Smart meters set to cost Blighty as much as replacing Trident Smart meters will cost as much as the Trident nuclear deterrent to implement, with the full cost of the scheme rising to £19bn, according to a government report. Total lifetime costs of the programme have now risen by £2bn since 2013, according to a report by the Major Projects Authority. In contrast, the Trident replacement …
What's the benefit to the nation of smart meters?
I can see that energy companies might be keen to implement them, but that will only be if they can get the consumer to pay; left to their own finances I suspect they'll only implement them in new installations and where repair or replacement of existing equipment is necessary.
As far as a strategic national interest goes, then there is really only the "belief" that smart meters might encourage consumers to use less energy, thereby reducing CO2 output; but what is the CO2 impact of making a smart meter and installing it? It can't be zero, so the CO2 impact analysis has to take this into account.
From a security and crime perspective, smart meters are only going to add to the nation's attack surface; giving rogue nations and criminals the potential to remotely disrupt the economy using DoS attacks or interfering with energy consumption readings.
Here's a scenario for you - really sunny windy day with lots of over-generation of electricity. A smart meter made by an engineer with a pic controller in it and an old phone so it only costs about £20 more than the original beast.
The electricity price drops to bugger all. Your home system recognises its gone cheap cost it can blue-tooth/wifi into it and see its nice and cheap. You can heat your hot water for near free and granny can fill up her storage heaters without worrying herself to death.
Your system also learns that it can be nice and cheap at night and can do a bit of thinking for itself and heat your water on cheap electricity rather than gas or whatever.
All perfectly possible now - which may explain why the companies are desperate to fit the old 'smart' meters that they effectively got the government to agree to by 'lobbying' cos they know you will never crawl under the stairs to stare at a shit LCD to see if its worth saving a couple of quid by turning the immersion on.
We've just fitted solar panels and as part of the install we added one of the 'smart' immersion heater diverters (a Solar iBoost other makes are etc etc.) A simple directional ammeter clamp on the grid cable in the meter cupboard, detects excess solar electric being exported. This sender wirelessly links to the iBoost switch in the airing cupboard which is wired between the fused switch and the immersion heater. The iBoost only allows the xs power into the immersion heater until the normal thermostat kicks in. It can also works as a standard timeswithch to allow for grid power to heat the water overnight.
Only a couple of hundred quid and works a treat..
@kmac499.
And how much cost is saved by heating your tank in this manner and how many times a year does it happen? Then, divide your couple of hundred quid by that and see what the ROI is. It'll be in years and then some. Storing power (effectively what you're doing) in houses is simply not viable at the moment and getting a few free tanks of hot water will takes years (probably decades) to pay back an outlay of several hundred quid.
"Your home system recognises its gone cheap cost it can blue-tooth/wifi into it... "
Except it doesn't work like that. In my case the power company decided that they would change my electro-mechanical electricity meter for a "smart" one. Result total failure, as we have no reliable mobile phone signal here, so that option was out of the door. I'm certainly not prepared to share my broadband with them so wi-fi is another non-starter. Outcome, a miserable little thing not much bigger than a matchbox that is almost impossible to read and which gives me no indication of how much power I'm using or if the photo-voltaic panels on the roof are running. At least my old meter did show how much electricity I was using.
So, this scheme has in my case already failed and I cannot see me getting a "smart" meter until they improve the connectivity to us here and that's another, expensive story.
total failure, as we have no reliable mobile phone signal here, so that option was out of the door.
No cell coverage here either, but that's not needed for this to work. In our case they decided to use satellite. Apparently it costs a bit more for them to do so, but it's well worth it them. (Their cost benefit analysis is almost 600 pages so I won't link to it.)
"Except it doesn't work like that. In my case the power company decided that they would change my electro-mechanical electricity meter for a "smart" one. Result total failure, as we have no reliable mobile phone signal here, so that option was out of the door. I'm certainly not prepared to share my broadband with them so wi-fi is another non-starter. Outcome, a miserable little thing not much bigger than a matchbox that is almost impossible to read and which gives me no indication of how much power I'm using or if the photo-voltaic panels on the roof are running. At least my old meter did show how much electricity I was using."
Surely you have two possible solutions? One is a current cost meter or similar (with two clamps and the code is easy to write to show usage and generation. Granted it's Linux but Windows is probably possible too) the other is a wifi adaptor in your inverter?
@Tom 7.
You've bought all the hype from the Labour government. In reality, whilst this may be feasible, it isn't going to happen. And heating a few tanks of water in some houses is a really poor way to store energy. Much better to do so on an industrial scale in the grid, such as pumped hydro etc.
In any event, the government has already thought of this eventuality and sorted it out by paying generators to turn off wind turbines when there is an excess.
"In any event, the government has already thought of this eventuality and sorted it out by paying generators to turn off wind turbines when there is an excess."
That happens when there's a network or system constraint. But if you think about it, the only reason we will see nil or negative wholesale prices is because of the way that windpower gets accepted onto the system and then paid. The reality is that windpower was never economic without a subsidy, and therefore it has a high average cost, and it has a true marginal cost to consumers. This idea of "free" energy is bollocks, touted by idiots that can't count.
Moreover, if this "free" energy makes its way to the consumer, how does the whole system get paid for? In addition to the wind subsidies, there's the costs of transmission, distributions, sales & billing, balancing and settlement, the costs of standby and generation backup, the costs of synchronous fossil plant that has to run to keep the grid stable even when all loads could be delivered by renewables.... and of course the fossil fuel used during the 70% of time when wind power is not available, and the 90% of time that solar isn't (those figures are load factors, for anybody not clever enough to work it out).
