Smart meter - could it control my energy?

Jeff_Dee

Thanks Deleted_User, very interesting 

Chino

Dolor said:

The very small risk is of disconnection by a remote actor. GCHQ which has provided the layered security built into our smart meter system believes that the risk is minimal.

As this is the same GCHQ that believes that it's perfectly acceptable for systems to have built-in backdoors, any opinions from GCHQ regarding the security of the smart meter system is meaningless.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/principles-more-informed-exceptional-access-debate

QrizB

Chino said:

Dolor said:

The very small risk is of disconnection by a remote actor. GCHQ which has provided the layered security built into our smart meter system believes that the risk is minimal.

As this is the same GCHQ that believes that it's perfectly acceptable for systems to have built-in backdoors, any opinions from GCHQ regarding the security of the smart meter system is meaningless.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/principles-more-informed-exceptional-access-debate

That's a straw man.

[Deleted User]

I just wonder what all the ‘nay sayers’ are going to do when the Government makes smart meters mandatory? They have no reason to do so now as smart meter take up remains high. The suppliers though keep pushing for it.

Gerry1

The facts are that your smart meter can control your supply in more than one way.  It's all in the specification for anyone that cares to look, although some forumites remain in denial and prefer to shout that it's all conspiracy theory and scaremongering, or pretend that you can be disconnected only for non-payment.

The Grid has difficulty in meeting demand at peak times,   As with so many other services, we've failed to invest in sufficient infrastructure to maintain and replace life expired power stations; two years ago there was a foretaste of things to come when the Wrong Sort of Lightning triggered widespread out(r)ages.  There's not much in reserve when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow or an interconnector goes bang, and this is rapidly becoming a hot topical issue.  Oh, and don't forget the Beast from the East and Mr. Putin turning his pipeline off.

So instead of the Grid adapting to meet your needs, you'll have to adapt to meet the Smart Grid's needs.

Time of Use tariffs are designed to nudge you to avoid peak period usage, e.g. 4pm - 7pm or 5 - 8pm by making it prohibitively expensive.  But those times aren't written on tablets of stone, nor are the surcharges.  Remember how London's Congestion Charge started out as £5 Mon-Fri from 6am - 7pm but rocketed to £15 seven days per week until 10pm?  Will ToU become almost unavoidable or mandatory? Faites vos jeux !

If ToU doesn't work, then your smart meter has Load Limiting (aka Rationing) up its sleeve.  It can ration your total power to any value, e.g. if you were allowed 4kW you could use the kettle or the washing machine or the tumble dryer or the cooker or the oil filled radiator, but not more than two (possibly just one) at a time.  In the jargon the euphemism is Demand Side Response.

When push comes to shove the velvet glove (shiny IHD toy and promises of lower bills) comes off and the iron fist (Load Shedding) is revealed.  Yes, it's much like the widespead power cuts that aren't unknown, but much more granular.  Don't expect the great and the good to be switched off, only the little people !

Still think it's all scaremongering?  Then why are smart meters being rolled out so aggressively with companies heavily fined if they miss their targets?  It's officially admitted that the savings (if people keeping looking at their shiny IHD toys) will only be about £11 per year, yet smart meters cost over £400 per household, so it's economics of the madhouse.

Here's a snapshot of some of what's planned.  Note the bit about Load Limiting switching your supply off when you use too much juice the wrong moment !

matelodave

the effort involved in switching off lots of individual leccy meters is significantly greater than just shutting down a local substation or remotly shutting off a transformer/distribution node.

Although the capability might be there it's doubful that it will get used unless there was a dire emergency need to do it. There are lots of ways that are easier to reduce the consumption of energy - price being the easiest

Andy7856

Absolutely for the electric meter.  There is currently an industry  working group set up explore that as way to manage demand as a  "last resort"  to protect the DNO's network (ie the company that operates your local electric network - in my case Northern Powergrid).   

Google "DCP371".

Reading some of the minutes there is a lot of discussion what defines last resort, and how they could ensure certain households are ring fenced.  This is more about managing demand as opposed to non payment of your bill though, but makes an interesting read into the future of things.

Gerry1

matelodave said:

the effort involved in switching off lots of individual leccy meters is significantly greater than just shutting down a local substation or remotly shutting off a transformer/distribution node.

