Yet Another Cycling Forum

General Category => The Knowledge => OT Knowledge => Topic started by: Martin109 on 22 May, 2019, 02:53:35 pm

Title: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Martin109 on 22 May, 2019, 02:53:35 pm
I am considering having one of these fitted, perhaps reviewing my scepticism, as I had previously thought that such a unit would be connected to my broadband, thus involving me in the 'internet of things', which I view with mistrust.  However, the lady from the electricity people said they send data direct to themselves.  How does this happen?  Was I naive to think broadband was involved?  Sometimes I'm a bear of very little brain.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 22 May, 2019, 03:00:13 pm
Mobile telephony, your honour. You can even get a good signal in Hell.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Martin109 on 22 May, 2019, 03:06:12 pm
Ah.. I see.  I dread to think what their phone bill's going to be, sending info about my electricity usage every few minutes 24/7!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 22 May, 2019, 03:08:06 pm
Beware the smart people speak with forked tongue.  Worth asking Mr Google a few questions as there are loads of issues floating around:  not compatible if you want to change supplier; simply does not work etc. - especially the network transmission.   

And of course the "it'll save you money" is a bit devious .... what it does is show you how much energy you are using -  and for you to turn it down and save money.

The bit about reading your meters (or not having to) which is a benefit - is easily solved as quite a few of the energy companies have a website/app for you to read meters and send figures to get actual bills (I pop out to my garage once a month, smartphone in hand, to read the meters and by the time I get back in the house I have an email from British Gas with the reading and the amount.)

My advice would be to wait for a while (probably quite a long one)

Rob
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: fuaran on 22 May, 2019, 03:16:07 pm
Ah.. I see.  I dread to think what their phone bill's going to be, sending info about my electricity usage every few minutes 24/7!
It is not much data. If it just needs to send your current meter reading, it should only be about 1KB each time. So maybe 50MB a month, which doesn't cost much. Much cheaper than sending a person round to read the meter.

In the northern half of the UK, it is using a separate network. So it doesn't use the mobile signal anyway.

The smart meters also have a separate "home area network". They use this to transmit from the meter to a home display. This is based on Zigbee, so separate from any home wifi you use.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Edd on 22 May, 2019, 03:33:21 pm
Beware the smart people speak with forked tongue.  Worth asking Mr Google a few questions as there are loads of issues floating around:  not compatible if you want to change supplier; simply does not work etc. - especially the network transmission.   

And of course the "it'll save you money" is a bit devious .... what it does is show you how much energy you are using -  and for you to turn it down and save money.

The bit about reading your meters (or not having to) which is a benefit - is easily solved as quite a few of the energy companies have a website/app for you to read meters and send figures to get actual bills (I pop out to my garage once a month, smartphone in hand, to read the meters and by the time I get back in the house I have an email from British Gas with the reading and the amount.)

My advice would be to wait for a while (probably quite a long one)

Rob

I'm looking at getting one installed but only after I've been assured that they are the second generation so don't go dumb when you switch supplier (which I used to do a lot, but have not needed to of late). In the installation questionnaire that they sent me, they did mention issues if your gas and elec meters are more than 10m apart (which most aren't) and some old meters are not compatible.
In terms of saving money, I agree with the above, but I'm looking at possibly going on a tariff with the same supplier who takes readings regular readings for differential day/night pricing, which may save us money (no switching anything on until after midnight! dinner at 1am, and showers before 6am!)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 22 May, 2019, 03:44:47 pm
We don't have a smart meter.  A little while ago when I was investigating who to switch to I noticed that some providers were requiring a sm with a new deal.  I spoke to one major company to ask if the Smart meters were SMETS2, and they said they were rolling them out but not in all areas, so could not guarantee we wouldn't end up with a SMETS1.  In the end went with a provider which didn't have any sm clause.  Apparently... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/14/two-million-smart-meters-not-working-research-suggests/  (...in 'dumb' mode.)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 22 May, 2019, 03:47:32 pm
The smart meters also have a separate "home area network". They use this to transmit from the meter to a home display. This is based on Zigbee, so separate from any home wifi you use.

Not heard of Zigbee in years, around 2003 IIRC.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 22 May, 2019, 04:02:14 pm
As has been said above the 'no more estimated bills' bit adds no value as you just submit your own readings when required.

Flexible tariffs and load shifting will help consumers to save money if they work at it, but not all suppliers offer these. 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: De Sisti on 22 May, 2019, 04:09:15 pm
Discussed at length here.
https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=109499.msg2323040#msg2323040 (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=109499.msg2323040#msg2323040)

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 22 May, 2019, 04:11:35 pm
As has been said above the 'no more estimated bills' bit adds no value as you just submit your own readings when required.

Flexible tariffs and load shifting will help consumers to save money if they work at it, but not all suppliers offer these.

Submitting your own readings will ultimately at some point require a validated reading.
Taking photos of the meter with some sort of unique tamper proof identifier attached would be the non-smart way of doing similar to the smart meter in terms of billing which is providing the supplier with a validated figure of usage.
 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 22 May, 2019, 05:59:10 pm
As has been said above the 'no more estimated bills' bit adds no value as you just submit your own readings when required.

Flexible tariffs and load shifting will help consumers to save money if they work at it, but not all suppliers offer these.

Submitting your own readings will ultimately at some point require a validated reading.
Taking photos of the meter with some sort of unique tamper proof identifier attached would be the non-smart way of doing similar to the smart meter in terms of billing which is providing the supplier with a validated figure of usage.

.. yep, the validated reading is OK - but we get gas and electric from British Gas (and read the meters etc each month) - but we've had the meters read in the last month by, guess what, two different meter reading persons on behalf of our single supplier!

Rob
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 22 May, 2019, 09:25:11 pm
Ah.. I see.  I dread to think what their phone bill's going to be, sending info about my electricity usage every few minutes 24/7!

Well, it's their bill, not yours. They either use GSM or mesh with nearby meters until they find a suitable GSM link. It's not much information and they're not paying by the gigabyte, it's a dedicated system.

I'm not against them because I'm lazy and reading the meter means squirrelling in the dark cupboard of wires under the stairs and it'd be interesting to see what we're actually using rather than getting the bill and thinking 'how fucking much?'

But I've not bothered because the customer services at British Gas couldn't tell me whether we'd get the old or newer smart meters (well, they didn't know they were two sorts) and I can't be arsed having them fitted twice when we eventually get annoyed enough with BG to move.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: videoman on 22 May, 2019, 09:59:46 pm
We had gas and electric meters fitted a couple of years ago but changed supplier last October so I am now back to supplying meter readings again, what a complete waste of money which the consumer will end up paying the bill for.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andytheflyer on 23 May, 2019, 07:30:02 pm
We had gas and electric meters fitted a couple of years ago but changed supplier last October so I am now back to supplying meter readings again, what a complete waste of money which the consumer will end up paying the bill for.
Which is exactly why I've just told Scottish Power to get stuffed, when they wanted to know why I'd declined their kind offer to have an SM fitted.  I read the meters every quarter and email them the data - takes all of 5 mins. I have a monitor on the hall wall next to the kitchen door so I can immediately see when SWMBO has left on something she should not have, and I can send the naughty schoolgirl upstairs to turn off the fan heater in the music room.

I was constructive in my response: when you can guarantee an SM2 meter, and that the data comms will work, you can fit a meter.  No?  Thought not. Sod off then.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Martin109 on 23 May, 2019, 07:40:47 pm
I was constructive in my response: when you can guarantee an SM2 meter, and that the data comms will work, you can fit a meter.  No?  Thought not. Sod off then.

Maybe I should take that approach then!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 23 May, 2019, 07:49:33 pm
I'm liking our not-that-smart smart meters because they mean I don't have to play bike-and-camping-kit Sokoban in order to read the meters.  Which means we pay for what we use, rather than what the random number generator comes up with, and fewer dodgy blokes turning up at awkward times expecting us to do some spontaneous heavy lifting.  (Or worse, damaging bikes by attempting it themselves, when I'm not in and barakta isn't capable.)

A secondary benefit is knowing what we're using.  Not because of the smart display unit thing (which is very cumulative-money-oriented and largely a waste of electrons) but because unlike our previous meter, this one has a blinkenlight on the front which I can easily interface to a microcontroller using a phototransistor and a Mk 1 bit of blutac, and generate much more informative time-series data.  You can infer a lot more from a graph like this (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=80102.msg2315671#msg2315671) than you can from an instantaneous power reading, unless you actually want to run around switching things off.

Obviously dumb meters with blinkenlights are available.  But not predictably.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wombat on 24 May, 2019, 05:59:28 pm
All reasonably modern meters, regardless of smartery, have blinkenlights.  There are some aftermarket displays that read said blinkenlights.  Both our import and export meters have these, but of course they are in different places, which is not helpful. the import meter is (surprise) in the meter cupboard, but as the export meter (which is absolutely identical to the import one) is mine, not theirs, its not allowed in their box.  I do know exactly how much I'm currently generating, and a daily/monthly/annual record of generation wherever I am in the world, but can I find out how much I'm using, or have used today, no I bloody can't! Thanks, you fumbling arseholes of the Energy Retail Association who completely fumbled the standards for smart meters, meaning I can't have one...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wombat on 25 May, 2019, 06:59:43 pm
And as a follow-on to this, I received my electricity bill (online) and thought that the cheapest tariff that I'm on seemed to be more expensive than the standard tariff that I was on temporarily.  So I had a whinge at SSE, also about still having my address wrong, then went back online to change my tariff to the new cheapest one.  All went very simply, got a message that I was now on the new tariff, with a footnote under "what happens next".  It said this tariff means you need to have a smart meter.  Go on then, give me one, as I've asked for one half a dozen times and you keep telling me I can't have one because I'm awkward enough to have solar PV.  This could be mildly interesting, as I'd like to see them try to tell me I can't have the cheapest tariff because they are too bloody incompetent to give me a smart meter...  I do like a bit of sport with some organisations.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wombat on 16 November, 2019, 11:18:09 am
Well, that was fun... or not.

In August I eventually got a date for an installation of a new shiny SMETS2 smart meter, that can cope with me having solar PV.  The date was Tuesday 12th November, and they kept sending me phone messages twice a week since August, reminding me of the installation date, including one sent the day before the installation.

Well, do you think I now have a smart meter, it being the 16th of November?  Of course I bloody haven't, because they found a new way to screw up. 

Apparently the mobile phone signal isn't reliable enough without a 5 metre high aerial which they don't want to provide.  Actually where the meter is, there is a fairly consistent Vodafone signal, but of course they use EE.  So why did they only realise this the morning of the appointment?  The head of customer services insists its because they do repeated phone signal checks (how, without actually visiting my house?) right up the the installation time.

They say I will probably have to wait a year or so to see if the phone signal improves, but as the phone companies seem hellbent on providing 5G to city dwellers who already have pretty damn fast 4G, rather than actually providing a phone network that serves the whole UK, I'm not holding my breath.

So why didn't the smart metering standard cover communication in rural areas, particularly as my area has full fibre broadband (paid for by the welsh Govt and the EU, NOT bloody BT/Openretch).

I'm not giving up on this, but Ofgem are a bunch of wasters who don't actually want to do their job, and refuse to speak to common members of the public (it was hard enough dealing with them at work).  This reinforces my view that the mobile phone companies should be legally prevented from installing ANY 5G infrastructure until they have finished providing a basic mobile signal to the entire UK.  If OFGEM would talk to OFCOM, and both of them would actually do the job of serving the people of the country, I might get somewhere.

The fight goes on...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 16 November, 2019, 01:30:27 pm
Coincidence that this thread has reappeared today - there is a possibility that Mr British Gas will be installing SmartMeters for gas and electric in our house this coming Monday.

I have made it very clear that if the bloke turns up and the meters aren't SMETS2 he will be sent away, no ifs, no buts,  We'll see.

Meter reading and recording by me each month will continue .... and Mrs robgul will be introduced to the in-the-house display unit  in an effort to encourage use of light switches  ::-)

Rob
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Jaded on 16 November, 2019, 06:11:45 pm
Scottish Power seem to have stopped asking me to consider a smart meter.

Perhaps having to give me another £50* has put them off.

Two cancelled appointments means they owe me £50 twice. They’ve not actually paid, of course. That would require them to know their arse from their elbow.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 16 November, 2019, 06:29:16 pm
My new EDF tariff requires me to have a smart meter fitted and they are already quite persistent.  I probably should get one so that I understand the conversations I have at work.

The only issue I have now is that I have just accepted an offer on the house.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Basil on 16 November, 2019, 07:12:58 pm

I have made it very clear that if the bloke turns up and the meters aren't SMETS2 he will be sent away, no ifs, no buts,  We'll see.



How will you know whether it is gen 2 or 1?  Other than ask the fitter and believe them.
Interested, as I may give in and get one sooner or later.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 16 November, 2019, 07:14:16 pm
Wondering if there's some way we can get the smart meter people and the TV licence people to chase each other in some sort of feedback loop...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 16 November, 2019, 07:15:10 pm
Still avoiding them.  We joined AVRO energy - on decent rates, before they got into trouble over smart meters back in May...

Quote
Small energy firm Avro Energy has been banned from taking on new customers because it hasn't joined the national smart meter network.

Update: Avro Energy says the ban has now been lifted.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Socks on 16 November, 2019, 07:39:24 pm
We had smart meters installed yesterday.  Only after I had ignored marketing emails for the last year or two, and received confirmation to a direct question confirming that SMETS 2 would be installed.

As I understand it they are paid for by a general charge on utility bills, so (as long as you have a reliable mobile signal) might as well sign up.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andytheflyer on 17 November, 2019, 04:52:27 pm
We had smart meters installed yesterday.  Only after I had ignored marketing emails for the last year or two, and received confirmation to a direct question confirming that SMETS 2 would be installed.

As I understand it they are paid for by a general charge on utility bills, so (as long as you have a reliable mobile signal) might as well sign up.
I've been fobbing off Scottish Power's emails for months.  Then, last week, someone actually rang me to make an appointment to fit a Smart Meter.  I told him that I didn't want one unless he could guarantee it would be SMETS2, and it would communicate with our iffy you-can-have-Vodafone-if-you-go-to-the-upstairs-front-bedroom, rural mobile signal.  He said it would.  I told him that I didn't believe him. The conversation then deteriorated somewhat and I accused him of fobbing us off with substandard, ill-thought-out technology that we as consumers have to pay for.  He then hung up on me. 

I win.  Again.....
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: fuaran on 17 November, 2019, 05:24:56 pm
In Scotland and the northern parts of England, they use a separate radio network. So doesn't need a mobile phone signal. Maybe better coverage.

Apparently they can also work in a mesh mode. ie it relays the signal through your neighbours meter, until it gets to one with a network connection. So it could improve, as more people get them installed.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 17 November, 2019, 08:11:20 pm

I have made it very clear that if the bloke turns up and the meters aren't SMETS2 he will be sent away, no ifs, no buts,  We'll see.



