View Full Version : Smart meters
My energy supplier was keen for me to have a smart meter because it would allow me to accurately gauge my energy usage. I resisted for a year because I'm quite aware of how I'm using my energy (I had an extra remote electricity meter anyway) but eventually succumbed.
Now, it seems, they may have another purpose and may (will) be used to charge you more for your energy at peak periods.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-10494535/Smart-meters-overhail-higher-peak-electricity-prices.html
This was always the underlying reason for it. Not for your benefit, but theirs to introduce more tariffs - the same as they do with big Industrial customers, charging higher amounts during particular hours of the day.
Wait until you want to charge your EV too, or until they discharge it to support the grid . . . .
redtrummy
13-02-22, 09:56 AM
I believe, being a cynic, that there is always an ulterior motive and eventually it will be used to control our lives even more.
On a similar topic a friend visited the other day, and in talking said his water bill works out at £22 a month (I suspect he does not pay for rainwater disposal in that), he is on a meter. Ours is over a thousand a year. I have used a water calculator site and the prospective charge is about £380 a year. I have applied for a meter! I know in the future I will be vulnerable to price hikes but in the short term it will offset the higher energy bills. You pays your money and takes your choice
i seen this coming when they were rolling them out.
HOW is it costing more to produce electricity than it was 4 years ago???????? simple answer is the Gov clawing money in any way they can and at the rate of 5% thats a lot of money.
everyone was supported through covid and its now time to pay.
glad i dont have a smart meter.
Sir Trev
13-02-22, 11:30 AM
The deliberately misleading ads about "saving" money by having a smart leccy meter have always annoyed me so we don't have one as a consequence. As I wash my own cars (and bike every now and then), and keep the vegetable garden going with the hosepipe once my four water butt's are empty, I don't have a water meter either.
No doubt I'll have no choice at some point.
Biker Biggles
13-02-22, 11:53 AM
I recently had a water meter put in-----No choice they just did it after informing me that this area is designated as a problem for water supply so we had to have meters. I expect smart leccy meters will become compulsory too at some stage, along with road pricing and extra charges for bin collections and everything else
I certainly saved a lot by getting a water meter some years ago, it depends on your usage relative to the old "rateable value" of the property. Every household will be different, but some attention to unnecessary water usage is a good idea anyway.
My gas/elec supplier used to send a request for meter readings but that seems to have stopped, I believe they are just waiting for me to miss a reading date and then they'll come back with wanting to put smart meters in so I don't need to give readings. I religiously send meter readings every month, I'll only have smart meters when absolutely forced to.
It's not always as sinister as it's made out to be, though.
Whilst I agree that the marketing messaging for smart meters has been dumb and downwright wrong at times, the capture and improvement of data to allow better engineering has some merit.
For example, for electricity, since there's typically no large scale storage available, running the network is fundamentally a problem of dynamically balancing generation with demand whilst the overall level of use changes. Usually, balancing has been done on the generation side (leading to extra industry payments for generators to force them either to or not to run when actual demand is different to what was estimated ahead of time etc.) In the quest for efficiency, demand-side balancing opportunities are being explored too. Is that so wrong? Why build more power stations and control turning them on and off when we can better control what is used from the existing ones instead, to try to level out the pattern (peaks and troughs) of use? It could be cheaper overall to do it that way. (Cheaper in comparison to viable future alternatves, not cheaper in comparison to years ago.)
Overcoming the consumer expected convenience of 'I want therefore I have' applies just as much to utility supply as anything else.
...
HOW is it costing more to produce electricity than it was 4 years ago????????
...
On the assumption you're asking because you don't understand, factors to consider include:
Fuel cost (Seen the price of gas and coal recently?)