Evidence?  Do you really think that they'll get someone with a BBC Model B to go through a million customers' accounts and Load Limit each one individually?  Of course not !

Each meter will doubtless have a Class of Service.  High numbers for royals, government officials and cronies, hospitals, people with special medical needs.  Low numbers for mere mortals such as you and me.  It'll be easy to ration hundreds of thousands of meters.  It's the same for landlines and mobiles: in the Great Storm of 87 you may have noticed that your landline could only receive incoming calls.

Someone also got it wrong on 7/7, restricting mobile coverage around Aldgate which backfired because it subsequently became evident that it cut off Cat 1 and 2 responders that may have had a critical need for it.

matelodave said:

Although the capability might be there it's doubful that it will get used unless there was a dire emergency need to do it. There are lots of ways that are easier to reduce the consumption of energy - price being the easiest

As I stated, Time of Use tariffs are the first stage.  When that doesn't reduce demand sufficiently then Load Limiting will be used, with Load Shedding as the last stage if it's needed.  These techniques have been used in Southern Africa's creaky networks for several years, so we'll just be following suit.

Why do you think that so much effort was undertaken in specifying these expensive smart meters if there was never any possibility of using these rationing facilities?  If the real intention had been just to read meters remotely and alert consumers to the cost of their consumption then glorified Energy Monitors for use with existing meters could have been posted to all households for a tenth of the cost of the bungled smart meter programme.

QrizB

Andy7856 said:

Google "DCP371".

Very interesting, thank you.

The working group's Summary of Purpose is:

To provide the governance arrangements regarding Distributors ability to manage consumer devices (such as EV chargers) connected to Smart Meter infrastructure to prevent network overloads in emergency scenarios as a last resort measure.

There is also this (referenced in their minutes) which covers how embedded generators can be disconnected if supply exceeds demand (a situation that seems unlikely in the immediate future):

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/industry-information/codes/grid-code-old/modifications/gc0147-last-resort-disconnection-embedded

[Deleted User]

Gerry1 said:

As I stated, Time of Use tariffs are the first stage.  When that doesn't reduce demand sufficiently then Load Limiting will be used, with Load Shedding as the last stage if it's needed.  These techniques have been used in Southern Africa's creaky networks for several years, so we'll just be following suit.

Why do you think that so much effort was undertaken in specifying these expensive smart meters if there was never any possibility of using these rationing facilities?  If the real intention had been just to read meters remotely and alert consumers to the cost of their consumption then glorified Energy Monitors for use with existing meters could have been posted to all households for a tenth of the cost of the bungled smart meter programme.

Your are right, reading meters was never the sole aim of smart meters, there is much more to them but you need to move into the 21st century to recognise them.

Time of use tariffs aren't new and are beneficial to both consumers and the distribution network. Economy 7 has been around since the 70's and really helps consumers save money as well as utilising excess generating capacity. However it is now outdated with clunky fixed times so the smart meters are a natural progression of this to provide more precise tariffs for specific times.

Load shedding will happen if needed regardless of smart meters and already does in the UK with large industrial consumers but the idea is that smart meters will avoid load shedding by changing the behaviour of consumers to use electricity more appropriately in terms of the time and amount

People need to change their way of thinking if we are to use energy more efficiently and the smart meters are part of that change.

But there will always be people stuck in their ways creating a unnecessary peak in electricity usage demanding their meat and two veg oven dinner at 5pm and putting the dishwasher on straight after dinner using their halogen lights because LED smart lights are new fangled rubbish.

Providing the peak demand is the most inefficient and polluting part of generating electricity, often pulling in coal power stations among other dirty and inefficient generation methods.

I for one am supportive of time of use tariffs and have been on them in the past and wish there were more of them available. British Gas did a tariff with free electricity for either Sat / Sun and I'd usually consume around 2-3 days worth during that free period - helped me save money and shifted a lot of my load from the peak times to off-peak.

If more of us think like this we can avoid load shedding all together, unfortunately most people are too ignorant to make the changes themselves so it will need to be forced upon them with time of use tariffs.

We should be thinking differently as a nation, for example seeing a windy day knowing that up to 7GWh of electricity will be from wind and making the most of it and then easing off on the calmer day.

EDIT: South Africa is a poor example to use, only 30% of people had electricity in the 1990's and it has boomed to over 90% and the infrastructure has required a massive uplift in that time that cannot be compared to the UK.