How will you know whether it is gen 2 or 1?  Other than ask the fitter and believe them.
Interested, as I may give in and get one sooner or later.

I am informed that the man will hve some paperwork which I shall examine before letting him start work, ask the man if it doesn't say SMETS2 and then annotate his paperwork with "this is a SMETS2 installation" . . . that way I have "something to show the judge" should that be necessary.

Rob

MORE on Monday AM : man has just turned up - despite my paperwork saying both meters his says just gas to do - he's checking with his HQ on whether he can do both.  AND he says he has SMETS2 meters in the van (now preparing for no heating, lighting or PC for a while - they say up to 2 hours or so)

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wombat on 18 November, 2019, 12:20:13 pm
In Scotland and the northern parts of England, they use a separate radio network. So doesn't need a mobile phone signal. Maybe better coverage.

Apparently they can also work in a mesh mode. ie it relays the signal through your neighbours meter, until it gets to one with a network connection. So it could improve, as more people get them installed.

That sounds promising, but it relies on a) having neighbours with smart meters (presumably on the same suppliers?)
 and b) having neighbours at all...

I wonder what the range of them is, between meshed meters.


We have a next door neighbour one side (which is about 30 metres away, and they are not with the same supplier).  I imagine they have resisted a smart meter because a) they are Jehovah's witnesses, and b) they are convinced wifi fries their grandchildrens brains. Apart from these oddities, they are perfect decent folk, and share vegetables, and take in parcels, etc.

Other than that, the nearest neighbour is about 400 metres away, and the next one, about twice that in the other direction.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 18 November, 2019, 12:22:08 pm
I wonder what the range of them is, between meshed meters.

Tens of metres for Zigbee.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tim Hall on 18 November, 2019, 01:29:02 pm


That sounds promising, but it relies on a) having neighbours with smart meters (presumably on the same suppliers?)

AIUI meshed meters don't have to be the same supplier. That's part of the rationale of SMETS2 meters - they don't care which supplier.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tim Hall on 18 November, 2019, 01:40:10 pm
I wonder what the range of them is, between meshed meters.

Tens of metres for Zigbee.

According to this page https://www.smartme.co.uk/technical.html (https://www.smartme.co.uk/technical.html) (I make no claims for its authenticity and know very little about this stuff) Zigbee is for communication within a property:
Quote
The Home Area network or HAN is a bit like your home broadband wireless network and will be used to communicate between the meters, the In Home Display (previously known as Smart Meter Display or Home Energy Monitor) and other items as and when they become available. However where the meter is a long way from the location of the In Home Display, or thick walls are in the way, the current technology (Zigbee at 2.4GHz) won't work. This could be the case for up to 30% of properties.

A different communications method (Zigbee 868MHz) will improve this for about 3.5% of properties but that still leave a large number for whom Smart Meters won't work. Zigbee 868MHz should be available some time in 2018.
Meshing is for comms between your house and (eventually) the Power company.

Quote
The Wide Area Network or WAN is the name given to the communications network between the meters and the company responsible for collecting the data and passing it on to other businesses such as suppliers. This company will usually be the DCC (Data Communications Company) which the government has set up especially for this role supporting the final SMETS2 meters. Depending on the Communications Service Provider, which varies by areas of the UK, the technology can change depending on what works best in a local area. Sometimes your meter will communicate directly with DCC and sometimes it will talk through the meters around you to reach a particular meter which has direct communications with DCC. This form of communications looks like a mesh when you draw out the possible links between meters and is therefore known as a Mesh network.
Meter Alerts
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 18 November, 2019, 04:33:18 pm

I have made it very clear that if the bloke turns up and the meters aren't SMETS2 he will be sent away, no ifs, no buts,  We'll see.



How will you know whether it is gen 2 or 1?  Other than ask the fitter and believe them.
Interested, as I may give in and get one sooner or later.

I am informed that the man will hve some paperwork which I shall examine before letting him start work, ask the man if it doesn't say SMETS2 and then annotate his paperwork with "this is a SMETS2 installation" . . . that way I have "something to show the judge" should that be necessary.

Rob

MORE on Monday AM : man has just turned up - despite my paperwork saying both meters his says just gas to do - he's checking with his HQ on whether he can do both.  AND he says he has SMETS2 meters in the van (now preparing for no heating, lighting or PC for a while - they say up to 2 hours or so)

Man got the OK to do both meters - did all the checks, pulled the main fuse and took the cover off the existing electric meter - to find that one of the screws holding the incoming cable in the clamp had sheared across the screwdriver slot so that it couldn't be undone . . . he reckoned it was over-torqued when the meter was replaced about 10 years ago. 

Of course, the task of sorting it wasn't in his remit so he had to report a fault for Western Power to come out and release the incoming terminal block (on the live side) to be able to get the meter off and fit a new (old style) meter before British Gas comes back to fit the SmartMeter.  Oh joy. 

The only upside of all this is that I was forced to tidy and rearrange the garage/workshop so that the meters were accessible.

Rob
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 20 November, 2019, 11:13:55 am
We had gas and electric meters fitted a couple of years ago but changed supplier last October so I am now back to supplying meter readings again, what a complete waste of money which the consumer will end up paying the bill for.

I refuse to have a smart meter.  Lots of pressure from my last supplier but No!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Adam on 20 November, 2019, 10:34:01 pm
Since buying shop premises 2 months ago, I've been regularly chasing Opus about the smart meters I was promised when I signed up.  Apparently they've got no idea when they'll be installed. 

Luddites.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 17 February, 2020, 11:55:33 am
We've just requested to switch to EDF's EV tariff. This requires that you have an EV, and is either 12.5p/unit if you don't have a smart meter, or 8p for 10h overnight (9pm->7am), and ~19p at other times, plus 8p from Friday 9pm right through until Monday 7am. All washing etc at the weekend then?

We have a smart meter. Last year I tried to switch us over to the dual rate tariff, but was told no, as our meter was SMETS1 and they would not replace it. So we spoke to British Gas, who also have an EV tariff but with a higher night rate; they were the original supplier when we got the smart meter. I assumed they'd be able to use it. Nope... insane. But they said they would install a new smart meter. This seems to be SMETS2 from what I can tell (looking up model and variant online).

EDF recently emailed to say we could have the 12.5p flat rate - this didn't exist back when we first spoke to them - as a lot of people complained about not being able to have an EV tariff. We decided to try again, thinking that we'd get the split rate. No, they still think our meter is SMETS1. They will us switch to the split rate when our meter is upgraded to SMETS2 in the future.

I am not sure if EDF's info is out of date, or if the meter is really SMETS1 despite my online research suggesting it's SMETS2. I'm hoping this is their error as the split rate will save us money (even so, a flat 12.5p/unit is already going to save us money as it's almost as low as our current night rate).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 17 February, 2020, 12:07:19 pm

I got notified recently that the local power company wants to install a smart gas meter in the flat.

It took me way too long trying to work out wtf smart gas is, before I realised what they were trying to do...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 17 February, 2020, 12:45:09 pm
It took me way too long trying to work out wtf smart gas is

I think I saw that in Doctor Who.  Beware of Macra.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 17 February, 2020, 04:54:50 pm
To update my experience - after a couple "not my job guv" visits a British Gas guy came and broke away the plastic cup around the sheared screw, used my pump pliers to release and fitted noth electric and gas meters (SMETS 2) - that was in mid-December . . . . . we're now moving house at the end of this week and the new house has old-style meters .... and the incumbent supplier (AVRO0 doesn't do smart meters at the moment . . . . that said a quick calculate suggests that the costs are quite a bit lower than we're paying now so I'll just read the meters and email them . . . . unless I get a better deal from British Gas as we're deserting them.

All good fun  . . . . but don't get me started on getting BT to move our phone line and broadband to the new place . . .  it's just 1.46km away (and nearer to the phone exchange - which is actually on the top floor of a Premier Inn in the centre of town) - they need the existing BT user at the new house to cease the line before we can order the change . . . . that then takes 3 days (and that's fastracked as it's a business broadband deal)   Aaaaargh!

Rob
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 23 February, 2020, 08:46:03 pm
Mine was fitted while I was with Ovo, ceased to work when I changed to npower, and resumed working when I changed to Tonik.  What a fiasco!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Jaded on 23 February, 2020, 09:38:29 pm
Because Scottish Power messed me up on Smart Meters three times, and offered me £50 each time but never paid it, I've left them for another supplier, which costs the same
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 28 February, 2020, 05:17:49 pm
Ecotricity phoned me a couple of days ago to offer a smart meter. They are booked in to install it/them next Friday.

When we signed up with Ecotricity 6 years ago they didn’t offer a smart meter, even though SSE, who previously supplied us, did.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 14 March, 2020, 12:01:33 pm
EDF recently emailed to say we could have the 12.5p flat rate - this didn't exist back when we first spoke to them - as a lot of people complained about not being able to have an EV tariff. We decided to try again, thinking that we'd get the split rate. No, they still think our meter is SMETS1. They will us switch to the split rate when our meter is upgraded to SMETS2 in the future.

I am not sure if EDF's info is out of date, or if the meter is really SMETS1 despite my online research suggesting it's SMETS2. I'm hoping this is their error as the split rate will save us money (even so, a flat 12.5p/unit is already going to save us money as it's almost as low as our current night rate).

So our switch seems to have happened and yes the smart meter is sending data to EDF despite their claim it was not compatible. We seem to be on the 12.5p flat rate.  This should change to the 8p at night rate once everything is up and running. For now I’m trying to charge the car on sunny days as there’s no penalty when the sun goes in. With the split rate I’ll have to be more careful as you can end up spending more if not careful.

What a palaver. Should never have needed to change the meter to be able to switch tariff.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 14 March, 2020, 07:22:05 pm
EDF recently emailed to say we could have the 12.5p flat rate - this didn't exist back when we first spoke to them - as a lot of people complained about not being able to have an EV tariff. We decided to try again, thinking that we'd get the split rate. No, they still think our meter is SMETS1. They will us switch to the split rate when our meter is upgraded to SMETS2 in the future.

I am not sure if EDF's info is out of date, or if the meter is really SMETS1 despite my online research suggesting it's SMETS2. I'm hoping this is their error as the split rate will save us money (even so, a flat 12.5p/unit is already going to save us money as it's almost as low as our current night rate).

So our switch seems to have happened and yes the smart meter is sending data to EDF despite their claim it was not compatible. We seem to be on the 12.5p flat rate.  This should change to the 8p at night rate once everything is up and running. For now I’m trying to charge the car on sunny days as there’s no penalty when the sun goes in. With the split rate I’ll have to be more careful as you can end up spending more if not careful.

What a palaver. Should never have needed to change the meter to be able to switch tariff.

Have you seen the Octopus EV tariff at 5p a unit off-peak?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 14 March, 2020, 07:51:33 pm
Have you seen the Octopus EV tariff at 5p a unit off-peak?

Yes, a colleague mentioned it some time back. I think we will benefit more from the EDF rate (it's 9pm-7am weeknights and 9pm Friday until 7am Monday over the whole weekend). There is probably not much in it but the number of hours of cheap rate on EDF probably swing it in their favour for our usage, and particularly because we will avoid peak rate use for much of the time with the solar panels.





Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 15 March, 2020, 08:42:58 pm
We have decided to stick with Ecotricity. I have read good things about Dale Vince helping XR and promising funds when the government gets taken to court by environmentalists.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: StevieB on 16 March, 2020, 12:53:05 am
A little bit of background...

First, if you think Ofgen, and Ofcom, and all the other Ofs, are there to protect the interest of consumers of vital amenities, please ask yourself the question: Who regulates the regulators? Answer, the Government. So please give them a bit of slack - they spend most of their time rushing to implement one headline-grabbing half-baked scheme after another...

I'd don't know the current state of play, but here is how things were set up approx 10 years ago (when smart metres were first introduced)... Ofgem forces the big six energy companies (and only them, cause that is only fair!) to add an extra ~5% on all their bills (ie. on all your bills) and said "We are going to give this money back IF you install energy saving equipment/materials into peoples' homes."

Of course that allows the Government to go "Look at all the amazing things we are doing to save the environment!" without having to spend any of their money, or explaining that actually the money is coming directly from consumers...

But it is totally crazee... I mean energy saving is not the core competence of the energy companies, not something close to their hearts, not really in their best interests! Still money is money, so they get some contractors to stick a smart meter on your wall (who cares if it works!), or throw some insulation in your loft - low lying fruit!

So I hope that helps to explain the mess... Yes, there are technical problems, but after 10 years those could have been sorted out had there been some management. Instead responsibility is shared between Government always looking for a quick-fix with no long term commitment, large companies who want to make a profit (not unreasonably IMO), and in between is some not-for-profit organisation which was set up to collect and distribute all the data coming from the smart meters - I've never heard of them but I reckon they don't stand much of a chance!!

In conclusion - smart meters are good in theory, it is the implementation which has been poor.

Should you get one? It won't hurt you, but it might not benefit you either!

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 16 March, 2020, 07:01:21 am
Well that was a bit of a giggle.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: StevieB on 16 March, 2020, 01:42:45 pm
Yea,
Sorry,
I know took much about this stuff...
I need to forget more...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 16 March, 2020, 02:15:14 pm
Yea,
Sorry,
I know took much about this stuff...
I need to forget more...

Would be nice if you added a bit of detail.

Are you referring to :-

Renewables Obligation
Warm Home Discount
Energy Company Obligation
Smart Meter Levies
Feed in Tariff Levy (probably not)

These are all levied on all suppliers not just the big 6 (incidentally an outdated term since Ovo bought the SSE supply wing).   Agreed WHD only kicks in above 250k supply points.  Bulb, Octopus and Ovo are all over 1m customers. 

I’m not quite sure who the data collecting body that you’ve never heard of are - Elexon ?

I agree that simply installing a smart meter doesn’t reduce consumption.  You have to take the data and then make informed decisions.  This is where the adverts are wrong.  Suppliers need to roll the meters out as required but then really use what they do to offer cleverer tariffs and improve their balancing.   I also agree that Ofgem just run around trying to fill holes rather than setting strategies.

It is a huge piece of misinformation that suppliers make a tonne of money.  Bulb lost £130m last year and Octopus £30m.  SSE sold their supply book and npower have been trying to sell theirs for 2 years.  Centrica’s share price is a fraction of what it used to be.  Ecotricity are loss making and I question their authenticity.  15 suppliers have gone out of business in the last year.  The 2 councils that entered the energy supply sector have done a really poor job.


Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: StevieB on 19 March, 2020, 12:03:09 am

Would be nice if you added a bit of detail.


Probably just as well I didn't!

I left this all behind years ago...

but at that time the BIG ONE was called 'Green Deal'...
Now that I look at their Web site I see all kinds of:

 > insulation
 > heating
 > draught-proofing
 > double glazing
 > renewable energy generation

but not Smart Meters!

Actually, it sort of makes sense for them to be part of a separate scheme - the supply companies are a bit sensitive about people fiddling with their meters. (It is not a difficult job, and they will let subcontractors do it after a bit of vetting and training...)