Demand increase
Maintenance (keeping existing power stations and networks running is becoming more challenging as they age)
Investment financing (raising the money for new power stations and new networks being built doesn't come for free)
Asset replacement cost (old power stations are worn out and need replacing, old overhead lines and substation equipment needs replacing eventually)
Green development incentives (increasing introduction of wind/solar instead of conventional fossil fuel)
Staffing costs (workers expect/demand pay rises)
Inflation
Now whether the rise in prices should be smaller is a different (and still legitimate) question but it's not simply a case of the government or private business owners profiteering.
Arguably there's nothing to stop anyone going off-grid if they want. Except they tend to complain it's too expensive! So, in the face of that irony, is on-grid such a bad deal in fact? Perhaps the affordability problem is rooted elsewhere?
redtrummy
13-02-22, 06:56 PM
I read the other day that a trial is about to commence where those EV owners that have signed up, have agreed to allow the lecy company to parasitically use the cars battery as a back up during high demand
I read the other day that a trial is about to commence where those EV owners that have signed up, have agreed to allow the lecy company to parasitically use the cars battery as a back up during high demand
Yep, from a pure electrical perspective, all those batteries 'just sat there' could be useful to provide grid resilience (i.e. to avoid another power station spinning 'just in case' there's a fault or sudden pickup). The risk of slightly longer overall charge times is unlikely to be critical for most vehicle users. There are practical concerns about the effects of discharge/recharge cycles on the batteries but I guess experiments will reveal data to assess that better.
For demand-side balancing, there have already been proposals for controlling the supply to cold stores, harnessing the benefit of thermal mass - cutting supply for a short period is unlikely to result in problematic temperature variation. It's even been mused that domestic fridges could be used in the same way (with enough numbers and control connection in place via 'internet of things' principles).
Luckypants
14-02-22, 08:37 AM
The idea of 'surge' pricing has been picked up by the media and whipped into a sensational headline. Whereas half hourly variable pricing has been available for two or more years from Octopus Energy, the tariff is called Agile. The attraction for many that bought into it was that overnight rates were very low and when there was a lot of wind, they would be PAID to take the electricity off the grid. This made it very popular with EV owners and folks who could shift most use away from peak periods. It has a price cap of 35p/kWh to protect people from excessive swings. Throughout 2021 the prices kept rising and the cap became a common price, the reason for this being the high wholesale price of energy. Many people switched away onto an EC specific tariff when the prices got steep, these customers were of course watching the wholesale prices closely, so saw the writing on the wall for the price jump.
https://octopus.energy/agile/
The link below shows the prices people are now paying on this tariff local to me, but you can have a poke about if interested to see historical rates etc.
https://agileprices.co.uk/?region=D
I cannot get a working smart meter at my house, so went onto a tracker product that used average wholesale prices to set my bills and this worked well until spring 2021. At that point I could see an inexorable rise in the prices and during August I was paying 25p. As I could see it was only going to get worse, I switched away to a cheaper 2 year fixed deal in the hope of riding out the price crunch.
So focus on the positives, if you get pushed onto a 'surge' pricing model, look at if it will allow you cheap(er) electricity at non-surge times and modify your use appropriately.
is it just me or is anyone else getting the feeling that this is all to do with building more nuclear power stations.
why cant wind farms be made to charge battery fields. that way the turbines would never need to be turned off.
why cant wind farms be made to charge battery fields. that way the turbines would never need to be turned off.
Mainly because those battery fields don't exist yet!
On a similar theme, though, most of the business case considerations for North Sea interconnectors have included to some extent the concept that the wind-generated excess electricity in Scotland, or possibly the North Sea, could be used to provide power to pumped storage schemes in Norway. (Moving water up and down mountains, like Dinorwig, is equivalent to a lot of batteries!) In reverse, the hydro-electric power from Norway could supplement UK demand at times.
why cant wind farms be made to charge battery fields. that way the turbines would never need to be turned off.
