My new smart meter.

Gerry1

milgo said:

I can't see Mr Blue at number 16 being cut off because he has a smart meter and his neighbour Mrs Green at number 18 being left on supply because she doesn't have one! 

You obviously have not read about the the smart grid concept and the smart meter specification documents.  Electricity smart meters all have remote Load Limiting and Load Shedding functionality built in.

milgo

Gerry1 said:

milgo said:

I can't see Mr Blue at number 16 being cut off because he has a smart meter and his neighbour Mrs Green at number 18 being left on supply because she doesn't have one! 

You obviously have not read about the the smart grid concept and the smart meter specification documents.  Electricity smart meters all have remote Load Limiting and Load Shedding functionality built in.

It would be an extremely brave government to implement this in any form. Also who would actually benefit from cutting off an individuals, a street or a town's electric? 

tim_p

niktheguru said:

tim_p said:

milgo said:

I can't see Mr Blue at number 16 being cut off because he has a smart meter and his neighbour Mrs Green at number 18 being left on supply because she doesn't have one! 

You’ve forgotten Mr Purple across the road at #19 who has a smart meter but is on an oxygen concentrator and needs an air mattress, think he might have something to say about being cut off (or not, when he is unable to breathe)
Plenty of people out there totally reliant on power for medical reasons. And no, I don’t know what happens now in the case of a power cut!  Battery backup, but for how long?

People like this are on the priority services register with the power networks so provisions are made and they are prioritised if power ever goes down. I doubt having a smart meter is going to detriment them.

They will only be on the PSR if they’ve done it themselves.  My father certainly wasn’t (did it even exist 10 years ago?) then my mother wasn’t until I signed her up. In my experience and part of the world it’s up to the consumer and I bet there are huge numbers of people like this who won’t even know about the PSR. 

niktheguru

tim_p said:

They will only be on the PSR if they’ve done it themselves.  My father certainly wasn’t (did it even exist 10 years ago?) then my mother wasn’t until I signed her up. In my experience and part of the world it’s up to the consumer and I bet there are huge numbers of people like this who won’t even know about the PSR. 

Generally for medical conditions if they were implemented after a hospital admission, the occupational therapists and a lot of the medical device companies now inform that these patients should be put on the priority service register. Indeed it is the patient or the families responsibility to do so, and i'm sure you are right there must be a percentage of people that have never heard of it. Saying that down in the south we've received stuff in the post from uk power networks regarding their priority service register and who is eligible. (it was then i realised we were as we have young children)
Also on switching, some utility suppliers ask if you want to be added to the priority service register, i know octopus does. So it is out there, but i agree with you there will be some who have never heard of it.

Den249

Gerry1 said:

PennyForThem_2 said:

Wonder how much it cost to fit meters?

It works out at about £475 per household, just to save about £11 per year. Not exactly a bargain.

It cost rather more than that to fit mine 
Engineer 1.  Arrived on schedule and successfully fitted the new electric meter.  Couldn't turn the manual gas shut-off handle so phoned HQ to get an "emergency" engineer to fix the handle.
Engineer 2.  Arrived later the same day and fixed the handle.
Engineer 3.  Arrived about a week later and installed the new gas meter.
  

[Deleted User]

milgo said:

Gerry1 said:

milgo said:

I can't see Mr Blue at number 16 being cut off because he has a smart meter and his neighbour Mrs Green at number 18 being left on supply because she doesn't have one! 

You obviously have not read about the the smart grid concept and the smart meter specification documents.  Electricity smart meters all have remote Load Limiting and Load Shedding functionality built in.

It would be an extremely brave government to implement this in any form. Also who would actually benefit from cutting off an individuals, a street or a town's electric? 

The reason that the UK smart meter system has GCHQ-level layered security is because the simultaneous disconnection of a large number of smart meters could result in significant and long term damage to the Grid. 

Load limiting is used in a number of countries to manage peak demand. A customer agrees not to exceed a maximum kW limit at certain times of the day for a lower contract price/discount. If the agreed kW limit is exceeded, the consumer gets texts; IHD messages etc alerting them that they need to reduce the power load. If these messages go unanswered (ie, load is not reduced) the meter’s remote disconnection is activated. The consumer has to call a reconnection number to get the supply re-instated. 