And things have obviously changed slightly...

However, the point I was trying to make is that the 'solution' depends on several players, who were playing different games, which is why I am not surprised the roll-out has taken much longer than expected. (Nor am I surprised you can list 4~5 schemes which might apply, might overlap, might...)

To put it another way - the problem of getting one 'box' to talk to another 'box' is much compounded when those boxes are sitting in different systems in different organisations, whose goals and objectives don't align terribly well (and mostly competitors who are not in the habit of collaborating with each other).

I'm sure you have more accurate and up-to-date information than me, but you are right... there are a lot of things the public are not aware of...

For starters - the meter and the isolation switch/fuse are the only parts of the system the 'supply' companies have responsibility for, the wires into your house belong to you, the wires into the meter belong to the 'distribution' companies - who are strictly kept separate to the supply companies.

The supply companies, ie. those companies which we as customers interact with (if you can call it that!) are simply billing companies - they need to track how much electricity you consume and bill you accordingly. That is all. Simple (you would think!).

Some people may not like the big supermarkets, like Tesco and Sainburys, but in terms of getting food from their suppliers and onto their shelves, they are incredibly efficient. In a similar way, the supply companies are also incredibly efficient - with millions of customers they cannot afford to screw it up. (They have done in the past when updating their systems, and it was not pretty!)

To be efficient they need efficient systems - ones which are not very flexible... (But equally you won't get far asking a supermarket for a pint of milk instead of a litre... if you see what I mean.)

The total number of supply companies around show the 'barriers to entry' have been removed. As many are going out of business, that shows the market is efficient. It also shows, as you say, there is not a lot of easy profits around in the business.

Yes, Centrica share price has declined from over 400p in 2012 to under 40p today - that would destroy most companies, yet they are largely the same company doing the same thing! It is their perceived ability to make profits in the future which has declined.

Consumers have complained - that has been picked up by the press who have kicked the government into doing something, they have kicked Ofgen who have kicked the supply companies.

What is not obvious is the amount of red tape involved - the companies have very little freedom of movement. For eg. if you compare the bills from two different companies I'll guarantee they are very similar in layout and format, often using identical words or phrases - that is because it is nearly all mandated by Ofgen. (Whether or not you find the information useful I'll leave to you to decide.)


Regarding the smart meters themselves - they have a memory sufficiently large to hold several days of readings, which they squirt out at night as a data stream when the network is idle anyway - so it does not cost much. (And seems there are other options now.)
 
But to work, there must be an agreement with a network carrier and bulk purchase SIM cards, so the installer is unlikely to have a selection of networks s/he can try out for signal strength at the time of installation.

For the internal comms, I am not sure zigbee would be chosen again if starting today, but obviously there is a certain amount of momentum given the 16 million systems already installed.
 
To be fair - all those low power rf systems have strengths and weaknesses. It is not just operating distances (and remember there can be big differences between optimum and non-optimum conditions), but also security, AND interference - in the 2.4 GHz band also sits wi-fi, bluetooth and your microwave oven for eg!

You are also totally right - the smart meters are part of a bigger picture - for suppliers to "offer cleverer tariffs and improve their balancing." That is because smart meters are more of less constantly monitoring the supply (please don't quote me, but it is something like each one minute reading is an average over that time span - which is very different from monthly (give or take!) readings!)

That is hugely important because the ability to charge different tariffs at different times of the day is a way of lowering peak demand by shifting when people charge their electric cars, for example.

The alternative is upgrading the electric supply network to meet the perceived rise in demand, which is mega expensive.

It is an industry wide problem, which no one wants to tackle, least of all the suppliers who, as you point out are already well screwed and don't have the resources to even think about it.

 A lot of people will be happy to see the supply companies killed off, but that is not a solution. And a lot of people don't realise that a company need to make a profit in order to breathe - to make improvements. And very few people realise an efficient electricity supply is a core part of the low-carbon, green future they all want.

Apologies for waffling on and on!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 20 March, 2020, 09:00:43 pm
And 2 suppliers go bust in the last 2 days.

Without wanting to go all COVID-19 in another thread, what are seeing at the moment is industrial demand coming down but domestic demand coming up as people wfh. Half hourly metering is already in place in business so suppliers see the change in consumption and can adjust for it.  Because a lot of domestic meters are still quarterly read the supplier will not be a able to adjust their forecasts quickly enough.  Smart metering would offer daily consumption profiling allowing the supplier to react more quickly.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: nicknack on 20 March, 2020, 09:43:21 pm
We had an appointment for smart meter installation a month or so ago. The chap turned up at the allotted hour, took one look at the location of our current meter and stated there was no way he could get a new meter in there. He then left.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 24 March, 2020, 04:25:02 pm
Something’s up with my internal monitor.  It’s picking up gas data but not electricity.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Bolt on 24 March, 2020, 11:42:39 pm
Something’s up with my internal monitor.  It’s picking up gas data but not electricity.
Mines been doing the same, but if I press the "flame/spark" button the combined usage is shown as normal.  It seems to be resetting itself to gas reading only overnight ???
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 11 May, 2020, 09:01:39 am

Well I now have a smart gas meter, and a electricity smart meter.

Noone can tell me what smart gas is...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 11 May, 2020, 08:44:17 pm

We now have a smart meter.

And in the first 4 hours of it's use, pulled over 700kw, constantly... on a supply that can do max 16kw... I am now searching the flat to find which usb wall wart is going white hot and starting to produce plasma...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 11 May, 2020, 08:54:36 pm
I am now searching the flat to find which usb wall wart is going white hot and starting to produce plasma...

The pink one.  </big_clive>
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 11 May, 2020, 10:09:09 pm

Well I now have a smart gas meter, and a electricity smart meter.

Noone can tell me what smart gas is...

J
Smart gas is the perfectly timed fart.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Davef on 11 May, 2020, 10:35:32 pm

Well I now have a smart gas meter, and a electricity smart meter.

Noone can tell me what smart gas is...

J
Read “the black cloud” by Fred hoyle.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 18 July, 2020, 10:22:38 pm
"Oh for fuck's sake!" said Kim, the words coming easily through force of habit.

I've just discovered, after a mildly sarcastic exchange with a long-suffering customer service monkey, that our smart meters have never actually provided any data, and it's been purely estimated readings since I stopped doing them manually in 2017

That I didn't pick it up is down to a combination of poor UI on the Robin Hood website[1], a surprisingly accurate estimation algorithm[2], and my general naivety that something could fuck up that badly.   :facepalm:

It's particularly irksome that their remote energy display waste-of-time doesn't allow you to access the raw counter readings like the old nPower one did, so I'm reduced to poking the gas meter with a inanimate carbon rod pokey thing while peering through an oriface with a torch, because it's slightly less effort than moving all the camping kit.



[1] Top tip: If you provide a table of plausible meter readings with status "Accepted" in the meter readings history, we're going to think they're meter readings, not estimates.
[2] Unlike nPower, who just called rand()
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 18 July, 2020, 11:14:35 pm
That's interesting. We've had a few "estimated" readings since the smart meter was installed and I wondered why, given that the machine is supposed to be sending them data every 30 minutes.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 18 July, 2020, 11:58:12 pm
EDF tried to issue our first bill this week. Total fail; they've decided there's a discrepancy between the old supplier's closing reading and EDF's opening reading. Given they went through the process of agreeing this with British Gas and said it was sorted two months ago, this is irksome. They're quoting 6-8 weeks for this process (same as last time). Such ineptitude.

They've also managed to break our access to smart meter data in the meantime (they can get readings though).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andytheflyer on 19 July, 2020, 09:12:40 am
I thank you.

All of the above merely reinforces my stance not to have an SM installed until the muppets have sorted the bugs.  What a monumental waste of time and money.  My little spy on the wall gizmo may not give me the gas consumption (only hot water anyway at this time of year) but I'll spot within minutes when the wife's left all the lights on, or she's put a fan heater on whilst doing her flute practice.

Eff off Scottish Power.  Don't bother calling me again until you've fixed the systemic issues. If I've told you once.......and still you ring me.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 19 July, 2020, 09:30:13 am
Closing off my account at the old house with EDF was straightforward and the final bill was produced with a credit and refunded.

The new house has an economy 7 meter and I have worked out that the suppliers have the 2 registers the wrong way round.  I noticed this as I moved the supply over to Octopus.   The problem is the industry is so chock full of automation that you simply can’t get this fixed.   As an example I provided readings to Octopus and explained tge situation but npower rejected those and swapped them back again which Octopus accepted.   I’m back where I started. 

I’m actually better off as I’m getting the cheap rate during the day.  I initially thought at some point they would notice and fix the problem but, having spoken to several droids, I reckon they’ll never work it out.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: orienteer on 19 July, 2020, 10:18:08 am
My current supplier (geddit?) So Energy is not offering smart meters, sensibly.

I submit readings once a month, and haven't seen a meter reader for yonks.

My electricity meter is tucked away under the kitchen sink unit, and I use an inspection camera to read it. The gas meter is outside.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 July, 2020, 11:31:27 am
At this point the main benefit of the smart meters is that the electrickery one had a Mk 1 blinkenlight on it, allowing me to monitor energy consumption with RRDtool (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=80102.msg2315671;topicseen#msg2315671).  Plenty of dumb meters also have that feature, but not the original one installed here.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 19 July, 2020, 11:35:56 am
At this point the main benefit of the smart meters is that the electrickery one had a Mk 1 blinkenlight on it, allowing me to monitor energy consumption with RRDtool (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=80102.msg2315671;topicseen#msg2315671).  Plenty of dumb meters also have that feature, but not the original one installed here.

Mine has an IR LED which puts out some sort of serial signal. My housemate is investigating the ways of measuring what it tells us. It also has the blinkenlight output option if all else fails. Tho I suspect Lianda may get grumpy if they come round to find we've taped photo diodes to it...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 July, 2020, 11:37:51 am
Ah, it's got those too - the installer used them with a PDA thing to set up the pairing of the meters.  Haven't looked to see if there's data coming out of it.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 19 July, 2020, 11:40:35 am
Ah, it's got those too - the installer used them with a PDA thing to set up the pairing of the meters.  Haven't looked to see if there's data coming out of it.

Now I'm wondering if we have the same or very similar meters. But to work out what it is would require me getting up, so that would have to wait...

We're redoing the power completely as we've gone from single phase to 3 phase, which is proving an interesting technical challenge. Trying to split a 32A hob and a 13A oven across 3 phases of 25A each...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Adam on 19 July, 2020, 02:10:07 pm
For my shop, the previous owner had Economy 7, but I've gone for a normal tariff.  They've said I can't have a smart meter for either gas or electricity.  And despite me submitting monthly readings for the last 9 months, they still sent someone round last week to read the gas meter.  Not interested in reading the electricity one though, even though it's the same provider.  Bizarre.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mike J on 19 July, 2020, 06:09:56 pm
They do like to pester when you tell them you don't want one.  "It'll save you doing quarterly readings", I'm already doing that anyway.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 20 July, 2020, 08:00:16 am
For my shop, the previous owner had Economy 7, but I've gone for a normal tariff.  They've said I can't have a smart meter for either gas or electricity.  And despite me submitting monthly readings for the last 9 months, they still sent someone round last week to read the gas meter.  Not interested in reading the electricity one though, even though it's the same provider.  Bizarre.

There’s a requirement in the (gas) industry code to do an independent reading every 2 years.  Gives them a chance to do a quick inspection at the same time.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 20 July, 2020, 10:32:51 am
Same for electricity IME. They want to do a reading themselves every two years.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: fd3 on 22 July, 2020, 12:07:54 am
Got a text stating that (not offering to) we would be getting a smart meter.  I'm happily ignoring this and hoping it goes away.  We've been with supplier for about a year now and their algorithm is close enough to what the meter readings actually say that I'm happy not to send them monthly readings any more.
We can't switch any more appliances off (apparently the fridge needs to be plugged in even if we're not at home) and I don't see how the smart meter can't have an energy cost to run.  Also, all the stuff in this thread.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 12 August, 2020, 10:51:18 am
EDF tried to issue our first bill this week. Total fail; they've decided there's a discrepancy between the old supplier's closing reading and EDF's opening reading. Given they went through the process of agreeing this with British Gas and said it was sorted two months ago, this is irksome. They're quoting 6-8 weeks for this process (same as last time). Such ineptitude.

They've also managed to break our access to smart meter data in the meantime (they can get readings though).

This morning I decided this had gone on long enough. So I opened the live chat and asked them to tell me what's going on.

(Paraphrasing)

Indian-sounding name: "Oh, it's all resolved now"

(Hmm.... could have told us)

Me: "So the dispute is resolved?"

Indian-sounding name: "They have the right meter reading now"

(Who... British Gas? They issued a final bill in March and took another £0.03 - a rounding error - after the previous adjustment. Nothing since).

Me: "Can you tell me the readings you have" (Not once had they actually thought to inform us what the dispute was over)

Indian-sounding name: "They are XXXX and XXXX" (It's a dual rate)

Me: "Just to be clear... is this the meter reading the previous supplier already had?"

Indian-sounding name: "Yes"

I made sure to save the chat where they admitted all this messing around was on their side only.

I asked for a new bill to be issued. I'm still waiting to see this online - but our DD has already been adjusted, to half of what it was.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: DuncanM on 12 August, 2020, 11:21:18 am
I've been getting emails from someone saying that Ecotricity have instructed them to install smart meters. I wonder if they know about the PV, or what it will do to the FIT setup we currently (!) have. I bet they don't. Wowbagger - are you with Ecotricity for supply and FIT (do you have PV)?

I also discovered that our PV panels overhang our neighbours property by about 100mm. We discovered this because she is getting her roof replaced and the roofers told her. According to the PV guy who came to take a look today, the house is 4m wide, and they fitted panels that come to 4m, plus there's a bit of rail at each end.  ::-) FFS. Will wait and see what his boss has to say...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 12 August, 2020, 11:25:02 am
We don't have any PV solar panels just one for hot water. Our roof points the wrong way to take advantage. I was told that the payback time would be 25 years. I won't be around then, and I figures that since all our electricity is coming rom renewable sources, I might uas well just keep on paying Ecotricity.

I am still getting emails requesting meter readings. I still don't understand why.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 12 August, 2020, 11:25:17 am
The smart meter could in theory be used to measure real export rather than deemed export as now.

Depending on your usage pattern, this will either reduce or increase your FIT payments. It will certainly reduce ours as we export less than 50%.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 11 September, 2020, 09:45:37 pm
I can’t find the more general thread on energy supply here but thought I’d add that both Council-backed energy suppliers - Bristol Energy and Robin Hood Energy have sold their customers and shut up shop.  Neither company really had their strategy right and both struggled to find their niche.  Both Councils are down tens of millions on their investments.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 11 September, 2020, 09:59:41 pm
Yep, I've begun proceedings to jump ship to the nearest available cephalopod.  I'm predicting another round of smart meters...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 11 September, 2020, 10:06:28 pm
Bristol Energy has been in trouble for a couple of years at least. I don't think it ever broke even.