It is a direction that is being pursued:
https://www.smart-energy.com/industry-sectors/storage/uks-largest-battery-storage-system-balances-grid-for-national-grid-eso/
and:
https://w3.windfair.net/wind-energy/news/38649-juwi-mvv-cee-group-wind-farm-turbine-battery-storage-germany-brandenburg-innovation-tender-pa
On another note the big 6 energy providers have made £7 billion profit over the last 5 years.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/energy-bills-eon-british-gas-sse-scottish-power-b2013421.html
Isn't capitalism great (at times)?
ethariel
15-02-22, 10:44 AM
Triad charges will be coming, smart meters have made sure of that (businesses have been paying those for decades).
For what 20-25 years we were told 'gas heating, gas cooking its cheap!' and then oops!
I have to admit if I was still in a house of my own rather than rented I'd have solar up, batteries and a bloody turbine on a pole (that a year ago would never have paid for it's self but now....) and be seriously looking at ground sourced heat pumps and bye bye gas boiler and cooker. Anything to reduce my reliance on grid supplied energy.
Triad charges will be coming, smart meters have made sure of that (businesses have been paying those for decades).
For what 20-25 years we were told 'gas heating, gas cooking its cheap!' and then oops!
I have to admit if I was still in a house of my own rather than rented I'd have solar up, batteries and a bloody turbine on a pole (that a year ago would never have paid for it's self but now....) and be seriously looking at ground sourced heat pumps and bye bye gas boiler and cooker. Anything to reduce my reliance on grid supplied energy.
Absolutely. I'd be investing in tech for energy independence, and ways to store it. Whilst it may cost a few quid upfront, long term the cost stabilises and you can be pretty self sufficient when it's all working properly & utilised to its maximum.
svenrico
16-02-22, 12:26 AM
I understood there is a problem in some cases with smart meters not being compatible with ground and air source heating systems .
Luckypants
16-02-22, 01:10 PM
The problem with a home battery and solar etc is the capital cost. Even now with 20 years of development you are looking at expensive bits of kit. Not many people can find the money. I've ben looking at it since the big power cut in November and finding it hard to justify.
the problem with a home battery and solar etc is the capital cost. Even now with 20 years of development you are looking at expensive bits of kit. Not many people can find the money. I've ben looking at it since the big power cut in november and finding it hard to justify.
arguably there's nothing to stop anyone going off-grid if they want. Except they tend to complain it's too expensive! So, in the face of that irony, is on-grid such a bad deal in fact? Perhaps the affordability problem is rooted elsewhere?
QED! :smile: (Sorry, couldn't resist blowing my own trumpet a bit.)
You're right LP, raising the initial capital is more challenging for individuals than corporations it seems. Even a self-financing debt goes against credit ratings and bank loan computers only follow primitive rule-sets.
Mainly because those battery fields don't exist yet!
On a similar theme, though, most of the business case considerations for North Sea interconnectors have included to some extent the concept that the wind-generated excess electricity in Scotland, or possibly the North Sea, could be used to provide power to pumped storage schemes in Norway. (Moving water up and down mountains, like Dinorwig, is equivalent to a lot of batteries!) In reverse, the hydro-electric power from Norway could supplement UK demand at times.
i'm sure that Scotland already has a few pumped storage hydro reservoirs.
i think the idea of using EV's battery's as backup is stupid.
The problem with pumped water storage is that you need the geography. My folks live in East Anglia, apparently there is a planned battery storage scheme. Best height you can get over there is barely 100m and even that's only the odd hill near the north coast.
I agree, the idea of gazillions of joules stored up in a battery bank is a bit daunting. Pumped water is much more sensible where it is possible. Nature does it all the time (rain). However pumped storage needs excess cheap/clean power generation availability, I'm not sure we have any.
Luckypants
17-02-22, 03:19 PM
On a similar theme, though, most of the business case considerations for North Sea interconnectors have included to some extent the concept that the wind-generated excess electricity in Scotland, or possibly the North Sea, could be used to provide power to pumped storage schemes in Norway. (Moving water up and down mountains, like Dinorwig, is equivalent to a lot of batteries!) In reverse, the hydro-electric power from Norway could supplement UK demand at times.
