap (i.e. simple) turbines then the economics don't work. So design compromises have to be made. One of these may be the inability to generate power at higher wind speeds. But politics trumps common sense so the engineering issues get put to one side.

I suspect many engineers with an iota of common sense would suggest forgetting wind generation and instead construct new large power stations burning fossil fuels with a focus on technology to 'clean up' the emissions produced by burning. But it is far easier politically to brand all coal as 'dirty' and then whack extortionate amounts on consumer bills to pay for unreliable alternatives.

MeterMan

EachPenny wrote: »

You need to appreciate the political definition of 'mandatory' differs from the common use of the word. In political terms 'mandatory' means "must, unless you cannot". Good examples of this are the 'mandatory' wearing of seatbelts and the 'mandatory' wearing of motorcycle crash helments. No politician is going to make a policy announcement which details the exemptions because the exemptions are often made up on the hoof when the need arises.

With your experience of smart meters can you think of a location you've seen where there is absolutely no way a smart meter could ever be fitted?

Arguing over the definition of the word 'mandatory', for the general populace of the country, that word means must have at any cost.

There are a few times a week where my companies smart meter does not fit, or is in an position which can't be gotten at due to being built around/over/in front of.

Your ideas for different connectivity options is only going to increase the cost of the development.

EachPenny

MeterMan wrote: »

There are a few times a week where my companies smart meter does not fit, or is in an position which can't be gotten at due to being built around/over/in front of.

Your ideas for different connectivity options is only going to increase the cost of the development.

So in the former case the smaller meters of the future will be fine, and in the latter case the customer will be expected to remove the obstruction, just as they would if their non-smart meter needs to be replaced.

In terms of the bloated budget already set aside for the smart meter programme the additional costs of other connectivity options would be trivial. Femtocells are mass produced tried and tested technology, broadband hubs are cheap as chips, they could even redeploy hubs removed from other customers if the budget was really tight... which of course it never has been.

phillw

EachPenny wrote: »

What the professor has done is to cleverly notice a minor change in wording between the 2015 and the 2017 manifesto.

It's not clever to point out that manifestos are not clearly defined. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Before and after the 2015 election the policy has been that they were not mandatory. Feel free to write to David Cameron to complain they the 2015 manifesto can be interpreted in a way that didn't match the policy they implemented before and after the 2015 elections and that the 2017 manifesto is consistent with the implemented policy.

EachPenny wrote: »

So, Professor Anderson, well done old chap! :beer::A:beer:

You can both drown your sorrows. They weren't mandatory before, they aren't mandatory now. There is no U-turn.

EachPenny

phillw wrote: »

They weren't mandatory before, they aren't mandatory now. There is no U-turn.

Of course smart meters aren't mandatory - the government and Ofgem say so.

I'm sure the OP in this thread will agree with you 100% -
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5656908

Giving people a choice is a way of saying something isn't mandatory, but if that choice is between two identical items then it isn't really a choice and in layman's terms it is 'mandatory'.

MeterMan

EachPenny wrote: »

Of course smart meters aren't mandatory - the government and Ofgem say so.

I'm sure the OP in this thread will agree with you 100% -
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5656908

Giving people a choice is a way of saying something isn't mandatory, but if that choice is between two identical items then it isn't really a choice and in layman's terms it is 'mandatory'.

What are the two identical items on offer? I fit 4 types of electric meter depending on what the customer has requested.