As for smart meters, we had an email about one (we're not with Bristol Energy) a couple of days ago, which I'm ignoring, as the same problems which made it impossible a few years ago still apply.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 11 September, 2020, 10:24:52 pm
I had a reminder today to send in a meter reading. I was told by Ecotricity that they are getting gas meter reading but not leccy, and they speculated that the leccy meter was in a more obscure place and the signal wasn't getting through. I pointed out that both meters are in the same cupboard.

I will give them a call on Monday.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 11 September, 2020, 10:29:46 pm
I had a reminder today to send in a meter reading. I was told by Ecotricity that they are getting gas meter reading but not leccy, and they speculated that the leccy meter was in a more obscure place and the signal wasn't getting through. I pointed out that both meters are in the same cupboard.

Does the electricity meter not obtain data from the battery-powered gas meter over Zigbee and then forward it to the mothership via the cellular WAN?

Not that that precludes some sort of fault or misconfiguration.  It's computers, of course they don't work properly.  But you'd generally expect it to be the other way round...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 12 September, 2020, 11:26:18 am
Bristol Energy has been in trouble for a couple of years at least. I don't think it ever broke even.

The business model is predicated on an assumption that the big guys make a tonne of money on their supply businesses and it’s just not true.  Of course the introduction of price capping hasn’t helped.

However, successful supply businesses like Bulb and Octopus are also loss making but have high market values.  I don’t get it.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Canardly on 12 September, 2020, 11:41:28 am
SSE keep badgering me to install a smart meter. Have these things been sorted now regarding tech standards and transferability etc?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tim Hall on 12 September, 2020, 11:53:44 am
SSE keep badgering me to install a smart meter. Have these things been sorted now regarding tech standards and transferability etc?
When I looked into about 18 months ago, SMETS 2 was bring rolled out,which meant transferability between suppliers, so I bit the bullet. Comms issues , either between the gas meter and the electricity meter or the electricity meter and the supplier meant they had to fit SMETS1 , with no transferability. Bah.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 12 September, 2020, 01:54:15 pm
SMETS1 meters should in theory gain transferability with firmware upgrades over time. We didn't wait as we wanted to switch to a smart meter tariff with a new supplier so got it changed to a SMETS2 meter.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Greenbank on 12 September, 2020, 02:01:06 pm
SMETS1 transferability could also be solved easily by making the original supplier responsible for forwarding the data to a central broker service where it can be made available to the appropriate supplier/billing co.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: tiermat on 13 September, 2020, 10:16:20 am
Smart meters. Hmmm.

We had ours installed, by E.on, when the extension was built.

It worked fine, they got the readings OK and didn't bother us. However they are expensive as a utility supplier, so we swapped. To BG. Who then expected me to read the meters for them every 4 weeks. Despite having confirmed that the smart meter was compatible with their systems.

As soon as I could, I kicked them into touch.

Now on Green Energy Network who read both the meters, remotely every week and update the portal so that I can verify.

It's not rocket science, this customer service thing....
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: simonp on 13 September, 2020, 10:49:17 am
SMETS1 transferability could also be solved easily by making the original supplier responsible for forwarding the data to a central broker service where it can be made available to the appropriate supplier/billing co.

It’s not quite that simple since the meters have two way communication. So the broker would have to be able to transmit commands back from the new supplier eg when switching between dual rate and standard tariffs.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 13 September, 2020, 02:02:09 pm
SMETS1 transferability could also be solved easily by making the original supplier responsible for forwarding the data to a central broker service where it can be made available to the appropriate supplier/billing co.

That's not really compatible with the fly-by-night nature of half the energy suppliers in this country, although maybe the worst ones never wasted money on deploying smart meters.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 15 September, 2020, 02:28:32 pm
Another wildly inaccurate set of "estimates" and a bill vastly in excess of reality. I am currently on hold after raising the issue with Ecotricity. Their cut-glass-accented female sales droids do a very good line in patronising.

And she hasn't explained to me why, after a successful smart meter reading on 11th Sept, my bill was based on an estimate, dated 14th September, about £200 in excess of the reality. Or why their website doesn't work when I try to submit my electricity reading.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wowbagger on 15 September, 2020, 02:38:57 pm
And a £500 refund! Splendid!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Canardly on 29 September, 2020, 04:52:35 pm
Have taken the plunge, both gas and leccy being fitted early October.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 11 October, 2020, 01:05:28 am
 :o

The cephalopod appears to have a much higher level of competence than the man in green:

Code: [Select]
{
  "count": 240,
  "next": "[REDACTED]",
  "previous": null,
  "results": [
    {
      "consumption": 0.199,
      "interval_start": "2020-10-10T00:30:00+01:00",
      "interval_end": "2020-10-10T01:00:00+01:00"
    },
    {
      "consumption": 0.291,
      "interval_start": "2020-10-10T00:00:00+01:00",
      "interval_end": "2020-10-10T00:30:00+01:00"
    },
    {...}
  ]
}

Actual readings!  From the SMETS1 meters that have been playing dumb for the last couple of years.  I'm genuinely astounded.

I'm seeing more RRD goodness and a lot less poking the gas meter with a stick through a small slot while holding a torch in my future...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Diver300 on 11 October, 2020, 10:16:30 am
:o

The cephalopod appears to have a much higher level of competence than the man in green:

Code: [Select]
{
  "count": 240,
  "next": "[REDACTED]",
  "previous": null,
  "results": [
    {
      "consumption": 0.199,
      "interval_start": "2020-10-10T00:30:00+01:00",
      "interval_end": "2020-10-10T01:00:00+01:00"
    },
    {
      "consumption": 0.291,
      "interval_start": "2020-10-10T00:00:00+01:00",
      "interval_end": "2020-10-10T00:30:00+01:00"
    },
    {...}
  ]
}

Actual readings!  From the SMETS1 meters that have been playing dumb for the last couple of years.  I'm genuinely astounded.

I'm seeing more RRD goodness and a lot less poking the gas meter with a stick through a small slot while holding a torch in my future...

Can you please explain how you extracted that information from the meter? What hardware / software / anabaric magic was needed?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Greenbank on 11 October, 2020, 10:56:56 am
MQTT over Zigbee?

So I'm guessing just a USB Zigbee receiver and some passive snooping.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 11 October, 2020, 12:15:32 pm
Can you please explain how you extracted that information from the meter? What hardware / software / anabaric magic was needed?

I'm getting it from Octopus's API:  https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

(Interestingly, it's returning the same data that it did last night.  Not sure if I jinxed it, or it only updates at midnight or something.)

I already have have finer-grained monitoring of the electricity meter by means of a phototransistor attached to the blinkenlight on the front with blu-tac and an Arduino, but that's only good for monitoring consumption, rather than accurate billing.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Diver300 on 11 October, 2020, 01:11:31 pm
Can you please explain how you extracted that information from the meter? What hardware / software / anabaric magic was needed?

I'm getting it from Octopus's API:  https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

(Interestingly, it's returning the same data that it did last night.  Not sure if I jinxed it, or it only updates at midnight or something.)

I hope you don't mind the stupid questions, but does that mean you are getting the information from Octopus's server, via the API, using the internet, so information that the meter has already sent to the server?

I already have have finer-grained monitoring of the electricity meter by means of a phototransistor attached to the blinkenlight on the front with blu-tac and an Arduino, but that's only good for monitoring consumption, rather than accurate billing.
I already knew about that and was admiring the ingenuity.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 11 October, 2020, 01:19:24 pm
Can you please explain how you extracted that information from the meter? What hardware / software / anabaric magic was needed?

I'm getting it from Octopus's API:  https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

(Interestingly, it's returning the same data that it did last night.  Not sure if I jinxed it, or it only updates at midnight or something.)

I hope you don't mind the stupid questions, but does that mean you are getting the information from Octopus's server, via the API, using the internet, so information that the meter has already sent to the server?

Yes, exactly.

It proves that the meters are successfully communicating with Octopus.  Which I never expected to happen, because Robin Hood (who had them installed) never managed to obtain data from them, sending us "Ignore this request for a meter reading if you have smart meters" letters once a month, and being completely unclear that they were using estimated readings.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 12 October, 2020, 03:25:20 pm
Okay, it appears that the API returns consumption in (UTC) whole days, and updates some hours after (UTC) midnight.  Presumably it's processed as a batch job on its way from the meter to Octopus's servers.

So not exactly real time.  Pleasingly, it does appear to broadly agree with my blinkylightmeter data:

(http://www.ductilebiscuit.net/gallery_albums/electricity/mainsgraph24hrwithoctopus.png)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: frankly frankie on 12 October, 2020, 11:12:51 pm
5am (UTC) is a rather unusual time to be microwaving your breakfast whilst running the tumble dryer.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 13 October, 2020, 12:01:55 pm
Okay, it appears that the API returns consumption in (UTC) whole days, and updates some hours after (UTC) midnight.  Presumably it's processed as a batch job on its way from the meter to Octopus's servers.

So not exactly real time.  Pleasingly, it does appear to broadly agree with my blinkylightmeter data:

(http://www.ductilebiscuit.net/gallery_albums/electricity/mainsgraph24hrwithoctopus.png)

You run Debian, and have substantial spinning rust storage?

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 13 October, 2020, 12:09:01 pm
Debian: yes.
Spinning rust: a couple of drives and a couple more not spinning.  (If this is about baseload, it's a sever, router, a couple of 24 port switches, a fire alarm system, and various SIP phones and deaf tech.)
I'll leave it to your imagination why someone might need to use an electric shower for a couple of minutes at 5am...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 13 October, 2020, 12:10:34 pm
Debian: yes.
Spinning rust: a couple of drives and a couple more not spinning.  (If this is about baseload, it's a sever, router, a couple of 24 port switches, a fire alarm system, and various SIP phones and deaf tech.)
I'll leave it to your imagination why someone might need to use an electric shower for a couple of minutes at 5am...

It was more the slight rise, that persisted for a while at 0625...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 13 October, 2020, 12:12:54 pm
It was more the slight rise, that persisted for a while at 0625...

That's the fridge.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 13 October, 2020, 12:14:18 pm
British Gas have started to text us random installation dates, unrequested, so they're really keen that we do have one fitted.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Canardly on 14 October, 2020, 09:41:23 pm
Smart meter duly installed and working. Gas is a bit slow to respond on the little monitor thingy. But otherwise working ok. Will be interesting to see if it has any positive or negative impact on bills.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 14 October, 2020, 09:49:27 pm
Smart meter duly installed and working. Gas is a bit slow to respond on the little monitor thingy. But otherwise working ok. Will be interesting to see if it has any positive or negative impact on bills.

And this is where the ads get a little misleading.  The mere existence of the smart meter does not reduce demand.  It should create an informed consumer that then changes the amount and pattern of their consumption and lowers overall demand.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 14 October, 2020, 10:02:31 pm
We finally signed up to get them off our case. I'm not going to bother asking them whether it's a new or an old one, because they won't know, and I figure it's their problem.

And if the gasman* gets stuck in the cupboard of IT shame, I'm not feeding him.

*sexism aside, I've never seen gaswoman, and if they do electric too, what are they? Energy people? There's an Energizer Bunny, of course, but I don't think he does meters. I figure I'm scared of the tradespeople because of 80s porn. No seriously, if you remember the plot of eighties porn movies like I do, you'll know that they frequently involved a lingerie-clad housewife and a strapping male plumber/electrician/insert trade and anything else of choice. I'm actively trying to minimize the risk by not wearing lingerie.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 14 October, 2020, 10:23:30 pm
Just looked into booking one with Bulb. One of the questions is "Is the distance between your meters 10m or less?" and helpfully they add:

Quote
10m is a bit longer than a bus

Thanks Bulb.

And apparently if I answer no to that question (it's borderline) I can't have just the electric done.

FU Bulb.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 14 October, 2020, 11:13:24 pm
Smart meter duly installed and working. Gas is a bit slow to respond on the little monitor thingy.

Normal behaviour:  The gas meter has quite a long interval between data transmissions, in order to conserve battery.


Quote
Will be interesting to see if it has any positive or negative impact on bills.

Theoretically the main impact is that the bills will be based on consumption, rather than random number generation.  If the supplier actually manages to access the data from the meters, of course.

Otherwise there's a lot of spin based on the dubious assumptions that consumers are a) oblivious to energy consumption in the absence of a smart meter  and  b) inclined to change their habits / appliances in order to reduce it.

Personally I reckon that, while the monitor thing might help you keep an eye on bills, it's marginally useful at best for tracking down excessive power use.  The monitor thing doesn't give you the granularity of the graphs I posted above, so a plug-in power meter is likely to be more useful for working out what's contributing what.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Greenbank on 15 October, 2020, 09:14:45 am
Theoretically the main impact is that the bills will be based on consumption, rather than random number generation.  If the supplier actually manages to access the data from the meters, of course.

Most suppliers will still be billing based on estimation to flatten out the monthly bills across the year rather than charging way more in the winter than in the summer.

I'd be happy to be billed for actual monthly consumption but that's because I'm in a lucky position that a ~£150 bill for winter months wouldn't be a problem for me. For a large number of people in the UK it would be a problem, and they want to be charged £75/month over the year rather than £150 in the depths of winter and £50 for spring/summer/autumn months.

The readings from a Smart meter installed in the spring/summer months can't guess how much the bill will be in the winter months.

I suppose the more frequent and accurate readings should mean the random number generator is slightly less random though.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 15 October, 2020, 09:27:31 am
I pay for quarterly actual gas and electricity consumption. They really, really don't like this judging by the amount of correspondence they send me about the 'benefits of direct debit.' They do remind me by text to read the meter (though their online portal always claims that no reading is due, and whenever I input the reading it shouts 'are you sure, this looks wrong?' even though it never is). Anyway, nothing in my experience tells me to anticipate a utility company billing correctly so I'd rather no give them a licence to take the amount.

If they attempt to change my billing to estimated I'll be peeved. Take reading, charge me for what I used.

SES Water did for a while start estimating my water bill, which I only picked up after the fact. Apparently, though they never felt like telling us this, couldn't find the water meter. Fair enough, it's in a verge, but that's where SES Water fitted it when we moved here.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 15 October, 2020, 09:32:57 am
Most suppliers will still be billing based on estimation to flatten out the monthly bills across the year rather than charging way more in the winter than in the summer.

All the ones I've had will take real meter readings and feed them into a random number generator for what I should be paying monthly. Which has never worked out.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 15 October, 2020, 11:12:14 am
Anyway, nothing in my experience tells me to anticipate a utility company billing correctly so I'd rather no give them a licence to take the amount.


I'm reminded of a few years back when Scottish Gas did an estimated reading, and decided to change my monthly payment to over £1200 per month. I was very grateful of the Direct Debit Guarantee, the charge was reversed very very fast.

What then happened was a lot of them claiming that they had the right reading, and it was the amount I was due etc... In the end there was a conclusion that the electricity meter was faulty, and they would replace the meter, and then use the first 3 months of use, as the basis to calculate the previous year and a bit. They installed the new meter, couple of months pass.