That is its prime purpose, but it will be a while until we have sufficient 'spare' renewable electricity to send any their way. Right now it is mainly used to supplement our grid.
i'm sure that Scotland already has a few pumped storage hydro reservoirs.Yes you do, quite a few. some still privately owned. Wales has a few too, most notably Dinorwig.
The problem with pumped water storage is that you need the geography. My folks live in East Anglia, apparently there is a planned battery storage scheme. Best height you can get over there is barely 100m and even that's only the odd hill near the north coast.
I agree, the idea of gazillions of joules stored up in a battery bank is a bit daunting. Pumped water is much more sensible where it is possible. Nature does it all the time (rain). However pumped storage needs excess cheap/clean power generation availability, I'm not sure we have any. Norway are setting themselves up to be 'The battery of Europe' by building lots of pumped storage schemes. They are using their sovereign wealth fund for this to generate another national income stream for when oil runs out.
Using old coal mines for energy storage:
https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/gravitricity_to_build_1_million_demonstrator_for_g ravity_based_storage_syst
https://gravitricity.com/
redtrummy
17-02-22, 06:53 PM
Seeker - interesting
Using old coal mines for energy storage:
https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/gravitricity_to_build_1_million_demonstrator_for_g ravity_based_storage_syst
https://gravitricity.com/
thats clever.
i'm sure that Scotland already has a few pumped storage hydro reservoirs.
Yes you do, quite a few. some still privately owned. Wales has a few too, most notably Dinorwig.
There's a good number of plants but most are conventional hydro-electric i.e water downhill to generate only. There's only a handful of true pumped storage installations in the UK that can pump the water back up to the top. Yes Dinorwig is the biggest and most well known.
Using old coal mines for energy storage:
https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/gravitricity_to_build_1_million_demonstrator_for_g ravity_based_storage_syst
https://gravitricity.com/
I'm realising how out of date I'm becoming - I hadn't heard of this one but I like the concept.
For all the grief that the trading side of the UK electrity supply industry gets, there's a fair bit of innovation activity on the generation and networks side. Some very good ideas, some probably not so good but at least it's not stagnant and so there's a chance of moving away from fossil fuel dependency and inefficient balancing.
Norway are setting themselves up to be 'The battery of Europe' by building lots of pumped storage schemes. They are using their sovereign wealth fund for this to generate another national income stream for when oil runs out.
Quite shrewd isn't it? Sadly a pretty stark contrast to how the UK used its similar North Sea opportunity and benefit.
Maybe our construction of the offshore windfarms will complement it quite nicely to give us some cost-effective security of supply for the future? Unless mainland European nuclear becomes the main source of surplus generation in which case the economics may swing against us a bit.
ethariel
18-02-22, 08:08 AM
Be an interesting watch today - https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ to see if Wind generation can handle high winds or whether multiple turbine farms are shut down as the latest storm blows through.
here's an idea. how about pumped hydro kinetic. same idea as the dropping weights but the weights are hollow. the hydro fills the tanks/shafts when in hydro mode and doing so lifts the kinetic weights (like a ball float in a cistern). after pumping the water back up to storage when there is less demand and excess power it would leave the kinetic ready to deploy with high instant demand with a follow up of the hydro. the kinetic would be free.
here's an idea. how about pumped hydro kinetic. same idea as the dropping weights but the weights are hollow. the hydro fills the tanks/shafts when in hydro mode and doing so lifts the kinetic weights (like a ball float in a cistern). after pumping the water back up to storage when there is less demand and excess power it would leave the kinetic ready to deploy with high instant demand with a follow up of the hydro. the kinetic would be free.
Chinese are looking into it:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/16/how-to-convert-coal-mine-goaves-into-pumped-hydro-storage-facilities/
(A goaf, the plural is goaves, is a mine that has been excavated leaving a void - I had to look it up - it's in the title of the article)
svenrico
21-02-22, 10:04 PM
'People living near RAF Fylingdales have been refused the upgrade because smart meter signals may clash with its ballistic missiles radar equipment.'