A._Badger

milgo said:

Gerry1 said:

milgo said:

I can't see Mr Blue at number 16 being cut off because he has a smart meter and his neighbour Mrs Green at number 18 being left on supply because she doesn't have one! 

You obviously have not read about the the smart grid concept and the smart meter specification documents.  Electricity smart meters all have remote Load Limiting and Load Shedding functionality built in.

It would be an extremely brave government to implement this in any form. Also who would actually benefit from cutting off an individuals, a street or a town's electric? 

Yes, I mean can anyone imagine a government ever stopping people from visiting a pub, going for a walk in the park or visiting a lonely, elderly relative? 
As for who benefits, follow two things: the money and the ideology. They are what is driving this nonsense.

Gerry1

Dolor said:

milgo said:

Gerry1 said:

You obviously have not read about the the smart grid concept and the smart meter specification documents.  Electricity smart meters all have remote Load Limiting and Load Shedding functionality built in.

It would be an extremely brave government to implement this in any form. Also who would actually benefit from cutting off an individuals, a street or a town's electric? 

Load limiting is used in a number of countries to manage peak demand. A customer agrees not to exceed a maximum kW limit at certain times of the day for a lower contract price/discount.

The the rosy picture. When most people have smart meters, the reality will soon be that when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow and there's a Beast From The East you won't need to opt in, your smart meter will start rationing you by price and / or load limiting / load shedding. That will be the only way to avoid traditional power cuts affecting whole towns.

milgo said:

It would be an extremely brave government to implement this in any form. Also who would actually benefit from cutting off an individuals, a street or a town's electric? 

If it was never going to be implemented, smart meters and 'Demand Side Response' would never have been specified at such vast cost.  Remote meter reading could have been implemented with a cheap device that used the optical port on existing meters.

As previously explained, the benefit is to the industry because it can skimp by not replacing existing power stations when they become life expired.  The customers suffer all the disadvantages of the resulting wonky network, such as not being able to afford to use appliances when they want to and not being able to use more than one high power appliance at a time.

A._Badger

Gerry1 said:

Dolor said:

milgo said:

Gerry1 said:

You obviously have not read about the the smart grid concept and the smart meter specification documents.  Electricity smart meters all have remote Load Limiting and Load Shedding functionality built in.

It would be an extremely brave government to implement this in any form. Also who would actually benefit from cutting off an individuals, a street or a town's electric? 

Load limiting is used in a number of countries to manage peak demand. A customer agrees not to exceed a maximum kW limit at certain times of the day for a lower contract price/discount.

The the rosy picture. When most people have smart meters, the reality will soon be that when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow and there's a Beast From The East you won't need to opt in, your smart meter will start rationing you by price and / or load limiting / load shedding. That will be the only way to avoid traditional power cuts affecting whole towns.

milgo said:

It would be an extremely brave government to implement this in any form. Also who would actually benefit from cutting off an individuals, a street or a town's electric? 

If it was never going to be implemented, smart meters and 'Demand Side Response' would never have been specified at such vast cost.  Remote meter reading could have been implemented with a cheap device that used the optical port on existing meters.

As previously explained, the benefit is to the industry because it can skimp by not replacing existing power stations when they become life expired.  The customers suffer all the disadvantages of the resulting wonky network, such as not being able to afford to use appliances when they want to and not being able to use more than one high power appliance at a time.

Correct though that is, there is also the ideological driver behind this - the 'net zero' fallacy. Power companies relish the excuse to cut costs and use their marketing people to disguise their reckless parsimony with greenwash advertising. 

Seeking to appease the 'Green' lobby (particularly strong in the BBC), successive governments have planned the decommissioning of most of the UK's reliable baseline generation, thrown billions of pounds at unreliable wind and solar generation and coupled that idiocy with a programme to force people to use electric cars and for heating, cooking etc, which means that they will have created a demand that simply cannot be met. One or two of the UK's regular winter anticyclones and load shedding (power cuts as we used to call them) will reveal the entire farce - though by then it will be too late to do anything about it and the guilty parties will be long gone from Parliament and the civil service.

None of this is accidental (the government has been quite open about it) and 'smart' meters are an integral part of the plan to change the way we live and work..