"High, please pay us the several thousand you owe"
"Um, that's not what we agreed."
"Well we analysed the meter we took out and found no fault."
"Are you sure about that"
"yes"
"Well i have the old meter in my hand, so I don't think you did any testing at all"
*silence*

Eventually it got as far as a court summons, at which point a call from a lawyer told them how stupid they were, and within 24 hours my bill had been written off, and we went to just using the numbers from the new meter...

Incompetent bunch of utter fuckwits.

I still have that old meter, sat in the server room... It's a proper old mechanical bakerlite thing.

Here in Amsterdam we got a new smart meter installed, including a smart gas meter. Despite my inquiries, noone can tell me what smart gas is. It wasn't a brand new meter, and had an existing reading on it. Which took a few weeks to sort out with them. I was glad I took photos within an hour of it being wired in. They could hardly claim I'd used a few megawatts within the first hour... on a 25 amp feed...

Why are meters so damn hard? you'd think energy companies would have got this sorted by now...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 15 October, 2020, 11:45:14 am
It took several weeks here to convince BG that our meter wasn't imperial (because the database*) after our first surprise £1000+ bill. I had to do a comedy photo of my holding a dated newspaper over the meter. Which seems a bit pointless as it could have been someone else's meter. You'd think the huge bill would have been a giveway.

Not to mention my often mentioned travails with EDF literally billing the wall that a meter was located on, rather than an actual address. Etc.

I don't think any utility company can bill.

*I do wonder if the previous owners were paying for imperial gas, so about three-times as much...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 October, 2020, 11:52:12 am
I do wonder if the previous owners were paying for imperial gas, so about three-times as much...

Isn't imperial gas about 35 times as much?  Gas comes in cubes, remember...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 15 October, 2020, 12:23:31 pm
I do wonder if the previous owners were paying for imperial gas, so about three-times as much...

Isn't imperial gas about 35 times as much?  Gas comes in cubes, remember...

If I recall, there's a factor of ten involved in the meter values as read (I can't be bothered to look), so the actual conversation was 3.5 rather than 35 so not quite so obvious, but it still inflated a £300ish bill to a £1000 mid-winter whopper. But with no baseline to go on, you might not know it's wrong (we lived in a bigger house before and never used anything like that much gas).

Discussion with customer 'services' went along the lines of Hi there, I think there's a mistake with our bill. Oh no, sir, it's quite correct. But it's rather large and you see, it says cubic feet and the meter says m3. Yes, that's correct! So the bill is wrong then. No, the meter is correct. Yes, I know the meter is correct but your bill is wrong. No, sir, the billing uses your meter...

You can't just explain to them that they are billing based on the wrong unit.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 October, 2020, 12:30:49 pm
Its worse than that, the Octopus API is returning kWh for gas meter readings.  This is apparently expected for the SMETS1 meter (SMETS2 meters return m^3), but implies another level of bistromathics is being applied somewhere re calorific value.  Possibly even at the meter itself.  I suppose that must be where the smart gas comes in.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 15 October, 2020, 12:48:04 pm
Its worse than that, the Octopus API is returning kWh for gas meter readings.  This is apparently expected for the SMETS1 meter (SMETS2 meters return m^3), but implies another level of bistromathics is being applied somewhere re calorific value.  Possibly even at the meter itself.  I suppose that must be where the smart gas comes in.

There's some calculation listed on the bill so both gas and electric are kWh, but I suspect to most people that might as well be quadratic calculus with imaginary numbers. Basically some unit changes and a calorific conversation. If you were following till that point, then they bring in the tariffs, so x units at this, y units at that. Then, as you pull up the end of that epic calculation, they put a little e next to the number.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 15 October, 2020, 01:34:20 pm
Its worse than that, the Octopus API is returning kWh for gas meter readings.  This is apparently expected for the SMETS1 meter (SMETS2 meters return m^3), but implies another level of bistromathics is being applied somewhere re calorific value.  Possibly even at the meter itself.  I suppose that must be where the smart gas comes in.

There's some calculation listed on the bill so both gas and electric are kWh, but I suspect to most people that might as well be quadratic calculus with imaginary numbers. Basically some unit changes and a calorific conversation. If you were following till that point, then they bring in the tariffs, so x units at this, y units at that. Then, as you pull up the end of that epic calculation, they put a little e next to the number.

Gas meters measure volume but you're required to bill energy, hence all the buggering about with formulae.   The Calorific Value is provided to the supplier daily by Transco/Grid.   In order to produce your bill they need to average the CV between meter reading 1 and meter reading 2.   It's not perfect but neither is the rest of the industry.

Incidentally if you have an old style gas meter you can disconnect them and turn them round so they run backwards.   The trick is to not let the reading run below the last one.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 October, 2020, 06:22:07 pm
Incidentally if you have an old style gas meter you can disconnect them and turn them round so they run backwards.   The trick is to not let the reading run below the last one.

Don't attempt this with a smart meter thobut, unless you want a bill for 2147483647 m^3 of gas.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Canardly on 26 October, 2020, 06:08:21 pm
Thats why the regs have changed and you are no longer allowed flexible pipework on the gas meter. Strictly speaking they should shut off any fitting that still has one when installing the new meter. I had to sign a waiver. Cross bonding was involved.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wombat on 07 November, 2020, 10:26:53 am
My electricity meter, which was installed when the house was built in 1985, ran backwards for quite a while, when we generated plenty of solar PV.  Our suppliers were of course, told of the type of meter, before the PV was installed, as part of the application for feed-in tariff.  However they chose to ignore this, and then got arsey over my bills.  Well sorry mates, but you were given the opportunity to change it!  I was being awkward and saying you can't change it unless its a smart meter, but we both new that wouldn't hold water.  They did eventually change it, but the haggling over consumption dragged on a bit.

In other news, I have another appointment for installation of a smart meter, on 16th November.  Apparently the first thing he will insist on doing before he installs it, is turn off the gas.  That could take him a while, as there's no gas for quite a few miles from here!  What he might be better advised to do, is ask me to turn off the PV, if he doesn't want to be electrocuted.  We will probably then have the conversation around "oh, you've got PV, we can't install it", and "Oh, we can't get a data signal".  Well that's your effing problem, I've made 3 formal complaints to you about it, so bleedin' well sort it!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: valkyrie on 07 November, 2020, 07:20:13 pm
After endlessly emails, letters and texts from E.On they got me on a phone call and I agreed to a smart meter install this morning. After an hour with the power off the electrician informed me that the gas meter was too far away from the electrical meter so I can’t have a smart meter. Hopefully the’ll stop contacting me now.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 07 November, 2020, 07:24:26 pm
Scottish Power hassled my Mum incessantly to put a smart meter.   We put them back for ages and I still think they have cocked up the changeover from Dad’s name (they HAD to close the account and open a new one rather just swapping the names).   Anyway we finally sorted a day out and then they just didn’t turn up.   Heard nothing since.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: CommuteTooFar on 13 November, 2020, 08:35:33 pm
I am booked for 4thn  January.  We will see what happens.  Npower sends me messages to confirm. I follow the link where it tells me I have already confirmed.  I have never confirmed I chose the date and time when I tried to confirm the date they offered which was unavailable.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Andy W on 13 November, 2020, 08:57:36 pm
I can't see much benefit for the end user. I know people who have them fitted. I have yet to observe people changing their energy usage. A 3 kW kettle is a big energy consumer, but that's not going to stand in the way of a nice cuppa.
I do understand the benefits to energy companies, in that they can build a picture of the nations energy usage and generate or store power accordingly.
 Have I missed the point?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 13 November, 2020, 10:53:16 pm
Have I missed the point?

Yes.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 13 November, 2020, 11:17:25 pm
I thought I wrote something in this a while back, but it’s not in this thread.  I can find me being rude to someone making mad assertions about the industry.  Must have been a tetchy day.

Anyway smart meters remove the need for estimated reads and can offer half hourly consumption data allowing the smart consumer to not just use less but to move their consumption to cheaper times of the day. 

To be fair the TV ads are pretty misleading.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 14 November, 2020, 12:52:40 am
Did I mention the comedy email from the Cephalopod?

Quote from: Pete @ Octopus Energy
Between 4:30pm – 6:30pm today, National Grid will be paying fossil fuel generators as much as 10 times the normal price for electricity to meet high demand.

We'd rather just pay to help you use less. That way the money goes to our customers, and National Grid don’t use as much fossil fuels.

So we’re running a special trial — and you're invited.

If you can reduce your electricity use between 4:30pm – 6:30pm today to half of your normal amount or less, any energy you do use will be completely free.

You normally use 1.2kWh between 4:30pm – 6:30pm on a Thursday, so use 0.6kWh or less to earn your free energy, and help ditch fossil fuels.

That's right!  Cut our use to below 300W for that period and win 7.3p worth of electrons absolutely free!!!

I tried to do it, purely for SCIENCE, and almost but didn't quite manage it.  I'm blaming barakta's ork laptop which has some errant security software that likes to spin in a loop to give the fans something to do.

Obviously this sort of thing becomes much more worthwhile if you've got more than a UPS-worth of energy storage.  Or incentives that are less tokenistic.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 14 November, 2020, 01:23:53 am
So much spin in such a short mail.  I suspect that was a day last week when there was a system warning.  I don’t think prices went terribly high in the end.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 14 November, 2020, 01:27:33 am
The idea of encouraging people to manually run around and switch things off in response to the state of the grid is a bit of a non-starter.  Only dedicated hippies will do it with any seriousness.  You might reschedule your pissy landlord electric shower session or washing machine cycle.

Have people learned nothing from Thatcher?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Andy W on 14 November, 2020, 07:16:00 am
 Thatcher was definitely not a hippy, where did you get that idea? Also, I'm not sure smart meters were around then, in the 80s. 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andytheflyer on 14 November, 2020, 10:45:37 am
I have one of those electricity monitors on the wall which shows me when Mrs AtF has left something on. I routinely switch off the lights she's left on.  If it's showing more than 250-350W during the day, I'm hunting for the reason why.  It's often <200W.

We have a storage heater in the (part of the house) garage (for laundry drying most nights) and one in the conservatory (which I spend most of the day in - and it's double glazed with that Kappafloat glass). 

The dishwasher and washing machine both go on at night during the Economy 7 period - along with the 2 storage heaters.

Other than waiting until 3am to cook an evening meal, not sure there's much more I can do.  So, no thanks, no Smart Meter, Scottish Power, not at least until you can guarantee that it will communicate with your servers, and it'll transfer to another supplier if I choose.  Last time I asked you, you couldn't give that guarantee.  So, go away until you can.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 14 November, 2020, 11:49:51 am
Thatcher was definitely not a hippy, where did you get that idea? Also, I'm not sure smart meters were around then, in the 80s.

No, quite the opposite.  AIUI, during the miners' strike there was a move for people to use as much electricity as possible in the hope of depleting Thatcher's stockpile of coal.  It didn't work.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 14 November, 2020, 12:00:39 pm
The idea of encouraging people to manually run around and switch things off in response to the state of the grid is a bit of a non-starter.  Only dedicated hippies will do it with any seriousness.  You might reschedule your pissy landlord electric shower session or washing machine cycle.

Have people learned nothing from Thatcher?
This is all suspiciously similar to the emails we get at work during the pricing assessment performances.

I'm fairly sure switching off the strip lights in an office won't have a similar effect that shutting down all operations would, but the later isn't exactly possible.

Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: perpetual dan on 14 November, 2020, 02:15:14 pm
Just looked into booking one with Bulb. One of the questions is "Is the distance between your meters 10m or less?" and helpfully they add:

Quote
10m is a bit longer than a bus

Thanks Bulb.

And apparently if I answer no to that question (it's borderline) I can't have just the electric done.

FU Bulb.
Our gas meter didn’t have the required clear space around it. The bulb quiz didn’t like this, but the opening said they’d do electricity or electricity + gas. So I emailed, and they said it’d be ok to carry on. So I lied on the form then owned up in the comments. Installer was fine with that, and managed to get the gas done too.

Practically, 10 clear meters and 10m full of walls, pipes, etc will be different. So I suspect they’re hedging a bit. Though quite why I’d be readily able to visualise the space taken by a bus inside my house I don’t know.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 14 November, 2020, 06:25:48 pm
The idea of encouraging people to manually run around and switch things off in response to the state of the grid is a bit of a non-starter.  Only dedicated hippies will do it with any seriousness.  You might reschedule your pissy landlord electric shower session or washing machine cycle.

I think it has a place but it’s very niche.  If you have a reasonable sized house, with PV, some storage and an EV then it may be worthwhile.   

If you can build a supply business with 100,000 domestic customers and they can all load shift then it becomes more powerful.

My first job in the industry 20 odd years ago was to build tariffs for large consumers to incentivise load shifting.  It’s not a new concept but the technology is now more accessible.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 15 November, 2020, 12:28:37 pm
The idea of encouraging people to manually run around and switch things off in response to the state of the grid is a bit of a non-starter.  Only dedicated hippies will do it with any seriousness.  You might reschedule your pissy landlord electric shower session or washing machine cycle.

Have people learned nothing from Thatcher?

Or maybe reschedule dinner. If you start cooking a 1835, rather than 1755, that could be a big saving. Ovens tend to be 3kw+

Ditto a "Please don't charge your car at this time"

But yes, for this to really work, you need to have more automated systems for demand side manglement.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 15 November, 2020, 06:32:05 pm
Octopus Energy bought Upside Energy a couple of weeks ago.  Upside are providing kit that offers DSR at a residential level.  If they can convert some of their 1m + customers then it could be pretty powerful.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 November, 2020, 06:33:17 pm
Or maybe reschedule dinner. If you start cooking a 1835, rather than 1755, that could be a big saving. Ovens tend to be 3kw+

This is true.  I was thinking with gas.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 15 November, 2020, 07:47:05 pm
I can't see much benefit for the end user. I know people who have them fitted. I have yet to observe people changing their energy usage. A 3 kW kettle is a big energy consumer, but that's not going to stand in the way of a nice cuppa.
I do understand the benefits to energy companies, in that they can build a picture of the nations energy usage and generate or store power accordingly.
 Have I missed the point?
I'm all in favour of renewable energy, conservation, saving the planet and reducing my bills, but I'd burn the last pound of whale fat it was the only way to get a decent cuppa!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 15 November, 2020, 07:51:54 pm
Or maybe reschedule dinner. If you start cooking a 1835, rather than 1755, that could be a big saving. Ovens tend to be 3kw+

This is true.  I was thinking with gas.

It's 2020, what sort of backwards barbarian colony still burns stuff to cook their dinner?

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 15 November, 2020, 07:56:10 pm
Or maybe reschedule dinner. If you start cooking a 1835, rather than 1755, that could be a big saving. Ovens tend to be 3kw+

This is true.  I was thinking with gas.