People in this area on the North York Moors won't be getting smart meters.
If something as simple as electricity smart meters can interfere with an early warning station how secure is the technology against cyber attack by hostile countries ?!
'People living near RAF Fylingdales have been refused the upgrade because smart meter signals may clash with its ballistic missiles radar equipment.'
People in this area on the North York Moors won't be getting smart meters.
If something as simple as electricity smart meters can interfere with an early warning station how secure is the technology against cyber attack by hostile countries ?!
bet its the other way round. like when iir cb radios used to mess up petrol pumps.
svenrico
22-02-22, 01:26 PM
bet its the other way round. like when iir cb radios used to mess up petrol pumps.
Let's hope so !
line the banks of all the large rivers with Whirlpool Turbines and we would have enough power for most of the UK.
buF8ASmwXt4
what is wrong with this country?????????
You only get as much energy as the water contains over the drop you are using. Putting a weir or similar across a river to get a metre drop won't give you much energy/power. Probably fine for a domestic house or two, but limited power, a few kW at best.
That's why hydro-electric plants use big dams, to increase the drop and thus potential energy of the water. Also the turbine has to be at the bottom of the drop to get the energy from the water.
That's the basic physics I'm afraid.
you dont need dams/weirs as they use diverted water. 1000 of then (>15 miles) of one river bank would generate 15,000kw (7000 kettles for an hour or 1.5mil 10w led bulbs) yes its not much but its always on trickling the grid. how much power does a wind turbine produce (realistically)? how much does a wind turbine cost? how ugly are wind turbines?
a little often adds up too a lot.
redtrummy
28-02-22, 04:42 PM
Very interesting - I have seen small scale hydro using an Archimedes screw, but this looks cheaper and could be utilised in a wider range of situations -every little helps as they say . I wonder how the efficiency figures stack up?
Nothing against small scale water turbines, but you have to understand the physics.
A well designed well made water turbine generating electricity is at best 75% efficient (85% for the turbine and around 10% loss in the generation/transmission side).
15kW of electricity will need 2 cubic metres per second of water dropping 1m (2000kg x g x 1m x 0.75) . The 1m fall will actually need more like 2m of drop by the time you take the entry/exit and turbine geometry into account.
A typical stream gradient of a medium river (e.g. Thames between Lechlade and London according to Google) is around 30cm/km, so to get a 2m fall you need to be looking at more than 6km of river stretch.
Stream gradient is usually significantly greater the further upstream you go, but of course the volume flow rate is less.
Sure these small scale generation installations have their uses, but you are not going to power a town from a typical small English river.
svenrico
28-02-22, 09:10 PM
Does an underflow water wheel need a big drop ?
The energy comes from either gravitational potential energy or from kinetic energy (which itself ultimately comes from potential energy being converted into speed of flow). The energy has to come from somewhere.
Undershot waterwheels essentially use kinetic energy from fast flowing water, typically where gradients are quite steep and thus usually pretty well upstream, fast flowing streams in the Dales for example.
Overshot wheels usually utilise potential energy, water drop of a few metres (wheel diameter).
svenrico
28-02-22, 10:09 PM
The energy comes from either gravitational potential energy or from kinetic energy (which itself ultimately comes from potential energy being converted into speed of flow). The energy has to come from somewhere.
Undershot waterwheels essentially use kinetic energy from fast flowing water, typically where gradients are quite steep and thus usually pretty well upstream, fast flowing streams in the Dales for example.
Overshot wheels usually utilise potential energy, water drop of a few metres (wheel diameter).
Yes, so undershot waterwheels use the kinetic energy of the natural flow of the water . Either type was in use years ago on watermills !
I'm not certain on this, but I believe undershot wheels are almost by definition significantly less efficient at extracting energy from the water than overshot types.
Overshot wheels essentially take water at height and lower it, extract that potential energy and discharge the water at very low speed, more or less dumping it into a pool.