You know, most electricity isn't bought at the current wholesale price? It was bought 6 months to 2 years ago based off of forecasts, generally the only energy bought at wholesale price on the day is the energy we buy when we run out of power and have to buy from the French.
Electricity sellers do this so they can lock in a price so your bill doesn't vary wildly between almost nothing to a grand a month. Also just because one hour there's an excess of energy doesn't mean there will be in the next hour.
The only things the meters will probably be used for by the resellers are
More accurate monthly reads
and
Shutting off people who haven't paid when they get a CCJ
"...during the 70% of time when wind power is not available..."
Hah! you've obviously never lived in a coastal area. Let me tell you, it blows an awful lot of the time, sometimes for weeks on end as it has done recently.
If that's where the wind is, put the wind farms there. Though I think a lot already have been.
If that's where the wind is, put the wind farms there.
The 30% is a blended figure, and as noted is a load factor. So an on-shore a well sited wind turbine (including coastal sites) would produce a long term average of 25% of the "plate rating", and an offshore wind turbine about 35%.
In case that's not clear, take a 1 MW wind turbine. If it were always able to run at full power for all 8,760 hours a year, you'd get 8,760 MWh. In reality wind output will be reduced if the wind is non-existent, low, or too high (the blades have to be feathered to avoid damage to the unit), and what you actually get is about 2,600 MWh per year. Critically, you don't get much of that power at the coldest times of year, because those are associated with stable high pressure systems. So on the coldest 100 days of the year you'll have a 6-7% load factor from UK wind turbines - my employers are one of the world largest wind farm operators, and we actually looked that data up for DECC. Sadly they didn't take much notice, and the wind power nonsense continued unabated.
All perfectly possible now - which may explain why the companies are desperate to fit the old 'smart' meters
Actually we're not. Three companies are already under investigation and facing multimillion quid fines by the clowns at OFGEM for failure to roll out smart (AMR) meters to business customers fast enough. And in the past twenty four hours OFGEM have issued a note to all energy suppliers telling them that one of the highest "enforcement priorities" for 2015/16 will be smart meter roll out.
So, contrary to your bizarre ideas, this is being driven first by EU/UK government diktat, and then by a regulator bent on forcing this misguided programme forward at any expense. Our part in this is simply doing what we're told under the threat of vast fines, in an arrangement where OFGEM are rule maker, investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.
"that they <energy companies> effectively got the government to agree to by 'lobbying'
Here we go for the millionth time. This is an EU directive, translated by the last Labour government into UK law. We didn't lobby for it, it is nothing but a benefit-free nuisance for us. if you don't like it, see either side of the House of Commons, and take it up with them.
You don't want the system to "learn" anything because it will "learn" bad habits.
Far better for the energy supply co to tell the customers when the power is cheaper and when to run.
That has been achieved by ripple controllers for at least 60 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management
Energy supply companies like to keep the energy demand reasonably flat and stable. The main reason for that is that winding up and slowing down big (efficient) generators is incredibly wasteful as well as increasing maintenance costs. It is far better to run up a genset and keep it humming for days on end at a steady load.
For that reason, generation companies tend to charge through - ultimately to the customer - a multiplier for the "spikiness" and peak demand.
Smart meters can help by allowing people to turn of discretionary load, but there isn't much of that beyond water eating. That is already covered by using either ripple controllers or special night rates.
Most domestic load is not really discretionary. Are you really going to check the smart meter before turning on the telly? Are you really going to consult the smart meter before deciding to bake a cake?
Nope.
Like IoT, this seems to be mainly driven by the industries that will benefit from the huge installs.
"Smart meters can help by allowing people to turn of discretionary load,"
After you've rewired the premises and reconnected appliances to separate must-have vs optional circuits and loads (unless the turning off is going to be done manually somehow).
"there isn't much [discretionary load] beyond water eating."
And even water heating is becoming irrelevant in this picture, courtesy of the miracle known as the "combi boiler" which ensures that modern premises (or even older premises where the heating has been "modernised") cannot store hot water in any meaningful way, the water has to be heated (using fossil fuel ie gas) at exactly the time you want to use it. Apparently that's "efficient" (but in many cases it probably isn't cost-effective or appropriate *in the bigger picture*).
You forgot to mention the charger for the electric car. The timing of that could be discretionary [Smiley here, or not?]
Marvellous examples of joined up thinking, smartmeters. Or even energy policy in general. Not.
@AC.
The biggest issue with the electric car (other than the usual range etc.etc.), is that it isn't really a discretionary load, as people need it to get to work etc. Also, imagine your wife is pregnant and waiting to give birth. Do you really want to use the car, reduce its charge and potentially not have it ready at the pertinent point? The whole notion of a car you can't recharge/refill in 5 minutes is a nonsense, unless you go to communal pools, which doesn't see likely.
Also, if you look at the average street and assume everyone has at least one electric car. Plug them all in overnight to charge (most likely pattern) and the local infrastructure will melt. It simply isn't built to carry that much load. What works as a one-off, doesn't always work when scaled to societies needs and that's what matters. Local generation could help, but nothing currently available is either available at the right time (solar doesn't work too well overnight), or generates so little it doesn't really matter.
"look at the average street and assume everyone has at least one electric car. "
That clearly doesn't work. Anyone who thinks otherwise, well what can you say.
Now look at the number of homes where the 2nd car is on the drive (or the street) all day except for the school run and shopping trips and occasional daytime social activities. Potential market for electric cars, but are there enough of these users to make (a) a worthwhile market (b) a worthwhile difference to energy usage and pollution patterns.
