Smart Meters

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  • mbmonty
    mbmonty Posts: 149
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    Hengus wrote: »
    Most suppliers would like to develop an App; however the Govt and SmartEnergy GB have imposed IHDs on them. All IHDs are warrantied for 12 months - thereafter, if one fails, the customer will end up paying for a new one.

    I do not think the IHD requirement prevents them creating a portal and an App, I am sure it would help them generate loyalty.

    The App does not have to access the smart meter at this stage, as long as they ping the meter regularly they may still provide useful data. An App poking straight into the meter would probably show how pathetic the security is.

    In the US and Canada that is one of the concerns, that ruskies or chinese will turn them all off once they have figured out how to hack the energy matrix they run the smart meter network on.
  • harrym1byt
    harrym1byt Posts: 64
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    edited 17 May 2018 at 4:09PM
    mbmonty wrote: »
    I do not think the IHD requirement prevents them creating a portal and an App, I am sure it would help them generate loyalty.

    The App does not have to access the smart meter at this stage, as long as they ping the meter regularly they may still provide useful data. An App poking straight into the meter would probably show how pathetic the security is.

    In the US and Canada that is one of the concerns, that ruskies or chinese will turn them all off once they have figured out how to hack the energy matrix they run the smart meter network on.

    There is no need to be able to connect an app directly to the meter, the meters upload to the suppliers website and you can log into the website and see a representation of the data in some form or another. The problem is that none of it is standardised between suppliers and none of them offer an opportunity to recover the data back to the customers PC.

    OVO's and First Utility's presentation of the data was not bad on their website. Bristol Utility's representation is appallingly bad, just a month by month comparison between each month, this year and last year. It doesn't even give the meter readings back, which have been taken each week, so a very poor implementation of 'smart'.

    Throughout my four different suppliers, in the past 3 years, I have taken weekly readings of gas, electric and water, which I feed once per week into my own spreadsheet.

    I would certainly prefer it if I didn't need to feed in the data manually and if the data were 30 minute data and able to be zoomed into. Technically it is do-able, but only if the suppliers co-operate in making the data downloadable and in a standardised format.

    To answer the other question about meters and IHD's - I have had the Secure meters and IHD installed each time I have swapped suppliers (3x), third new set of identical meters now. The IHD is pretty pathetic in my opinion, a crude LCD backlit touch display, something you would have expected back in the 1980's, but I have not compared it against any others. For both G and E - It shows current consumption, a bar graph of earlier consumption and what it has cost us since the last (monthly) bill was paid.

    It fails to provide the actual reading of the meter, units used since it was installed. So for my spreadsheet, I have to go and actually read the numbers on the meters. Instantaneously consume more than a pre-decided amount, and a green LED changes to orange then red. The user cannot change the set points, so every time the gas boiler fires up, the green changes to red, which really tells me nothing useful at all.

    The actual meters themselves offer much more detailed information, by pressing buttons - for the day, the week, the month etc., plus of course the actual meter reading.
  • PennineAcute
    PennineAcute Posts: 1,150
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    Surely you can just enter your daily usage. From that, both gas and electricity readings can be calculated

    Elec is quite easy, gas is a bit more complicated. I use the following formula to convert kWh into cubic meters =IF(LEN(C34)>0,B34+C34*3.6/1.02264/39.65,"") it is quite accurate.

    Where B34 would be the previous day's reading and C34 is the previous day's kWh.
  • badmemory
    badmemory Posts: 7,626
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    =IF(LEN(C34)>0,B34+C34*3.6/1.02264/39.65,"") it is quite accurate.


    Of course one would have to ask oneself just how accurate the 39.65 was, as my conversion rate has never been higher than 39.6 or lower than 39.3! I have also wondered if all the companies use the same conversion rate for a time period as the others do, as obviously the higher it is the more they can charge per unit.
  • PennineAcute
    PennineAcute Posts: 1,150
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    edited 17 May 2018 at 5:46PM
    I have had to adjust it once, a couple of months ago. I had to increase it by one.

    I worked that out from my IHD, so in the 17 months I have been logging my usage, I was call it fairly accurate.

    Within a few pence, my spreadsheet matches my monthly statements.
  • System
    System Posts: 178,077
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    badmemory wrote: »
    Of course one would have to ask oneself just how accurate the 39.65 was, as my conversion rate has never been higher than 39.6 or lower than 39.3! I have also wondered if all the companies use the same conversion rate for a time period as the others do, as obviously the higher it is the more they can charge per unit.

    Err no. Suppliers download the calorific value for the gas supplied to your region daily (possibly twice a day if the tables are anything to go by). The CV used for billing is is the average CV for the billing period. Under Ofgem regulations, if the average comes out at 39.39 then the value has to be truncated to one decimal point. That is, if the average is 39.39 then 39.3 has to be used for billing. Fixed CVs are a breach of Regulations.
  • harrym1byt
    harrym1byt Posts: 64
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    Surely you can just enter your daily usage. From that, both gas and electricity readings can be calculated

    Elec is quite easy, gas is a bit more complicated. I use the following formula to convert kWh into cubic meters =IF(LEN(C34)>0,B34+C34*3.6/1.02264/39.65,"") it is quite accurate.

    Where B34 would be the previous day's reading and C34 is the previous day's kWh.

    If that was intended as a reply to my post, I know well enough how to work it out, my spreadsheet does that for me on a weekly basis, from the readings I input - the thing is, should I need to do that to know what my consumption is? Should I really need to take the readings manually, with a 'Smart' meter?
  • PennineAcute
    PennineAcute Posts: 1,150
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    As is anything to do with technology, they can fail at times. Does not make them bad.
  • Xbigman
    Xbigman Posts: 3,884
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    As is anything to do with technology, they can fail at times. Does not make them bad.

    But it can make them useless.



    Darren
    Xbigman's guide to a happy life.

    Eat properly
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    Save some money
  • mac.d
    mac.d Posts: 1,344
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    harrym1byt wrote: »
    Sorry, but you are wrong....

    The meter logs the values every 30 minutes, but the logged readings are only uploaded/transmitted once per day at around midnight in a batch, via the mobile phone network.

    Fair enough if that's right, you've not convinced me though! Time of use tariffs and half-hourly reads go hand in hand, so why would they log them but not get the data until the end of the day?

    Also, the only IHD I've seen working for any length of time (British Gas) only updates the gas every 30 minutes, but you are no doubt spot on with your reason for the electric usage being instant while the gas is just periodically updated.
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