Undershot wheels extracting kinetic energy have to slow the flow rate (that's the mechanism for extracting the energy), and the more energy you extract the slower the discharge flow. That's where the efficiency gets limited, the more you slow the flow the more it tends to back-up. You have to let it flow away in order for the wheel to continue to run, so you can only extract a smaller proportion of the energy.
I don't know what the relative efficiencies are typically, I'm sure there's something written somewhere. Undershot wheels are essentially a paddle steamer in reverse, and they are notoriously inefficient, hence the use of screw propellers (just like rotary water turbines are far more efficient than waterwheels).
svenrico
01-03-22, 09:32 PM
I'm not certain on this, but I believe undershot wheels are almost by definition significantly less efficient at extracting energy from the water than overshot types.
Overshot wheels essentially take water at height and lower it, extract that potential energy and discharge the water at very low speed, more or less dumping it into a pool.
Undershot wheels extracting kinetic energy have to slow the flow rate (that's the mechanism for extracting the energy), and the more energy you extract the slower the discharge flow. That's where the efficiency gets limited, the more you slow the flow the more it tends to back-up. You have to let it flow away in order for the wheel to continue to run, so you can only extract a smaller proportion of the energy.
I don't know what the relative efficiencies are typically, I'm sure there's something written somewhere. Undershot wheels are essentially a paddle steamer in reverse, and they are notoriously inefficient, hence the use of screw propellers (just like rotary water turbines are far more efficient than waterwheels).
I am not an expert on waterwheels but undershot waterwheels will let the water flow away to allow the wheel to continue to run. The water just continues flowing in the river or stream past the wheel doesn't it.
Yes, but when you are using kinetic energy of water you only get the energy out of the flow by slowing it, the more you slow the flow the bigger the force on the wheel but the slower it runs. The power out is the product of force and speed (or torque x rpm if you prefer). You can't get all the energy out because that would mean bringing the flow speed to zero (stagnation), thus the efficiency is limited almost by definition.
You could produce an output curve of power versus speed reduction and select the optimum running condition for the stream. No slowing gives full speed but no force, so no power out. Full stagnation gives maximum force but no speed so no power out. There's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle with best power output but the efficiency will be relatively low.
svenrico
01-03-22, 10:14 PM
Yes, but when you are using kinetic energy of water you only get the energy out of the flow by slowing it, the more you slow the flow the bigger the force on the wheel but the slower it runs. The power out is the product of force and speed (or torque x rpm if you prefer). You can't get all the energy out because that would mean bringing the flow speed to zero (stagnation), thus the efficiency is limited almost by definition.
You could produce an output curve of power versus speed reduction and select the optimum running condition for the stream. No slowing gives full speed but no force, so no power out. Full stagnation gives maximum force but no speed so no power out. There's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle with best power output but the efficiency will be relatively low.
But doesn't the stream have a constant flow of kinetic energy , the wheel will take out some energy as the water goes past but it will be replaced by the force of a constant flow of water coming from upstream (think we might have to agree to differ on some points but an interesting discussion ):)
I was referring to the power the wheel extracts, as you say the water will keep on flowing apart from the amount which you are taking the energy away from. If you extract all the energy from some of it, it means it has come to a stop. You then have to get that water out of the way so more can meet the wheel. In practice you don't bring it to a stop (a stopped wheel gives no power), you extract some energy and let the flow get out of the way so more "fresh" energy can arrive at the wheel, but that means you are not extracting all the energy and the efficiency is limited.
If the flow of water is free, then efficiency doesn't necessarily matter all that much other than you are limited as to how much power the installation can deliver. However slow flowing water doesn't contain all that much energy, 1 cubic metre (1000kg) flowing at 1 m/sec only represents 500 watts power total, and you can't extract very much of that.
KE = 1/2 x mass x speed squared (joules)
Power (watts) = KE per second
We're probably not really differing, just looking at the situation in slightly different directions. The bottom line is that an undershot wheel in relatively slow flowing water is not going to get you very much power considering the cost of the installation relative to other systems.
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