The gas system still balances daily rather than half-hourly in electricity.   Time of day charging in gas is a long way from happening.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rafletcher on 15 November, 2020, 07:57:25 pm
Or maybe reschedule dinner. If you start cooking a 1835, rather than 1755, that could be a big saving. Ovens tend to be 3kw+

This is true.  I was thinking with gas.

It's 2020, what sort of backwards barbarian colony still burns stuff to cook their dinner?

J

I guess the Dutch just heat their greenhouses with it.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 15 November, 2020, 08:38:25 pm
I can't see much benefit for the end user. I know people who have them fitted. I have yet to observe people changing their energy usage. A 3 kW kettle is a big energy consumer, but that's not going to stand in the way of a nice cuppa.

If they found a way to penalise you (or gamify, as the cool kids say) every time they boil four cuppas worth of water to make one cuppa they'd be on to a winner.

(replacing every 3000W kettle with a Travelodge-spec 600W job that really made you wait would be the low-tech solution)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 15 November, 2020, 09:43:06 pm
I can't see much benefit for the end user. I know people who have them fitted. I have yet to observe people changing their energy usage. A 3 kW kettle is a big energy consumer, but that's not going to stand in the way of a nice cuppa.

If they found a way to penalise you (or gamify, as the cool kids say) every time they boil four cuppas worth of water to make one cuppa they'd be on to a winner.

(replacing every 3000W kettle with a Travelodge-spec 600W job that really made you wait would be the low-tech solution)

I just don’t think the average energy consumer cares enough.  Fuel poverty is a huge problem but you still don’t get engaged customers.

I don’t think the financial incentives are big enough.  I also don’t think penalising really works if you use petrol pricing or fags as an example.

I suspect that a strategy heading towards net zero would mean physically banning inefficient equipment.  The power sector had changed significantly but heat is a big emitter.  Think how many gas boilers there are out there that will need to be replaced.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Feanor on 15 November, 2020, 09:51:55 pm
Ovens tend to be 3kw+

Actually, that's not really right.

When it comes to electrically heated cooking appliances, it's the hobs, not the ovens that are the high-power consumers.
Ovens are much more modest, and can usually be provisioned on a standard UK 13A socket, and do not require a special circuit.
Elements are in the 1 to 2 kW range.

Hobs, on the other hand, have four or five elements which might be used simultaneously, and generally require a special circuit.

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 15 November, 2020, 09:54:51 pm
Re: gas boilers - tell me that the energy used to build, ship & install a brand new gas boiler is less than I'm 'wasting' on my current one and I might change it.
Electric - come and fit some EV panels on my roof and the roof of my shed if it's that important.
If it is that important (and it is) have a standardised way of doing it and feeding in instead of all the pissing about.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 15 November, 2020, 10:13:17 pm
When I replaced the gas boiler at our last but one place my consumption halved.   It was a massive change but the old one was really crap and I suspect it was slightly hooky like a lot of the rest of the stuff in the house.

I suspect we’ll end up banning gas boilers in new build and then bringing a scrappage scheme back in.  There’s quite a lot of interest in ground source and air source heat pumps as well as hydrogen possibly being the next big thing.  Can’t see storage heating being a big thing again.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 15 November, 2020, 10:40:46 pm
I tried that last one about storage heaters on my brother (sparky) earlier.
I got a lecture in how people are pish at controlling storage heaters and how newer ones take control of the bit people were pish at.

I'm not exactly sold.


Best thing I've got out of smart meters is mums shut up about me using all the electricity as when I've got an empty I rarely breech the £1 mark.


Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 15 November, 2020, 10:51:31 pm
Gas boilers tend to get ripped out like once a decade anyway, so you can just wait for natural atrophy.

Or you could if there were some non fossil fuel like-for-like replacement, but every ASHP and GSHP I can find is comically large and expensive, even ignoring the outdoor bits.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: perpetual dan on 16 November, 2020, 08:29:17 am
...snip...

It's 2020, what sort of backwards barbarian colony still burns stuff to cook their dinner?

J

Colony? We’ve taken back control! ;)

As for electric storage heaters for house heating, we had that in the first house we bought. It was expensive enough to make converting back worthwhile. Despite the idiot previous owners squashing all the radiator pipes as they cut them out.

Have the economics of running the thing shifted? Because if not no amount of demand shifting is going to make the low emissions a widespread winner.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 16 November, 2020, 09:42:00 am
Re: gas boilers - tell me that the energy used to build, ship & install a brand new gas boiler is less than I'm 'wasting' on my current one and I might change it.
Electric - come and fit some EV panels on my roof and the roof of my shed if it's that important.
If it is that important (and it is) have a standardised way of doing it and feeding in instead of all the pissing about.

This is the real problem, isn't it? Our boiler is over a decade old but runs fine. I've no idea if it's cost-effective to replace it. I'm told we're moving away from gas boilers, but honestly, who knows. I have a big roof, it could be bristling with solar. Would this be an effective investment, who knows that either? We don't really seem to have any policies beyond we might do something, some day.

But yeah, I can get a smart meter (whether I want one or not) and fret about the kettle. Precisely no people will do this. We're dealing with people who run their car to charge their mobile.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 16 November, 2020, 09:55:00 am
Colony? We’ve taken back control! ;)

I'm glad you put the smiley on there...

Quote
As for electric storage heaters for house heating, we had that in the first house we bought. It was expensive enough to make converting back worthwhile. Despite the idiot previous owners squashing all the radiator pipes as they cut them out.

Electric storage heaters are a bloody stupid idea. There is a reason they are banned in some countries.

I hope that in the event of any boiler scrappage scheme, they include getting rid of storage heaters too...

Quote
Have the economics of running the thing shifted? Because if not no amount of demand shifting is going to make the low emissions a widespread winner.

What thing?

We can replace gas fired boilers for hot water with an electric heated water tank. These are very efficient, and also coming down in price quite nicely.

For space heating, the answer is heat pumps. Ground source would be preferred, but air source is still good too. The big problem with heat pumps is they are seriously fscking expensive. Considerably more so than a gas boiler. But that is largely due to economies of scale. When the demand goes up, the production costs should come down a bit. They also have the issue that they produce a low grade heat, which can be an issue with radiators that were designed for gas boiler supplied hot water. There are ways round this, in a new build, underfloor heating is the way forward, but there are modern heat pumps coming onto the market that sacrifice a little in efficiency, for being able to feed into traditional radiators, making for a reasonably effective plug and pray system.

In cities tho, the thing to also consider is district heating. Where I live we joke about having heated cycle lanes. The reason for this is the waste heat from the nearby MSW fired power station is used to heat the homes in this area. Cycle paths are cheaper to dig up, so when they ran the pipes, they did so under the cycle lanes. Result, they cycle lanes freeze slower. In the basement of this building we have a huge heat exchanger that takes the hot water from the MSW plant, and uses it to heat the water in the circuit that supplies the building. The result is that all 7 units on my stair are connected together, and when one of them fucks up and gets air in the system, it all collects in my living room radiator... not bitter and annoyed about this... honest... There are plans to get rid of the MSW fired power plant, not least because it was originally a coal plant, and the whole air quality thing. But when they do so, I'm not sure what they will do about the district heat. I wonder if we'll see neighbourhood scale heat pumps...

NL has already banned gas boilers for new builds I believe, and the UK has a ban coming in, tho I am not sure when it will come into effect. 2024 rings a bell, but it could be something pointless like 2030.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 16 November, 2020, 10:40:47 am
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/gone-with-the-wind-why-electricity-shortages-are-becoming-the-norm

Sorry for the Spectator linky.   
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 16 November, 2020, 10:51:10 am
Colony? We’ve taken back control! ;)

I'm glad you put the smiley on there...

Quote
As for electric storage heaters for house heating, we had that in the first house we bought. It was expensive enough to make converting back worthwhile. Despite the idiot previous owners squashing all the radiator pipes as they cut them out.

Electric storage heaters are a bloody stupid idea. There is a reason they are banned in some countries.
House I grew up in had electric storage heaters. It was always cold and without Economy 7 it would have been v expensive to run. Also, the heaters themselves contained asbestos.

Quote
In cities tho, the thing to also consider is district heating. Where I live we joke about having heated cycle lanes. The reason for this is the waste heat from the nearby MSW fired power station is used to heat the homes in this area. Cycle paths are cheaper to dig up, so when they ran the pipes, they did so under the cycle lanes. Result, they cycle lanes freeze slower. In the basement of this building we have a huge heat exchanger that takes the hot water from the MSW plant, and uses it to heat the water in the circuit that supplies the building. The result is that all 7 units on my stair are connected together, and when one of them fucks up and gets air in the system, it all collects in my living room radiator... not bitter and annoyed about this... honest... There are plans to get rid of the MSW fired power plant, not least because it was originally a coal plant, and the whole air quality thing. But when they do so, I'm not sure what they will do about the district heat. I wonder if we'll see neighbourhood scale heat pumps...
This is pretty standard in Poland. I lived in several places with district heating and they were all very warm at very low cost. Mind you they were also blocks of flats, so inherently much warmer than a house, unless you're on the ground floor (which ironically commands higher prices). Most out there are still coal fired, of course. Never experienced any break downs.

But heated cycle lanes? It might work in Netherlands but in Poland and other colder places it would and did (on pavements and roads – no cycle lanes when I was there in the '00s) result in lethal ice, as the snow melts then refreezes.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: perpetual dan on 16 November, 2020, 11:17:28 am
Colony? We’ve taken back control! ;)

I'm glad you put the smiley on there...


You'll have seen too the bits I didn't contest as well :)   </pobi>


Quote
As for electric storage heaters for house heating, we had that in the first house we bought. It was expensive enough to make converting back worthwhile. Despite the idiot previous owners squashing all the radiator pipes as they cut them out.

Electric storage heaters are a bloody stupid idea. There is a reason they are banned in some countries.

I hope that in the event of any boiler scrappage scheme, they include getting rid of storage heaters too...

Quote
Have the economics of running the thing shifted? Because if not no amount of demand shifting is going to make the low emissions a widespread winner.

What thing?


Space heating with not-gas. As you said: Gas is too cheap to make the up-front cost of some other system, plus any running costs, economic in the time before people move house. When selling the house, it's only an advantage by the amount of the running costs. And while there's a lot of talk of needing more houses, we're mostly in places that aren't going to be replaced any time soon.


...
In cities tho, the thing to also consider is district heating. Where I live we joke about having heated cycle lanes. The reason for this is the waste heat from the nearby MSW fired power station is used to heat the homes in this area. Cycle paths are cheaper to dig up, so when they ran the pipes, they did so under the cycle lanes. Result, they cycle lanes freeze slower. In the basement of this building we have a huge heat exchanger that takes the hot water from the MSW plant, and uses it to heat the water in the circuit that supplies the building. The result is that all 7 units on my stair are connected together, and when one of them fucks up and gets air in the system, it all collects in my living room radiator... not bitter and annoyed about this... honest... There are plans to get rid of the MSW fired power plant, not least because it was originally a coal plant, and the whole air quality thing. But when they do so, I'm not sure what they will do about the district heat. I wonder if we'll see neighbourhood scale heat pumps...

NL has already banned gas boilers for new builds I believe, and the UK has a ban coming in, tho I am not sure when it will come into effect. 2024 rings a bell, but it could be something pointless like 2030.

J

We used to have district heating in some parts of London. Back in the mists of time, my Mum worked for the council housing department and they had blocks that were heated from the local power station.

And, circling back to load shedding and off-peak pricing, I'd use our tumbler at night (on cheaper electricity) more often if it didn't have a history of tripping the earth leakage breaker. Given that it needed an after-sales fix because of a tendency of that model to catch fire because of water + electricity, I'm not that optimistic about them designing a secure and safe power management controller.



Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 16 November, 2020, 01:40:14 pm
We used to have district heating in some parts of London. Back in the mists of time, my Mum worked for the council housing department and they had blocks that were heated from the local power station.

We have brand new district heating here in communist Islington:
https://www.theade.co.uk/case-studies/visionary/islington-councils-bunhill-heat-and-power

(although building a brand new fossil fuel power station is pretty lame)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 19 November, 2020, 11:59:52 am
Been scanning the 10 point plan details that have come out this week.

On the domestic heating front it looks like they are pushing heat pumps with a target of 600,000 installations per year.  There's nothing very clear on gas boilers but there will be a requirement on builders to produce low carbon homes.   It seems this will be a push towards better insulation rather than an outright ban on boilers.   Probably carrot rather than stick, again.

Smart meters don't seem to get a mention.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Quisling on 19 November, 2020, 04:55:49 pm
Been scanning the 10 point plan details that have come out this week.

On the domestic heating front it looks like they are pushing heat pumps with a target of 600,000 installations per year.  There's nothing very clear on gas boilers but there will be a requirement on builders to produce low carbon homes.   It seems this will be a push towards better insulation rather than an outright ban on boilers.   Probably carrot rather than stick, again.

Smart meters don't seem to get a mention.

Fossil fuel boilers have already been outlawed on new homes from 2025.  I'd like to see electricity submetering on all heat pumps for homeowners to separate heat input power from other electricity usage in the home.
The latest proposed building regs unfortunately favour technology bells and whistles rather than a "fabric first" approach to minimising demand.  Arse about face obviously  :facepalm:
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 19 November, 2020, 05:51:45 pm
While I think the idea of heat pumps etc is a good one, I remain very sceptical that they would produce enough heat to make a 'normal' old British house (e.g. with solid walls that need to breathe, that is hard to insulate without completely blocking off all ventilation that we're now told we actually need,  etc) feel a comfortable temperature in the winter.
I'm sure they are great in well designed modern homes with lots of insulation etc and I don't think there's any excuse for not using in new builds assuming they are built to a decent standard..
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: MikeFromLFE on 20 November, 2020, 08:33:47 am
I'm told that heat pumps can be noisy when running.
Can anyone confirm this?
Any louder than an air conditioning unit?

I'm thinking that if in a typical 1930s semi - like ours - a heat pump unit in the drive (between the houses) would severely hack off the neighbour, until they put one in too and we are both suffering equally.

In this sort of situation - an old semi +heat pump at the moment the top up heating would be with the gas boiler, but in future the top up might well be electric space heating of some sort.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Quisling on 20 November, 2020, 08:47:21 am
I'm told that heat pumps can be noisy when running.
Can anyone confirm this?
Any louder than an air conditioning unit?

I'm thinking that if in a typical 1930s semi - like ours - a heat pump unit in the drive (between the houses) would severely hack off the neighbour, until they put one in too and we are both suffering equally.

In this sort of situation - an old semi +heat pump at the moment the top up heating would be with the gas boiler, but in future the top up might well be electric space heating of some sort.

Lots of good points here:
* Heat pumps are pretty quiet but you wouldn't want one whirring away right under your bungalow bedroom window necessarily.  But MCS accredited installers should undertake a noise design and ensure this is not problematic for neighbours in order to meet the building regs/planning requirements.
* a "bivalent" solution (two heat sources) with a heat pump running as lead boiler up to say 50 degrees, and a gas/oil boiler topping up heat on the coldest days is a more sensible interim solution that trying to shoehorn an air source heat pump into every application like old leaking properties with cast iron radiators etc.  There are plenty of ASHPs that can output at up to 90C, but the efficiency above 55C is poor and running costs will be higher than a gas boiler until such time as gas emissions are taxed more heavily.