@AC.
Ah, but you've missed the point. Even with only one car per house, used for commuting (generally at least one is), you simply couldn't charge them all. Now, any 2nd cars would simply be additional load. True, you could possibly charge them during the day to spread the load, but this puts the charging into peak generation times. Part of the supposed reasoning for electric cars is that they charge overnight on essentially (they claim) spare electricity....oversupply. So, start charging during the day and you break the economic model very badly.
Whilst there are undoubtedly some niche cases for electric cars, there simply won't be enough market and trying to charge them in the general community will cause all sorts of structural issues. It simply isn't a starter. We need to accept that cars with batteries (which is different to electric cars) are non-starters and start looking at things like hydrogen cars, which can be refilled quickly.
The current system of monitoring your quarterly bills and then going switch off crazy will still be the overriding methodology of many in this country.
Smart meter or not, those who can afford it will not bother, those that can't afford it are either already keeping a concious eye on their usage, or are part of the blithering idiot sect that deserve to be impoverished.
The entire power usage for my one bed flat is less than £6 per week, it was about £10 until I turned the old freezer off and started shopping more regularly.
It isn't monitoring, the people need more of in this country, it is efficient domestic appliances and Scandinavian standard insulation.
I'd wager a national rip it out Economy7 heater drive would raise millions out of power poverty and see the winter fatality figures for hypothermia reduced to almost zero. Economy 7 storage heaters are a killer in the home, they keep the house warm until about three in the afternoon and then costs significantly more than standard tariff to keep the house warm for the rest of the day.
Personally, I'd see those behind Economy 7, behind bars for manslaughter.
Personally, I'd see those behind Economy 7, behind bars for manslaughter.
The main reason for E7 was that the then state owned CEGB had a problem of under-utilised overnight plant, and local authorities weren't willing to pay for communal gas boilers in the large social housing developments being slung up in the 1960s. The local authorities briefly tried fitting individual gas boilers, but combined with the poor construction of the day this caused problems (look up Ronan Point if you're interested), and suddenly there was a match made in somewhere beginning with "h".
In pure economic terms, dry electric heat is actually not too bad. It's safer than gas (even in low rise situations), it requires virtually no servicing, and the capital costs are much less than gas. But against that the controllability is poor and the running costs are higher. The alternative is a wet heating system, but in a high rise or high density development that means a large boiler or CHP, retrofitting risers and laterals for a heat network, adding heat interchange units and heat meters plus radiators, all of which cost around £15k per property. Nobody is in a hurry to do that, even to save £200 a year on the electricity bills.
I find Economy 7 great, my entire house is heated by Economy 7, I pay about 7p/KW night rate, much less than day rate, it works out cheaper than oil or gas per KW of heat, I did the math...
Yes we need more insulation, the problem being old houses, mine is late 1970's and there is zero chance of insulating it anymore than it is without knocking it down, so if the government wants to pay me £550k to rebuild, or £140K for new highly efficient windows then fine, but its not worth it financially for me to do either....
I never got why more storage heating is not used? as a rule there is always excess generation at night.. so I run my washing machine, dishwasher etc as much as possible at night...
"I never got why more storage heating is not used? as a rule there is always excess generation at night.. so I run my washing machine, dishwasher etc as much as possible at night..."
Because it's generally crap.
And under most if not all E7 tariffs you pay a higher day time rate, so you need to have something over 35% of all your electricity demand during the off peak hours across the year. Industry estimates suggest that possibly as many as 40% of people on E7 tariffs would be better off on non-E7 tariffs because their off peak demand isn't over 35%. It should even be printed on your bill if it is cheaper, but people don't seem to care.
"mine is late 1970's and there is zero chance of insulating it anymore than it is without knocking it down, so if the government wants to pay me £550k to rebuild, or £140K for new highly efficient windows then fine,"
At current market rates a house with a rebuild cost of over half a mill, or a 140k window replacement bill is called "a fucking mansion". Instead of expecting the rest of us to subsidise improving your house, how about you spend your money on it?
I've just moved into a 1960s flat where there is no gas and very little insulation. The walls are mostly double glazing ("picture window" size) and some concrete panels. Fairly typical "system built", probably.
I will be having insulated plasterboard fitted on the larger concrete areas. This can be done in many properties if you don't mind losing an inch or two of room space. The double glazing will be replaced, some with triple, in stages when necessary. Neither upgrade will pay for itself in my lifetime at current energy prices.
The flat is in one of many blocks of that era built with underfloor electric heating. Many in this block have been persuaded to replace it with electric panel heaters (Rointe). Electric-only heating paying peak time prices, with low grade insulation? Nightmare.
Modern storage heaters such as Dimplex Quantum initially appear to be a much better fit for this building than either older storage heaters or any form of direct electric heating e.g. panel heaters, but I'd be interested in other evidence-backed information.
The off-peak tariff I was looking at was something like 19p/unit daytime, 8p/unit off-peak, vs the standard tariff of 16p/unit (standing charges are equal). Anyone with a calculator work out what proportion I need to use overnight to make it interesting (ignore capital costs of the storage heating, for now)?
Oh and if you've got a crystal ball so you can see where electricity prices will be in three or ten years, and whether there will still be a meaningful off-peak/on-peak difference, that'd be most welcome too.
All input gratefully received.
What's the benefit to the nation of smart meters?
Not the nation. The benefit is for the privatised energy companies and "market makers", since once there is an actively traded market for electricity - which is what all these "smart meters" will be doing on behalf of subscribers - a new crop of financial parasites can be collecting transaction fees - or just go full ENRON: Buy up electrical futures, then "service" a major power station.
