Smart Meters

Loopylew28

I think this guide needs to discuss, or link to an article that discusses, the positives and negatives of a smart meter. Are they actually going to save you money etc? I suffer with OCD and I am cautious of potential triggers. For me, the idea of a display constantly telling me how much money I'm burning would be such a negative that it isn't worth it. I'd find myself obsessively looking at it and probably end up only ever using candles for warmth and light. But, can you get smart meters that don't come with a display? I can't tell from the article. EDF are ringing me pretty much everyday to ask if I want one. I ignored them for months but accidentally answered the phone the other day so I don't think I can hide for long!!

Nick_C

You don't have to have an in home display.

If you have one, you don't have to use it. Mine was packed away after about 3 days

Carrot007

Christianwade1971 wrote: »

I've seen some old posts about 5 terminal meters and instalation but nothing recently. I'm with Bulb and waited ages until they could arrange installation. I answered all the pre visit questions to the best of my knowledge. When the engineer came last Friday he advised he couldn't do it because we had a 5 terminal meter. (whatever that is) does anyone know if any providers can currently do what we need and install?

Don't think anyone has answered this so I shall.


A 5 terminal meter will automatically switch on certain off peak things. 99% a storage heater.


Smart and most modern meters do not do this.


A contactor can be added to do the job. But AFAIK suppliers have only been providing ones for the commercial market so far. It is possible when the end of smart fitting occurs (or the meter is obselite) and there is the clean up left they will offer them so they can swap the meter.


Of course you could swap currently and get you electrician to fit one at your cost if you feel the need to move sooner!

zeupater

Nick_C wrote: »

You don't have to have an in home display.

If you have one, you don't have to use it. Mine was packed away after about 3 days

Hi

If that's the case I don't really follow your logic or support for the smart-metering project, especially so as it effectively costs you an additional ~£500+ over the live of the meter, so approximately £50/year as any anticipated savings are related to consumer behavioural changes driven by information provided by the real time information provided by the IHD ...

In a previous post you seem to convey that you're simply feeding on-line smart-metering data into a spreadsheet to check the billing accuracy on a monthly basis (54months mentioned), something which is very easy with simply taking EOM meter readings ... we've effectively done just that for decades without relying on HHM/HHB technology!!

:think: ... Given the option of including an additional £500 of costs onto everyone's energy bills over (say) 10 years for having a having a smart-meter installed, or receiving a payment (/discount) of ~£4 just for submitting a meter reading, I wonder which the average consumer would have a preference for ... ??

I fully understand the concept of smart-metering, the arguments behind it, the history of the technology development, why the previous incarnation was abandoned towards the end of last century, how & why it was resurrected early this century, the costing mistakes, the project management mistakes, lessons learned elsewhere, the EU involvement, the implications of non-technical bureaucratic gold plating of the project within the UK, the positions taken in other countries .. etc, etc, etc ... and therefore have some serious concerns related to maintaining claims on project deliverables ....

... so, after all that, to the usual counterpoint employed to support smart-meters .... they can help balance the grid by providing signals to allowing smart load-shedding (fridges/freezers/heating etc) .... okay, so where in the project cost is this to be seen as a line item? ... and who is going to pay for the facility .... smart-meters can't do it as universal specifications for local area communication with the required equipment and the communication & control logic don't exist within wither the SMETS or the project scope, so an energy management or building management control system would need to sit somewhere within the consumer side of the equation .... so where is it?, we're 10-15 years into the project & a cursory flick through any well known retail catalogue or visit to a consumer goods warehouse would provide plenty of evidence to support a realisation that there's still little appetite (if any!) for the type of automation that would be needed, but even if there was tomorrow & it didn't cost any extra over what's currently available, everything revolves around the replacement cycle of white goods & other appliances suitable for automatic remote control ... looks like load shedding at district level for quite some time yet then, even if some in those areas have already 'invested' in property level technology!