Heatpumps are ideally matched to underfloor heating with flow temperatures of 30-35C where they will get excellent efficiencies.  Trying to retrofit with existing radiators as heat emitters banging out 60C or more is likely to result in seasonal coefficients of performance in the order of 2 to 2.5 (i.e. 1kWh electricity in = 2 kWh of heat out).  With electricity costing 3-4x gas per kWh, you therefore need to design schemes that deliver more efficient performance, although this equation changes a bit if you're currently on Calor Gas or oil.  Compared to direct electric heating, an ASHP wins hands down, as electric panel heaters are only ever 100% efficient.  The maths skew further if you have economy 7 and storage heaters....

I faced this whole challenge when I wanted to get rid of my oil boiler 7 years ago in a part Victorian house.  In the end I put in a wood pellet boiler + solar hot water.  It was probably the right decision at the time, but if I was doing it again I'd do an ASHP + small oil boiler for top-up on coldest days, but select the ASHP to be capable of high output temperatures so I'd have the option of running it harder if the boiler failed.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rafletcher on 20 November, 2020, 10:40:00 am
How much real estate is required for an ASHP? (yeah, and tell me how long that piece of string needs to be too :-))  Say for a typical 70's 3 bed semi.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 20 November, 2020, 10:41:03 am
How much real estate is required for an ASHP? (yeah, and tell me how long that piece of string needs to be too :-))  Say for a typical 70's 3 bed semi.

About the same as a small fridge. Give or take.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 20 November, 2020, 11:49:41 am
How much real estate is required for an ASHP? (yeah, and tell me how long that piece of string needs to be too :-))  Say for a typical 70's 3 bed semi.

You need an outdoor thing that looks a lot like an oversize air conditioner (because it is) and assuming you're interfacing with central heating pipes or underfloor heating you need a heat exchanger indoors which seem to vary in size from "oversize boiler" to "massive fridge freezer".
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Zipperhead on 20 November, 2020, 02:41:51 pm

We used to have district heating in some parts of London. Back in the mists of time, my Mum worked for the council housing department and they had blocks that were heated from the local power station.

Churchill Gardens in Pimlico used to be heated by waste heat from Battersea power station. There's a tunnel under the river for the pipes. When the power station was shut down a boiler house was built, on the south side of the river, to heat the estate, on the north side.

Here's the hot water tank (https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4859532,-0.1406014,3a,75y,113.34h,120.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1spgnMeGO2F83M1mfAfphd9g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: cygnet on 20 November, 2020, 05:15:36 pm
Bunhill and Citigen aslo provide district heating in the Farringdon/Barbican/Old St area
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 20 November, 2020, 05:26:03 pm
Bunhill and Citigen aslo provide district heating in the Farringdon/Barbican/Old St area

I used to look after the Citigen contract when I worked for London Electricity 20 years ago.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: TimC on 20 November, 2020, 06:18:10 pm
I'd love to fit an ASHP for my house, but it's a listed building so The Powers That Be won't let me, and it has no wet central heating anyway. It was all (well, four rooms) storage heating, but I replaced those with modern electric clay-cored heaters. I still have an Economy 7 meter ('cos water heating), and that apparently prevents the fitting of a Smart Meter. So, despite being smaller than the average snail's shell (ok, exaggeration - it's 780 sq ft), the leccy bills are around £200 a month.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: SteveC on 20 November, 2020, 06:41:24 pm
Back in the '70s, when storage heaters were all the rage, my dad used to work for the CEGB, which meant he was sometimes in the Grid Control Centre. Apparently, those heaters needed a top-up during the day, so they came on a 2.00 pm for half an hour or so. All of them. All across the country. And bringing generators on line in those days was still a largely manual process. Visitors were not popular from about 1.50 onwards.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 20 November, 2020, 07:08:57 pm
Can someone explain to me the physics of heat pumps? In terms simple enough to be understood by someone who got a C* in O-level physics way back in the 80s. How does the air or ground at a few degrees C transfer heat to a room that's warmer than that?

*Might have been a B, can't remember.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Feanor on 20 November, 2020, 07:15:32 pm
Same way that a fridge moves heat out of the inside which is cooler, into the room which is warmer.

Think of it as a fridge trying to cool the outside air down even lower.
The extracted heat is dumped inside the house,  just the same as the fridge dumps the extracted heat into the room via the warm part at the back.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 20 November, 2020, 07:22:04 pm
So evaporation and condensation? But in this case condensing or compressing inside the building.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 20 November, 2020, 07:30:43 pm
Pull your fridge away from the wall. The tubing on the back is nice and hot. That tubing emits much more heat than the number of watts going into the motor, because most of it is heat extracted from inside the cabinet.

Now stick your fridge on the window cill so the tubing is facing you and the door is open to the outside world. That's an air source heat pump.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 20 November, 2020, 07:33:33 pm
Clear. Thanks.  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 20 November, 2020, 07:50:56 pm
Back in the '70s, when storage heaters were all the rage, my dad used to work for the CEGB, which meant he was sometimes in the Grid Control Centre. Apparently, those heaters needed a top-up during the day, so they came on a 2.00 pm for half an hour or so. All of them. All across the country. And bringing generators on line in those days was still a largely manual process. Visitors were not popular from about 1.50 onwards.

These days that would help Grid out.  There are times if day particularly when it’s windy that they are looking to turn demand up.  You could end up with a situation where you could be paid to consume power, which brings us neatly back to the benefits of smart meters.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: cygnet on 20 November, 2020, 09:26:37 pm
Bunhill and Citigen aslo provide district heating in the Farringdon/Barbican/Old St area

I used to look after the Citigen contract when I worked for London Electricity 20 years ago.
Were they running the submarine engines then? I had brief involvement as some of the heating/cooling pipes ran across a site I worked on.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 20 November, 2020, 09:33:19 pm
So evaporation and condensation? But in this case condensing or compressing inside the building.

Yep, it's all based on the fact that compressing something makes it hot, and lowing the pressure makes it cold. (When i was diving, if you ever cracked a valve to empty a tank that had the wrong mix in it, the whole valve would ice up).

an air con unit is an air source heat pump, it's just rigged the wrong way round, if you put the inside unit outside, and the outside unit inside, you would have a very crude, very inefficient, air source heat pump...

There's some useful videos on gootube that explain it with really nice animations that explain it well...

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 20 November, 2020, 09:50:55 pm
Bunhill and Citigen aslo provide district heating in the Farringdon/Barbican/Old St area

I used to look after the Citigen contract when I worked for London Electricity 20 years ago.
Were they running the submarine engines then? I had brief involvement as some of the heating/cooling pipes ran across a site I worked on.

I just did the settlement for the power offtake and looked at the balancing.  Annoyingly I didn’t get a site visit with that deal.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Diver300 on 20 November, 2020, 10:31:30 pm
an air con unit is an air source heat pump, it's just rigged the wrong way round, if you put the inside unit outside, and the outside unit inside, you would have a very crude, very inefficient, air source heat pump...
Point of order / physics. If you rig an air con unit the wrong way round, you get a perfectly good air source heat pump. It would be just about as efficient as any. With a split aircon system the outside unit and the inside unit look different because, well, one goes outside and the other goes inside, but they do the same / opposite jobs of boiling / condensing the fluid and losing / gaining heat to the air. There's a compressor somewhere, usually the outside unit because of noise, but it could be anywhere really.

Many aircon units can swap the heating / cooling between inside and outside units. A couple of solenoid valves does the job a lot more easily than taking out a chunk of wall and turning it round, but the effect on the heat flows is much the same.

Most heat pumps can't cool, because if you try to cool using radiators you get condensation on the radiators. Cooling has to be by air, so the actual radiator / evaporator can be where the condensation can be piped away.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 20 November, 2020, 10:46:13 pm
Point of order / physics. If you rig an air con unit the wrong way round, you get a perfectly good air source heat pump. It would be just about as efficient as any. With a split aircon system the outside unit and the inside unit look different because, well, one goes outside and the other goes inside, but they do the same / opposite jobs of boiling / condensing the fluid and losing / gaining heat to the air. There's a compressor somewhere, usually the outside unit because of noise, but it could be anywhere really.

I was thinking more from the fact that the the hot side wouldn't be very good at heating the space, because of the compactness of the unit.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Diver300 on 21 November, 2020, 08:12:45 am
Point of order / physics. If you rig an air con unit the wrong way round, you get a perfectly good air source heat pump. It would be just about as efficient as any. With a split aircon system the outside unit and the inside unit look different because, well, one goes outside and the other goes inside, but they do the same / opposite jobs of boiling / condensing the fluid and losing / gaining heat to the air. There's a compressor somewhere, usually the outside unit because of noise, but it could be anywhere really.

I was thinking more from the fact that the the hot side wouldn't be very good at heating the space, because of the compactness of the unit.

J

All the aircon units that I have seen have had similar sized inside and outside units, or the inside unit is a bit smaller because of aesthetics. As the heat flow are much the same for both units and both are exchanging heat to air blow by a fan, it would be strange to have very different sizes.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: perpetual dan on 21 November, 2020, 10:06:53 am

We used to have district heating in some parts of London. Back in the mists of time, my Mum worked for the council housing department and they had blocks that were heated from the local power station.

Churchill Gardens in Pimlico used to be heated by waste heat from Battersea power station. There's a tunnel under the river for the pipes. When the power station was shut down a boiler house was built, on the south side of the river, to heat the estate, on the north side.

Here's the hot water tank (https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4859532,-0.1406014,3a,75y,113.34h,120.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1spgnMeGO2F83M1mfAfphd9g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)
That’s quite possibly where she was talking about.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Wombat on 24 November, 2020, 07:08:35 pm
My electricity meter, which was installed when the house was built in 1985, ran backwards for quite a while, when we generated plenty of solar PV.  Our suppliers were of course, told of the type of meter, before the PV was installed, as part of the application for feed-in tariff.  However they chose to ignore this, and then got arsey over my bills.  Well sorry mates, but you were given the opportunity to change it!  I was being awkward and saying you can't change it unless its a smart meter, but we both new that wouldn't hold water.  They did eventually change it, but the haggling over consumption dragged on a bit.

In other news, I have another appointment for installation of a smart meter, on 16th November.  Apparently the first thing he will insist on doing before he installs it, is turn off the gas.  That could take him a while, as there's no gas for quite a few miles from here!  What he might be better advised to do, is ask me to turn off the PV, if he doesn't want to be electrocuted.  We will probably then have the conversation around "oh, you've got PV, we can't install it", and "Oh, we can't get a data signal".  Well that's your effing problem, I've made 3 formal complaints to you about it, so bleedin' well sort it!

I'm stunned!

I actually have a working smart meter.  And it actually obliges and the display says "0W"  (yes, that's a zero, not the meter saying OW!") when we're generating more than we're consuming.  Of course the export meter does tell the truth as well, so we get our feed-in tariff payments.  So, what was so bloody difficult, and why the zillions of excuses as to why they couldn't fit one?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 24 November, 2020, 07:14:30 pm
Our smart meter installation is tomorrow. I am somehow managing to keep a lid on my excitement. I gave up asking them if the cupboard was too small or what kind of meter it was and subjugated myself to the endless hectoring. I started to feel like I was spoiling their party.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 25 November, 2020, 01:54:27 pm
Mostly painless, the Asbestos Palace is now smart metered. Apparently, our gas meter was unsupported (literally, it was levitating on gas pipes alone, which is against the regulations, so had to be re-mangled into a more statutorily acceptable format).

I am currently running up an electricity bill at 6p per hour. Oh my.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 25 November, 2020, 02:17:12 pm
Mostly painless, the Asbestos Palace is now smart metered. Apparently, our gas meter was unsupported (literally, it was levitating on gas pipes alone, which is against the regulations, so had to be re-mangled into a more statutorily acceptable format).

I am currently running up an electricity bill at 6p per hour. Oh my.

.... you'll soon get bored with the usage indicator gadget  . . .   two weeks max and you'll disconnect it ;D
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 25 November, 2020, 04:29:07 pm
Up to 7p/h now. This wouldn't matter if we all had our own home nuclear power generators.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 25 November, 2020, 08:57:31 pm
Up to 7p/h now. This wouldn't matter if we all had our own home nuclear power generators.

You probably haven’t picked the right time of year to start tracking the data.   Energy usage can be next to nothing in the Summer months.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Canardly on 25 November, 2020, 09:14:12 pm
Up to 7p/h now. This wouldn't matter if we all had our own home nuclear power generators.

Dont put the kettle on, you will start screaming.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Feanor on 25 November, 2020, 09:28:47 pm
Yes, the electric thing is all instantaneous noise.

Shove the kettle on and it's all Alarums and Excursions.
What response is expected? Turn off the kettle?

I sometimes try to goad it from green to orange to red.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 25 November, 2020, 09:40:33 pm
They would be a lot more useful if they plotted a graph.  Otherwise it just tells you what you know already, and what state your fridge's thermostat is in.  Instantaneous power is useful if you're going round switching things off to find a mysterious load, but a plug-in power meter is usually a more convenient[1] way of measuring that.


[1] Except for the things that don't have plugs.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 26 November, 2020, 11:20:39 am
Did I mention the comedy email from the Cephalopod?

Quote from: Pete @ Octopus Energy
Between 4:30pm – 6:30pm today, National Grid will be paying fossil fuel generators as much as 10 times the normal price for electricity to meet high demand.

We'd rather just pay to help you use less. That way the money goes to our customers, and National Grid don’t use as much fossil fuels.

So we’re running a special trial — and you're invited.

If you can reduce your electricity use between 4:30pm – 6:30pm today to half of your normal amount or less, any energy you do use will be completely free.

You normally use 1.2kWh between 4:30pm – 6:30pm on a Thursday, so use 0.6kWh or less to earn your free energy, and help ditch fossil fuels.

That's right!  Cut our use to below 300W for that period and win 7.3p worth of electrons absolutely free!!!

I tried to do it, purely for SCIENCE, and almost but didn't quite manage it.  I'm blaming barakta's ork laptop which has some errant security software that likes to spin in a loop to give the fans something to do.

Unexpected result:

Quote from: Pete @ Octopus Energy
Thanks for joining in our big switch off, with thousands of other Octopus Energy customers.

Our boffins have tabulated and reviewed all the numbers.

In one or two cases, we weren’t able to access meter readings in time to be included in the calculations. Your meter was one of these, but we still appreciate you getting involved — so we’re crediting your account with £1: the average credit earned by all participants. We’ll apply the credit to your account within 7 days.

So what were the results of the trial? In short: a lot.

Firstly, due to factors like the cold weather and the start of lockdown, 2 out of 3 customers who weren’t involved in the trial actually used more than their average Thursday during the trial period.

And yet 2 out of 3 customers in our smart trial used less than their average: a fantastic result.