"an actively traded market for electricity - which is what all these "smart meters" will be doing on behalf of subscribers "
Are you sure about that?
I've heard people mention it, but as far as I'm aware, they've all misunderstood. I'm happy to be corrected, based on a definitieve reference, but afaik "smart meters" will not in general be used to support a "spot market" for residential end users of electricity, in the same way as there is no "spot market" for residential end users of gas, broadband, etc.
It is not just security that is the problem but their near uselessness.
We are moving to a more off-grid style supply system where renewable etc will need a more sophisticated system that a very very expensive way of wasting money on reading that meter !
They will likely all have to come out again by 2025 at a cost of yet another 20 billion !
Wait till 2025 when other countries have expensively guinea pigged it successfully then make a move for sane mature technology.
Why not with all this building of the new houses order in new tech, all the broken meters should be replaced with smart meters. Why not allow the natural progression, why are they so impatient to force everybody over to new meters now?!
e.g. moved into a new build house on a new estate, why not lay fibre down? nope, good old copper cables (probably not even copper)
The number of new build homes is a tiny fraction of the existing housing stock. At the current rate of building, we'd replace all the existing homes in around 160 years. Not only that, but it's the existing (inefficient) homes that most need accurate metering if you accept the argument that accurate metering reduces consumption.
As it is, it's a poorly thought out project, with poor technical specification and even poorer oversight.
"While the EU came up with targets for savings it was the Government at the time that pretended Smart Meters were the answer."
Directives 2009/72/EC* (leccy) & 2009/73/EC* (gas) and associated literature within the Official Journal of the European Union make mention that regulatory authorities shall strongly recommend smart grids and intelligent metering systems**.
*Proposed 2007
**I'm not being argumentative. I just have a different understanding drawn from EU directives and literature and, as I also note, here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/19/feature_uk_gov_power_meter_plan/
Won't work for all, I wanted a smart meter, mainly so I could monitor my power usage closer..
No such luck, guy turned up to install it and couldn't get a signal, my answer was yeah of course not,...
So no mobile phone signal on their 'preferred' networks means no smart meter for me!
All you need is to program enough of them to go on/off in a pre-programmed pattern during peak hour and the grid will collapse. I used to help my dad with the software for simulations in the days when he made a nice chunk of money on top of his professor salary by doing grid models (not in the UK). If memory serves me right it would take flipping a resistive load worth < 30% of the actual consumption on-off at sub-5min intervals to achieve that.
The only difference between it and Trident is that Trident can actually be used to nuke other countries. The smart meter, if someone breaks into the control network and/or manages to upload alternative firmware) is good for nuking yourself. Into the stone age. Considering that it is absolutely impossible to upload new firmware and/or settings to all meters in less than a few weeks via cellular (the presently preferred solution) this also means staying there for a while.
A few years ago Smart meters were being pushed in the U.S.. Here in Texas there were fights over privacy issues since they monitored your use every minute. Some people were arrested for not allowing the power company to come on their property and change out the meter.
Now I am for a meter that sends data once a month so the meter reader doesn't get into an altercation with my dogs. There is no reason for the power company to invade my privacy and constantly monitor my usage.
You have mentioned how high the cost is in the U.K., but what about the U.S.? Is there any major difference in the meters?
"You have mentioned how high the cost is in the U.K., but what about the U.S.? Is there any major difference in the meters?"
Where do you think he UK will buy most of these meters from?
Info sec researches got some 1 off's for penetration tests but that stopped when they found how s88t the data security was on them.
"those cardboard boxes should be recycled!"
Keep the tramps in them, and send 'em to a district heating plant. They'd qualify as "renewable" power, and if dried and pelletised they'd work a treat, and you'd be able to claim Renewable Heat Incentive. In a small biomass plant you'd get 8.6p/kWh, with RPI uplift for twenty years. That'd mean an average tramp would give you about 750 MJ, say 200 kWh, and that means a tramp is worth about seventeen quid just from RHI.
To qualify you'd need to make a quarterly declaration of sustainability to OFGEM, and to meet their requirements you might have to establish a captive tramp breeding programme if there's any risk that culling, pelletising and burning them might cause the tramp population to decline. Or you could just use the half a million people that die in the UK each year. In energy terms it wouldn't pay for itself, but that never matters with DECC's idiot subsidy programmes.
If they were being honest, these meters would be called "we screwed up generation capacity by replacing coal power stations with useless environmentally unfriendly turbines so now need to control demand by turning off your power when we feel like it - meters".
Unfortunately the marketing people got there first.
"However, DECC insisted changes in cost were solely driven by the change in accounting methodology, not by underlying cost changes, said the report."
Would this new accounting methodology be accounting for all the actual costs as opposed to throwing a dart at a board 3 times and multiplying the result by the page number the minister happens to be on in playboy then multiplied again by the number of folders on his desk?
The original costings were the Capita "we'll say we can do it for"
The latest ones are the "we said it would be £XXX but now we've added the bribes"
Soon to be "here's the actual real costs of smart meters and it makes the NHS PfIT look good value now"
Err... I think you will find that the industry is not particularly interested in these meters, it is the government that wants them because of some misguided idea that the green blob had that bu using them it would cut down the production of an essential plant food, CO2.
The money from the government is a bribe to get the industry 'on side' and fit them.
Government have friends in the Elecrtic Business they need to keep sweet, for political donations and seats on the board for when they are no longer in power. It's just an old school tie network. FIFA does corruption with brown envelopes, UKGov screws everybody in the open, most of the time !