So, that leaves a big stick being in fully in the hands of the energy production & distribution sectors .... any potential conflicting or vested interests based on operating margin maintenance come to mind on this one?? .... it's not 'tin-foil-hat-time' conspiracy theory, it's what's already happened (&happening!) elsewhere on the planet where the same technology has reached a higher level of maturity ... all it needs is for people to consider/take a less myopic viewpoint!

HTH
Z

zeupater

Carrot007 wrote: »

Don't think anyone has answered this so I shall.

A 5 terminal meter will automatically switch on certain off peak things. 99% a storage heater.

Smart and most modern meters do not do this.

A contactor can be added to do the job. But AFAIK suppliers have only been providing ones for the commercial market so far. It is possible when the end of smart fitting occurs (or the meter is obselite) and there is the clean up left they will offer them so they can swap the meter.

Of course you could swap currently and get you electrician to fit one at your cost if you feel the need to move sooner!

Hi

... with the theory behind direct switching not being a requirement being due to the operation of a HAN/IOT environment delivering the same results without having to rewire individual circuits within the home ... plug it in, turn it on, join the automation network, setup or accept some automation rules & that's about it ... apart from having some form of secure automated services server running somewhere within the network with direct (in range) comms access to both the primary smart-meter HAN & all of the comms nodes that is! ....

HTH
Z

Gerry1

zeupater wrote: »

smart-meters can't do it as universal specifications for local area communication with the required equipment and the communication & control logic don't exist within wither the SMETS or the project scope, so an energy management or building management control system would need to sit somewhere within the consumer side of the equation .... so where is it?

It's a fact that smart meters include a Load Shedding (Disconnection) facility and Load Limiting (exceeding the specified value, which can be from 0 - 24kW, will trigger instant disconnection) and ability to support Time Of Use tariffs.

Does anyone think all this would have been carefully specified (at significant cost) if will never ever be used?

zeupater

Gerry1 wrote: »

It's a fact that smart meters include a Load Shedding (Disconnection) facility and Load Limiting (exceeding the specified value, which can be from 0 - 24kW, will trigger instant disconnection) and ability to support Time Of Use tariffs.

Does anyone think all this would have been carefully specified (at significant cost) if will never ever be used?

Hi

The shedding you mention would be for the entire property (ie all load disconnected), but the smart-meters also have the ability to receive a flagging signal for smart load shedding (ie load agreed to be available for network control when necessary!) ... the independent server(/box) tasked as a building or energy management system simply monitors the flag status on the smart-meter over the HAN then sends appropriate home automation signals over a secure network to instruct equipment selected to reduce (/shed) demand to either switch off or reduce load ... this level of automation isn't handled directly by the smart-meter, it's just a communications intermediary, but we all seem to be led to believe that smart-meters will deliver the required grid balancing functionality, which isn't really the case if you think about it!.

In emergency supply situations where grid supply stability is at risk, the very idea of sending thousands of individual messages to cause individual smart-meters to disconnect is really naive ... why introduce an unnecessarily complex processing & transmission overhead when transformers serving low priority areas containing thousands of individual loads with a known cumulative demand can simply be switched with one data packet, as is currently the case ...

I do understand that the SMETS specs require the facility to remotely disconnect or reconnect individual supplies on a per property basis, but that's likely more related to long term disconnection when a property is unoccupied etc ....

Regarding the '0-24kW' load limiting, well isn't that really just the same as having a remotely resettable 100A house service fuse to limit load ((1/0.24)x24)=100 ... which could prove to be quite useful in a scenario where really high power hogs such as cooking, heating & EV charging are all electrified ...

... plenty of countries & regions have had load limiting conditions for years, well below 100A, particularly where seasonal loading would show considerable asymmetry and power supply is generation capacity limited, for example where air conditioning is required on a remote island, all this achieved without the additional complexity afforded by smart-metering technologies ...