Government have friends in the Elecrtic Business
No they don't. We're the modern day whipping boys, blamed for every failing in government energy policy, government welfare provision, the environment and everything else. If you have a look at who is benefiting from this programme, then it gets back to some of the usual parasites sucking on the public sector teat: Crapita, CGI (Logica, as was), and Arqiva. With Telefonica having a greasy hand in it too.
@ Ledswinger
"No they don't. We're the modern day whipping boys"
Unfortunately Ledswinger that sounds too true. People keep complaining how right wing people have got by voting tory but from what I can see the tories blame businesses for government failings and then seem to apply more regulation of the type that caused the problem.
While I havnt replied until now I wanted to say I am enjoying reading your posts. It is nice to hear from people within the industries and get that viewpoint.
While I havnt replied until now I wanted to say I am enjoying reading your posts.
Ledswinger: On a mission to inform and entertain, and where that is not possible to cause moderate offence.
It is nice to hear from people within the industries and get that viewpoint.
Well, what you're getting is my viewpoint. The industry view is much more careful, because we have to work with the politicians, civil servants, and regulators in the long term. We couch our corporate language very carefully, we avoid saying things like "you're fucking mad if you believe that!", and we never, ever say "told you so!". More's the pity, because energy policy is a complete mess, everybody in the industry knows it, but equally everybody knows that there will be consequences for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
And because we are businesses, we have to make money: Where DECC are busy destroying the wholesale thermal market, we have to follow the subsidies for things like wind turbines, renewable heat, PV, etc. We know they cost a fortune, don't deliver much, and that the cost goes on to customers bills, but the only alternative is to pull down the shutters and watch somebody else do it.
I'm sceptical that the figures for money spent so far has been used to install any meters at all. The money for actually installing the meters does and will come from the customers via the energy companies. The companies are able to wrap the costs into their so-called 'green levy'.
The figures for expenditure (£13.14m) quoted is the cost of running the government end of the project (all the civil servants and consultants, possibly with a bit of device testing thrown in just to be safe). The projected costs (between £17.5bn and £23.4bn) will mainly be borne by the consumers.
53 million smart meters, each one averages say 1W internal usage, I thought we were trying to reduce our electricity usage?
Add to that the internal display module, another 1W each?
I've always thought a much better solution would be to offer a free energy survey. Once you've done an initial review of high usage appliances the smart meter becomes a but useless. No-one is going to immediately buy a new fridge, washing machine, dishwasher etc.. to save a few Wh on their 'leccy bill. You'd wait until those appliances died and replace then.
The only rationale is to do time of day charging or remote cutoff.
53 million smart meters, each one averages say 1W internal usage, I thought we were trying to reduce our electricity usage?
You are on the right lines, but your figures are wrong. 1W, you say? On average for old ones, yes because the 'leccy meter used 2W and gas ones zero because they were driven by line pressure not needed by end users.
OFGEM's latest predictions, released a couple of weeks ago show a smart gas meter will use 1W, a domestic smart electricity meter will use 3W. The in home display will use 0.6W. The communications hub will use 1W. So we move from an average of 2W per two meter household to 5.6W per household. This means that smart meters will consume a total of 1.23 TWh each year, up from 0.4 TWh per annum.
One consequence of smart meters is that the power use of most of the additional loads is downstream of the meter, so you'll pay for the extra energy used. At around £5 a year extra you may not notice, but that's an extra £130m a year onto electricity bills forever, in addition to the vast cost of the meter install programme.
Thanks for the numbers, they are truly frightening! I was basing my estimate on the assumption they'd do a good job of the design. It appears they didn't.
That is a lot of generating capacity needed just to cover meters. And what about the back room infrastructure needed to receive the data? It is a shame the blinkered masses cannot see this for what it really is. The moment you paint something with the green climate change brush the vocal masses will beat you down if you dare speak out against it.
Thanks for the numbers, they are truly frightening!
My pleasure. Page 46 or so of this.
In the grand scheme of things this isn't that big (a small CCGT would cover this) but as you say, all moving in the wrong direction for no reason.
And what about the back room infrastructure needed to receive the data?
56m meters, reading every 30 minutes or so will create around 980 billion data points per year. Actual data per point won't be much just for billing, but it's starting to get big just from volume and frequency (and there's other data that the meter can record about power quality, peak loads etc). I'd guess that when you include greater telecoms energy use, the smart meter DCC, and the additional processing by suppliers, you could get to around 200 MW mainly from the smart meters and intermediate telecoms. Note that's just for residential. If you include business smart/AMR meters then you can add in another 20%.
The gross 240MW of load for residential and business smart metering would equate to 2.1 TWh, and if the hippies want that from a wind farm then (ignoring it won't be baseload that's required) you'd need about 600MW of capacity costing a mere £2bn.
Thanks for the link. I love the rather blase way they dismiss the extra load. And the "providing additional functionality to significantly reduce peak demand" which is a pretty much a blatant "we'll cut you off it demand is too high". Elsewhere it is "could reduce peak demand".
None of the planned 'green' energy sources have the capacity to cover the extra load. Swansea tidal barrage is only expected to generate some 500GWh a year.
We're going as fast as we can in the wrong direction for a smart grid. Knee jerk short term pseudo-green ideas all at the expense of the consumer/taxpayer.
They could always try mentioning this to their MP who if bribes permit might bother to ask awkward questions at PMQ, which of course won't get answered properly because nothing ever does.