HTH
Z

Nick_C

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

If that's the case I don't really follow your logic or support for the smart-metering project, especially so as it effectively costs you an additional ~£500+ over the live of the meter, so approximately £50/year as any anticipated savings are related to consumer behavioural changes driven by information provided by the real time information provided by the IHD ...

In a previous post you seem to convey that you're simply feeding on-line smart-metering data into a spreadsheet to check the billing accuracy on a monthly basis (54months mentioned), something which is very easy with simply taking EOM meter readings ... we've effectively done just that for decades without relying on HHM/HHB technology!!

...

I don't use the IHD because I'm not interested in real time data.

I use the app and the website, which give me a fantastic analysis of historic data. Cost and consumption by hour, day, week, month, and year.

It would not be possible for me to get this data without a smart meter.

The data has helped me to identify the savings I can make by changing behavior, and the continuous improvement over time.

The monthly meter readings that I get on line are very helpful, because I would not be able to take a meter reading at precise monthly intervals if I had to do it manually.

zeupater

Nick_C wrote: »

I don't use the IHD because I'm not interested in real time data.

I use the app and the website, which give me a fantastic analysis of historic data. Cost and consumption by hour, day, week, month, and year.

It would not be possible for me to get this data without a smart meter.

The data has helped me to identify the savings I can make by changing behavior, and the continuous improvement over time.

The monthly meter readings that I get on line are very helpful, because I would not be able to take a meter reading at precise monthly intervals if I had to do it manually.

Hi

Again, I can't follow the logic that analysis of historical data provides information which would be of more use in identifying either the potential for behavioural change or even target where that change could be.

Take for example the occasional errors ... maybe someone lifted a saucepan off the hob when serving a meal & forgot to turn the plate off, we've all done it & sometimes it doesn't get noticed for quite a while ... maybe the lights have been left on in the garage, there's plenty of occasions when a well placed real time display would prove useful to capture such things - if the demand is unexpectedly high it's no real issue to have a look at what's causing it and take a preventative approach, whereas looking at history is simply too late! ..... additionally, unless you have access to really detailed EMS node based data there's little chance of performing any reasonable level of demand analysis.

I understand how HHM can be used to perform a low granularity analysis to, for example, justify a major purchase decision such as solar PV or domestic battery system (maybe both!) with a view to provide a degree of energy independence, but the occasions where this is useful are really limited!

It really is real-time information that is key .... we don't have a smart-meter but
do have solar PV & a data acquisition setup which is slightly more sophisticated than all but a (relative) handful of properties would have, and have access to both spot data & long term high granularity historical energy data gathered in intervals far more granular than described within the SMETS, yet at this very moment any demand based decisions that I or any automation control system would be looking to take would be based on two things ... what we are generating and what we are consuming ... then look to what demands could be adjusted, rescheduled or satisfied to smooth demand to supply ... examples of this would include ramping heat provision, delaying or overrunning refrigeration cycles, topping up DHW temperatures when there's excess capacity (ie cheaper supply) etc ....

What we do to manage our own energy is simply a microcosm of what is required to run a smart-grid - balancing demand to supply .... long term historical usage patterns within a household may be useful to determine areas where high demand rescheduling could be possible, but you really don't need a solution provider to be all that smart to be able to appreciate that running the oven, hob, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer & kettle all within the time window that energy providers would likely apply punitive peak rate tariffs would be more expensive than using a little commonsense!

HTH
Z

Michaelw

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Again, I can't follow the logic that analysis of historical data provides information which would be of more use in identifying either the potential for behavioural change or even target where that change could be.

HTH
Z

To be honest the further I went into these meter menu's on the in home display they were massively inacurate possibly British Gas have not utilised to that level of data reading.Most left on's here are a mobile phone charging also the gas reading isn't in real time which is another problem.

For an energy supplier the benefits far outweigh those then for the customer,I've found them a five minute wonder have no real long term benefit once usage has been established and the in home display is redundent.