OR
They could try going beyond the usual... my dad voted Labour so I do, or May dresses better than Corbyn so I vote Conservative... and actually think a bit, perhaps even consider voting for someone from outside politics who might just have lived in the real world for a bit, maybe has a functional brain and could even (for at the least the first months) not have people shoving backhanders at him to spend yet more UK tax payers money abroad....
But none of that will happen, we get what the uneducated and stupid masses vote for ... something largely controlled by the Sun
For the benefit of overseas readers Total Control is an tariff from suppliers that uses off-peak power to heat your home and water.
"You'll get between five and twelve hours a day from your storage heating. We find out the best times to put it on for you by regularly checking the weather forecast. This means that you’ll have heat when you need it most, without having to worry."
https://www.hydro.co.uk/GasAndElectricity/YourMeter/DifferentMeterTypes/
The reality is that they can dump excess power into your house when you don't need it and make you pay for it!
With smart meters the suppliers will be able to cut you off as well. This won't affect me as my tinfoil hat has a woolly lining.
Prior to the general election, I wrote to my MP on this matter, and he seemed quite willing to listen on the subject. Unfortunately he is one of the oese who was ousted, and so I am now going to write to the new incumbent.
I urge all UK citizens reading this to do the same, to demand the scrapping of this unwanted (by anybody, including the industry) outrageously pointless, dangerous and expensive scheme, pointing out how vulnerable it will make the UK if implemented, and that the money could be far better used elsewhere.
It's flippin' disgraceful when we have a Governemnt that on the one hand insists that spooks be able to spy on us all the time to try to prevent terrorist attacks whilst simultaneously spending billions of our money to try to ensure that we're all more vulnerable to terrorists!
Seconded. Where are the nuclear-powered flying battlestations? Probably in violation of some namby-pamby treaty. Such a dreadnought would have all sorts of peace dividends (portable sunshade for heatwaves, portable power station to relieve brownouts) as well as scaring the bejesus out of the whole world. Its political correctness gone mad.
What we need is Nuclear Power!
If people would come to their senses about nuclear power (that it is cleaner, 'greener', and safer than basically everything else) then we would hardly need meters, let alone 'smart' ones!
Yes I know nuclear is expensive - but is a lot more expensive than it needs to be - Nuclear companies are forced by law to keep emissions "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" (ALARA) that is to say, they are forced to lower emissions even when there is absolutely no reason to. They set themselves stupid targets like 100GBq tritium per year (for scale, 1GBq tritium is found inside one of those glow-in-the-dark keyfobs - tritium is basically harmless) so when they find something unexpected and go over their arbitrary target, people think there has been a major incident when in fact there hasn't.
Nuclear installations are forced to go to ridiculous lengths (like quadruple-redundant dosimetry of personnel) to keep already insignificantly low doses of radiation even lower.
All this when there is no evidence at all to say that low doses of radiation are actually harmful - there are even some scientists that think low doses are beneficial ("hormesis" effect) and nobody has been able to prove them wrong.
Meanwhile coal, oil and biomass plants are belching out tonne after tonne of carcinogens, nanoparticles, even radiation (more than nuclear plants), and that's when they are operating NORMALLY!
I think there is a big case for relaxing the rules around nuclear power to make it less expensive, but it seems to be something of a taboo subject!
All of this irrational fear of radiation is just going to allow the fossil fuel barons, climate change denialists, and biomass bandits to destroy the planet.
If people would come to their senses about nuclear power (that it is cleaner, 'greener', and safer than basically everything else) then we would hardly need meters, let alone 'smart' ones!
"Too cheap to meter" has been comprehensively disproven over many, many decades. Nukes are expensive to build, expensive to run and expensive to decommission. As a reliable future energy source they are great, but the UK is going down the idiotic path of committing a vast amount for a single site installation of the unproven Areva EPR design, rather than going for a modest update on older designs from Westinghouse or other proven designs, and building those out sequentially.
Quite possibly true (well, some of it anyway).
How's Olkiluoto doing? And its French equivalents?
Looking even further over the horizon, what do you think the prospects are for fusion as a realistic electricity source?
And finally: are you still working in the nuclear industry? Is that detail relevant? Should El Reg have a policy on declaration of interest?
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2119131
Yes - I do still work in the nuclear industry - although in the public sector, so I don't have a 'commercial' interest as such.. I'm actually in robotics rather than nuclear power/physics itself - the robots which go inside the radioactive areas - "so You don't have to".
Olkiluoto, Flamanville etc as I'm sure you know are hugely over budget, but I think they will succeed.
As for fusion - it's a nice idea - but if you ask my personal opinion, I think if the money we have invested in fusion were to have been put into testing better fission reactor designs (MSRs for example) then we would be a LOT better off. Fusion is safer than fission for sure (if the safest thing is to stop producing power forthwith, at the smallest opportunity) but there is still "low level" waste, e.g. the gloves and overalls that workers have worn when they have been in an area which has undetectably, low but unprovably nonexistent contamination. That is because of the ridiculous state the legislation is in, and it is precisely WHY nuclear is so expensive. Imagine if the fossil fuel and chemical industries had the same limitations on emissions: Where every last atom of heavy metals, nanoparticles etc they pump out, must be accounted for. But since a mass spectrometer is a hell of a lot more expensive per atom detected than a Geiger counter, nobody bothers.
In all honesty, I think fission is a LOT safer than most people believe. Those posters above, for example, advocating the construction of more nuclear subs: What do you suppose happens when a nuclear sub gets hit by a torpedo? If the same amount of radioactive material were released by a civilian power plant, then there would be a nuclear incident with the scale and cost of Chernobyl. Everybody panics, people DIE due to the evacuation (not because of the radiation), and the planet suffers, because we now need more fossil fuels to replace all the nuclear plants we just closed on a knee-jerk.
As for a policy on declaration of interest? Well I could always have gone AC like yourself!
RE: "Too Cheap To Meter"
You're right that it doesn't work in the current political and regulatory climate - but there's nothing to say it COULDN'T happen. If, for example, we were allowed to build nuclear power stations underwater (like nuclear subs!) and put the waste at very, very deep parts of the sea (subduction zones perhaps?) then nuclear would certainly be "Too Cheap to Meter". But of course, humanity would rather choke to death than pay any thought to that bogeyman.. At least not until they are *actually* choking to death.
When the world gets so hot that people start to need air conditioning to survive, then you can bet there will be de-regulation of nuclear power. But of course that will be too late. Most of our species will be extinct, and most of civilisation will have collapsed.
"What we need is Nuclear Power!"
Agreed!
Just for some context, the RSPB used to be all for "green" wind power. Then they noticed that a few birds were being killed by colliding with the big spinny blades. Suddenly windfarms are the spawn of the devil and must not be sited where Tweety Pie flies.
I wonder how many birds have died as a result of nuclear power? My guess? None. Ergo the RSPB should be all for NOOKLEAR!
Nuclear power... yup, just go to Rolls Royce get them to build a few nuclear sub plants, dot them around a few places on the coast... safe, reliable, non centralised... and creating British jobs.
But no, not enough of a back hander there so we will continue to get an over priced foreign pile located in Somerset charging the earth for electricity it might manage to supply if they ever correct the design flaws and get it to work... which will probably only cost a few hundred billion more than the quote at the moment.
"just go to Rolls Royce get them to build a few nuclear sub plants, "
"not enough of a back hander there"
Did you know HMG had been having a competition for designs for Small Modular Reactors for electricity generation, and RR were (are?) one of the participants?
Of course there's the small matter of regulatory approval, but perhaps the greenest government ever is planning a bonfire of the red tape.
"charging the earth for electricity it might manage to supply if they ever correct the design flaws and get it to work"
But at least it's got an approved design.
An approved design that hasn't been seen to work.
Or one that works that hasn't been approved.
What a marvellous choice.
Anyone seen any engineers (not mechanics) lately? Or have they all either retired or left the country, or been recruited in the City?
I love the idea of HMS Megadreadnaught
Back in the good old days private companies used to make such things and sell them... fancy setting up a company? The idea sounds huge fun... and testing it would be brilliant... even if by accident we might accidentally (of course, never deliberate) completely obliterate Whitehall, Downing Street and that little palace in Westminster... Gun powder plot was just too limited in its outlook :)
I can pick standard meters up from £20 upwards (one off, certified recon as fitted by most suppliers) the cost of which would normally be carried by *the supplier*. Smart meters on the other hand are about £150 (single phase, 100A, one off), add £50 to fit it and presto! Charge the Government (us, the tax payers) about £400 a meter and watch those profits roll in ... Subtract the usual meter budget for the ten year life of the new meter and well, you do the maths.
As has been said, this whole policy smacks less about the natural environment and more about the economic environment of certain bank accounts.
How?
By turning off your household appliances when the sun isn't out?
Really, apart from remotely cutting off vulnerable old people in winter, what sort of savings and where are they going to make?
How does it figure out what lights I need on or not? some of us have windowless basements so "no lights during the day" would not be useful?
Climate change, the biggest pork barrel since labour's open door policy
"By turning off your household appliances when the sun isn't out?"
The smartmeters being rolled out don't (can't) do that though. They can turn off a whole household, but not part of it. Round about now someone will usually come along and say "they can't disconnect, it would be illegal". To which the appropriate response is "how long do you think it would take to change the law, if a State of Emergency was declared?". And/or "if that capability isn't needed, why is it implemented?".
If what's needed is dynamic response from appliances or groups of appliances, the grid frequency already provides the necessary signal (<50Hz means more generation capacity needs to come online, , >50Hz means less generation capacity is needed) and adding a frequency-sensitive switch (to manage demand as well as supply) to a relevant modern domestic appliance would be a maximum of a few pounds (tens of pounds?). See e,g, dynamicdemand.co.uk which hasn't been updated for several years because "the market" doesn't see an opportunity to make a profit.
As the fragmentation of the railway system showed in the 20th century and is showing again in the 21st century, joined up thinking frequently isn't profitable enough for each individual player even if it's good for the bigger picture, therefore it doesn't happen.
"They can turn off a whole household, but not part of it."
Crap, expensive, unnecessary they may be, but they certainly can turn off part loads. The SMETS2 specification has what's called an "ancillary load" switch, and this is specifically designed for households to be able to connect non-essential loads that (household willing) can be disconnected at the grid operator's choice.
Regarding frequency response, there is a thriving market in this, with companies bidding in to National Grid's ancillary services market for all manner of stuff - frequency response, short term operational reserve, system balancing reserve, black start and other services. It's actually a very effective market, but nobody outside the industry pays any attention because it is both dull and complex when you get below the high level that we're talking about.
"they certainly can turn off part loads."
In premises that are wired appropriately and where loads are connected appropriately. How many of those are there at the moment? Will it be noticeably different by 2020?
You're correct in theory, but in real world terms for residential usage I stand by what I wrote.
Are business customers getting smart meters too?
Will it be noticeably different by 2020?
No. The SMETS2 specification is so limited it would have been an embarrassment in 2009. The idea of a single kill switch for auxiliary loads was always complete idiocy, but it had to be built in to tick the box and claim the "savings" that justified the programme in the then Labour government's impact assessment.
Are business customers getting smart meters too?
In theory they all should have had them by April of this year. Commercial meters don't have to be SMETS2 compliant, so they only need to be AMR (automated meter reading) types.
Of course if they wanted to cut CO2 how about forcing companies to utilize homeworking.
My company offers me about the same floor space as my study but with the under flor, office height and the above ceiling space about 3 times the volume. Add to that the hallways, massive 5 story entrance (with its single glazed glass), the toilet areas etc thats a LOT more space to be heated than my puny office at home. Then in the summer it needs cooling because no modern office seems to have opening windows. And it needs 12 lights above my desk because there is no window close enough for the guy 2 desks along who doesn't think he can read his notes and whose lights are irreversibly connected to mine. Of course the company insists I am at my desk for 'core hours' which means sitting in the traffic jam for 2 hours a day (no public transport outside of about 4 big cities in the UK) . All of this contributes a massive massive amount more CO2 to the atmosphere than I could ever save with a smart meter. And why is all that needed? Because some manager doesn't think you are working if you are not in the office... even though I am typing on this forum rather than working :)
The whole scheme is a mess, in my experience. We agreed to have smart meters fitted 18 months ago. Engineer turned up, only to discover our gas system couldn't be purged in a legal manner. So we ended up with a smart electric meter and a traditional gas one.
Last month we changed energy supplier. New one can't use the old one's smart meters, so we're back to having both read manually.
Ho hum ...
(Oh, and our electricity usage didn't change one jot).
Or you could just train up a few thousand plasterers to externally insulate half-a-million cold, damp, redbrick properties in Northern England (with heat-recovery units added) to slash their energy consumption by a third.
But then you couldn't threaten to switch off a rioting populations heating remotely, could you?
Or you could just train up a few thousand plasterers to externally insulate half-a-million cold, damp, redbrick properties in Northern England
Tell me about it. Indicative cost under Energy Company Obligation for solid wall insulation is about £7k a property on average, although that average is reflective of the bias of need towards terraced housing.
So for £19bn we could actually insulate 2.7m homes with solid wall insulation, representing almost half of the solid wall housing stock we have. Simple, reliable, durable. No reason energy customers should pay the entire cost for the properties of private landlords to be improved, so if we made it a mandatory 50/50, this would pay for almost all solid wall housing stock in the UK to be improved.
No point adding heat recovery ventilation - it's expensive, offer limited benefits, often doesn't work very well, and the potential benefits will be completely lost unless you fit un-openable windows. But otherwise you're quite correct that there's far cheaper ways of saving energy than smart meters, and the whole programme should be scrapped immediately.
I have a www.smappee.com which i very very rarely now look at. The rest of the household weren't really interested in it and aside from the initial flurry of seeing what consumes when & turning off (the shredder consumed 60 watts in standby) our habits haven't really changed. Typically, new appliances use less energy in use and standby and is where we would make the savings over time, swapping a CRT TV for a Plasma / CCFL LCD saves a lot, moving to an LED LCD saves even more & Switching-mode power supplies are much better than the old transformers.
Smart meters will not have any significant impact on reducing power usage. The cost of energy will do that.
Nothing smart here... theres a meter on each radiator that a man replaces every year just before they send a massive bill, no timer on the heating, no meter for your electric...
Frankly we are (as usual) the only country in europe paying through the nose to give money to foreign companies to implement yet another idiotic eu directive.
Love it if we ever get brexit (which I doubt), would love it even more if they hung every civil servant, mp and government minister as the traitors they are (and recycled them as a source of bio energy in a proper coal/dead body fired power station.
If true I don't see why the company's wouldn't be in favour. It's all about control isn't it ? why wouldn't they want to control your supply from the comfort of their office ? It sure going to do bugger all for the consumer. If we want to meter watch then you can get kit to show you that already. And since the consumer ultimately pays for premature replacement of kit it simply isn't in their interest. When they have messed about with mine I'll end up with an expensive meter probably hidden under the stairs or maybe outside in a box, that will do no more for me than the one I already have. I think whoever is responsible for this fiasco inflicted on the powerless citizens, ought to pay for it being cancelled out of their own pocket.
I would really love to understand smart meters and why the hell I would want something that consumes electricity in an apparent attempt to help me save it?
If I need a light to read I will put it on. If it has a 60w bulb with a proper filament it will come on straight away, if it is one of those modern pathetic things I will have got bored and gone to sleep before it is bright enough for me to read.. guess what I won't change my bulbs anytime soon.
If I need to wash some clothes (I do sometimes just to make it look good) then I will use my washing machine. If it should break down I will repair it. What I will NOT be doing is rushing off to buy a modern washing machine that doesn't fill with cold water therefore has to use electric to heat the water (my house uses gas... cheaper and better than electricity... think logically, to get electricity to heat the water I burn gas in a large power plant to heat water, use that to turn turbines, generate electricity, lose some of it heating the power lines and then use it to heat water... bizarre when the power plant is then trying to cool the water it already heated... .dumb). But that aside, I won't look at the electric meter and ponder rushing out to buy a new machine, or get the shop to install 3 or 4 so I can test them against each other. Nor will I wait until some inconvenient time because I need the clean clothes to go to the pub... not while I am at the pub.
If I want to watch TV then I guess I would first have to buy one, but if I did already have one the tv shows are on at fixed times... no point in telling me how much the electric is costing
I use a gas cooker, but if I were living in a house with electric the smart meter isn't going to control how and when I am hungry or when my guests arrive.
This is technology for technologies sake and no practical use at all.
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