The individual amounts weren’t large — around half a kWh — but across thousands of homes make a big difference. In fact, if we scaled up the results to all Octopus customers, that small contribution from each home would have accounted for 3/4 of the entire National Grid shortfall.

Maybe they're just really bad at computers?  I can get our readings from their API within 24 hours.  *boggle*
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 26 November, 2020, 12:01:41 pm
2 out of 3 used less and 2 out of 3 used more? Did AstraZeneca organise the trial?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 26 November, 2020, 05:17:08 pm
Up to 7p/h now. This wouldn't matter if we all had our own home nuclear power generators.

Dont put the kettle on, you will start screaming.

I did start bouncing around the kitchen like a trapped wasp when I saw the gas reading for the first time (91p/h!) when the heating cranked up. This wasn't helped when I noticed my wife sharing the scene with her iPad through the serving hatch* with her Zoom buddies. I'm pretty sure they have this 'worst husband' thing going.

*yes, it's spendid, bless the 1960s. Not that we use it, it's got glass doors to let extra light into the kitchen, and it's next to the kitchen door so not much actual use, but it's conceptually pleasing.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 26 November, 2020, 05:32:16 pm
'worst husband'

I've just checked, and this is a much less entertaining google image search than 'worst ladder'.


Quote
yes, it's spendid, bless the 1960s. Not that we use it, it's got glass doors to let extra light into the kitchen, and it's next to the kitchen door so not much actual use, but it's conceptually pleasing.

My parents had one with a rickety wooden sliding door arrangement.  This was useful for re-creating[1] the "...unless they figure out how to open doors" scene from Jurassic Park whenever the cats sensed that someone was carving a roast.

This has absolutely nothing to do with energy consumption.  Though one of the cats did function as a rudimentary energy monitor by sleeping halfway up the stairs whenever someone left the light on in the cupboard beneath.


[1] Technically, our cats had prior art.  Hence the whole family struggling to contain their laughter when we first saw that scene at the cinema.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: offcumden on 26 November, 2020, 05:36:38 pm
Our SM has just been installed. Booking was for this afternoon, and the electrician finally turned up at 4pm, which meant we sat in the dark without heating for nearly an hour. Otherwise uneventful.

As we already have apps for the PVs and the Zappi charger, the new usage gadget will not tell us much that we didn't already know. I've left it in the garage for the time being - until any tenacious lurgi bugs have expired - but will bring it indoors soon to add to the starship control panel.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 26 November, 2020, 06:04:26 pm
'worst husband'

I've just checked, and this is a much less entertaining google image search than 'worst ladder'.

Quote
yes, it's spendid, bless the 1960s. Not that we use it, it's got glass doors to let extra light into the kitchen, and it's next to the kitchen door so not much actual use, but it's conceptually pleasing.

My parents had one with a rickety wooden sliding door arrangement.  This was useful for re-creating[1] the "...unless they figure out how to open doors" scene from Jurassic Park whenever the cats sensed that someone was carving a roast.

This has absolutely nothing to do with energy consumption.  Though one of the cats did function as a rudimentary energy monitor by sleeping halfway up the stairs whenever someone left the light on in the cupboard beneath.

[1] Technically, our cats had prior art.  Hence the whole family struggling to contain their laughter when we first saw that scene at the cinema.

It was the wooden door (swing) arrangement when we got The Asbestos Palace (everything was pretty much as it was when the place was built in 1966). The refurbilators wanted to brick it up, but I stood firm, and we put in glass doors instead. The kitchen is sort of semi-underground so the windows don't exactly gush illumination.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 28 November, 2020, 08:51:52 pm
Getting bored with it now. It's actually interesting to see what we're using, since we normally just get the quarterly bill, but I have to agree, beyond that it is what it is, I'm not sure how we'd change it. Sit in the cold, become raw-food gurus, and regularly purge ourselves with cold showers. Or knock down our mid-sixties shrine to asbestos and build a Scando-superhome. That's probably the solution, though it comes with a measure of drastic, and it's a bit late in the evening to start demolishing one's home.

It probably terrifies people on a budget, who see their money trickling away. I remember once scoffing an entire sharing plate of nachos and then, it being one of the classy joint, noticing there was a calorie count on the laminated menu. It's that sort of a shocker. I couldn't exactly uneat it. And that was only the starter but once you've started, you may as well finish.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: offcumden on 28 November, 2020, 09:03:16 pm
Re the usage gadget: I was puzzled for a while to see it indicating that our current (in both senses) take was 0watts, given that we had lights on and the washing machine was turning over. Then I realised that the output from our PVs was being deducted from the overall take.  Very nice to be reminded that, even during the current grisly weather, we get a few free electrons to keep life ticking over.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 28 November, 2020, 09:03:42 pm
I do go round the place turning lights off.  The only other way to save is to go cold, to be honest.

Most modern electrical appliances are as efficient as you’re going to get them.

Actually I’ve just counted and there’s 24 spotlights in this room - kitchen/diner.   Good job it’s a rental place.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: offcumden on 28 November, 2020, 09:26:18 pm
LED lights are getting cheaper. We had a couple of multiple spotlight fittings which came with halogen GU10 bulbs.  Changing these to LEDs reduced electricity usage by, I think, five or six times.
Screwfix or Toolstation are my usual sources.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 29 November, 2020, 02:11:51 pm

The problem with LED lights, is in a way, they are too efficient.

When I moved into my flat in Canterbury, my bedroom had 3 100W R80 spot lights. They put out enough light, and they also dumped nearly 300w of heat into the room.

Now I have 3 9w LED lights, that put next to no heat into the room. So I have to put a bit more heat in elsewhere.

I notice it.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Diver300 on 29 November, 2020, 02:15:11 pm

The problem with LED lights, is in a way, they are too efficient.

When I moved into my flat in Canterbury, my bedroom had 3 100W R80 spot lights. They put out enough light, and they also dumped nearly 300w of heat into the room.

Now I have 3 9w LED lights, that put next to no heat into the room. So I have to put a bit more heat in elsewhere.

I notice it.

J
Of course the additional heat is on and offable separately from the lights, so won't be needed all the time that the lights are on.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 29 November, 2020, 02:30:28 pm
I'm just in the process of changing light fittings and bulbs from halogen to LED which should mean, so they say, a close to 90% reduction in electricity - the outlay will probably take a couple of years to pay back but I can live with that . . . and we should get much longer life from the LED bulbs.   The one issue has been trying to work out the best LED bulbs for the warm white colour and the number of lumens - bit of trial and error buying odd bulbs but we've cracked it now.

.... anyone want a bargain lot of 20 stainless steel halogen downlighters complete with transformers and bulbs before I put them on Gumtree?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 29 November, 2020, 05:05:29 pm
The baseline seems to be about 3p/h, which is always-on stuff like clocks and speakers. Lights don't seem to make much difference, but we have LEDs throughout, other than my very satisfying decktop lava lamp.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 29 November, 2020, 05:26:19 pm

The problem with LED lights, is in a way, they are too efficient.

When I moved into my flat in Canterbury, my bedroom had 3 100W R80 spot lights. They put out enough light, and they also dumped nearly 300w of heat into the room.

Now I have 3 9w LED lights, that put next to no heat into the room. So I have to put a bit more heat in elsewhere.

I notice it.

J

Had a similar issue, not helped by the fact the house had storage heaters!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: fuaran on 29 November, 2020, 05:29:24 pm
Most of the heat from lights goes up into the ceiling. Not very efficient at heating the rest of the room.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 29 November, 2020, 06:03:07 pm
Most of the heat from lights goes up into the ceiling.

Even more so with dichroic reflectors.  Halogen downlighters anyone?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 29 November, 2020, 10:38:45 pm
Had a similar issue, not helped by the fact the house had storage heaters!

That's how my Canterbury flat is heated.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 29 November, 2020, 10:51:06 pm
Had a similar issue, not helped by the fact the house had storage heaters!

That's how my Canterbury flat is heated.

Ah, hence the need for extra heat...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 01 December, 2020, 09:45:40 pm
Hmm, getting a smart meter evidently earned us a bill (not sure why they send one at the end of the dumb-meter period, surely the meter continues, but perhaps it starts again from the big zero). I don't really mind, it's all the same money. Except the bill says estimated, then read, then estimated, then read.

I have a PhD in fancy stuff that involved genetics and molecules. It's not sums, admittedly. Honestly, I cannot understand their fucking bills. And believe me, if you ever had the misfortune to contact British Gas, you'll have realised they don't understand their fucking bills either.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 02 December, 2020, 09:18:23 am
Hmm, getting a smart meter evidently earned us a bill (not sure why they send one at the end of the dumb-meter period, surely the meter continues, but perhaps it starts again from the big zero). I don't really mind, it's all the same money. Except the bill says estimated, then read, then estimated, then read.

I have a PhD in fancy stuff that involved genetics and molecules. It's not sums, admittedly. Honestly, I cannot understand their fucking bills. And believe me, if you ever had the misfortune to contact British Gas, you'll have realised they don't understand their fucking bills either.

Yep - when we had Smart Meters installed at our previous house they sent and "end bill" for the old ones and then a new one starting from Zero.

We're waiting on booking Smart Meters from BG having just ordered a switch from AVRO (who can't seem to get their act together on billing or admin) - and the upside is that the 2 year fixed rate we have with BG is a LOT cheaper than AVRO (who purport to be cheap) - you just need to speak to a human at BG and they have some way better than published/online rates.  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 02 December, 2020, 09:39:57 am
I did figure it out in the end, BG changed their prices, and estimated the reading when the price changed, and then took the final reading and basically mangled together a final bill out of the two. Without really saying they did this. Surprise bill with bonus random numbers. Good to know getting a smart meter has not affected the service.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rob on 02 December, 2020, 09:59:20 am
BG recently acquired the customers of a failed supplier.  So bad is their SAP based billing system they have been unable to move the customers over quick enough and have lost approx 50% of them to other suppliers.   This is what happens when you hire Accenture to run your IT procurement.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ashaman42 on 02 December, 2020, 09:07:44 pm
Our smart meter, well the readout box in the living room, is claiming that we've used £1305 worth of electricity today.

I did charge up a couple battery packs but they weren't that big!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 02 December, 2020, 09:36:47 pm
Just put the electricity back when you are done. They'll never know.

As students, we had one of those 50p meters. The little coin hopper underneath somehow fell off. I blame poor workmanship on behalf of the meter-makers. That 50p did some work. It sweated to a mirror shine as it passed through the meter like dahl during dysentery. On collection day, we had to go to all the local shops and get to generate about £20's worth of 50p coins. It was like the crappest treasure hoard ever. Then we'd bodge it all together with enough coins not to raise immediate suspicion. I'm to this day unclear how we got away with this for so long, during winter we were running electric fires in every room. Eventually we had to do a bunk owing to an epic mismatch between reading and reward.

Don't judge us. We had just cause. Righteousness sided with us and waved her mighty angelic sword. Firstly, our landlord, Norm the Milkman* had a son who was the epitome of scally so he tried to rob us about once a month, somehow never twigging we had no shit worth stealing, but was dumber than the average milk bottle, and also NtMM never fixed the big hole in the roof. Also yes, as you ask, we were somehow never short of a bottle of milk, since our back window opened into the yard where he parked the milk-floats. I may well be going to Hell, but that's fine, because I already have a second home there and that's my retirement plan.

*not Norman the Gangster, who we wouldn't fuck with, because he was the real deal, the King of Kensington and he had lads who didn't just hit people, they hit people like they liked it more than they liked their mums, and they really liked their mums. I've no idea why everyone in the late-80s/early 90s Liverpool was called Norman.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 04 December, 2020, 01:18:18 pm
Novelty over. I put the gadget in the cupboard with the meters (it kept losing connection anyway, but as previously discussed, The Asbestos Palace is impervious to weasily little radio waves).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 04 December, 2020, 01:31:41 pm
I'm still enjoying the novelty of accurate billing without performing keyhole surgery to access the gas meter.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 04 December, 2020, 01:43:43 pm
I won't argue with no longer needing to insert my iPhone into the cupboard, arm outstretched, in the hope of getting a picture of the electricity meter readout*.

*our fault. In olden times, back when the Asbestos Palace was a mere castle, everything in the hallways was en-cupboarded in fabulously crappy dark wood that was favoured in the 60s and 70s and reminded me of schools and hospitals, which turned the hallway into a grimly dark institutionalized intestine that squeezed you from the front door to the kitchen. Rip it out, declared we. Unfortunately, then we had to minimally box in the meters which our destructive processes had left cruelly exposed.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 04 December, 2020, 05:29:54 pm
Novelty over. I put the gadget in the cupboard with the meters (it kept losing connection anyway, but as previously discussed, The Asbestos Palace is impervious to weasily little radio waves).

Told you!!   We should have Smart Meters shortly, I'm not even going to bother to get the reader gadget out of the box.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 04 December, 2020, 08:07:29 pm
The instructions said the gadget didn't need to be connected to the wifi for billing but please connect it to your wifi for billing. I assume this means it uses the wifi as a backup, but it preferred the elegance of a quantum superposed instruction.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 04 December, 2020, 08:10:23 pm
Neither of the smart meter display gadgets we've had had any sort of WiFi functionality.  They were able to obtain tariff data (in order to display in Currency Units rather than something intuitive like kW) via the meter.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Feanor on 04 December, 2020, 08:12:53 pm
I think it means it gets its useage from the meters in the usual way, and can present this in kW.
But to be able to present this to you in £, it needs to know about your tariff, so it needs to be able to go online to the supplier to get this info.

The meters connect to the suppliers by themselves to supply usage info, and don't need the display device to do this.
The display device is cosmetic to the metering.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 04 December, 2020, 08:45:27 pm
I suppose that makes more sense than the instructions. It wanted to be connected to the wifi for some reason, though from this point on, I'm blaming it if any p0rn gets downloaded.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Feanor on 04 December, 2020, 09:52:11 pm
That's fair enough, I look forward to an Oglaf series where in some other-world smart meters have become sentient and have their own p0rn, subjugating hapless homeowners and their guests in some mass orgy where inserting 50p coins is a historic-fantasy fetish.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 17 September, 2021, 08:05:59 pm
In smart meter news, it appears that the Octopus API isn't returning any data for our gas meter since midnight on the 6th.  The electricity is fine.

Obviously, I've been somewhat distracted, and am very much not in the mood for digging out the meters in order to see what's going on, but feel free to take bets on whether this is due to:

a) Wireless notworking.
b) A bat flattery in the gas meter.
c) Some sort of IT incompetence, either industry-wide or cephalopod-specific.
d) I can't believe it's not brexit.
e) All of the above.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 17 September, 2021, 08:27:43 pm
Octopus website has been telling me it doesn't know what gas tariff we're on, even though it's the same as the electricity and neither of them are smart meters.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 17 September, 2021, 09:10:44 pm
That, combined with the readings suspiciously stopping at midnight, would lend weight to hypothesis (c).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 18 September, 2021, 02:04:46 pm
I dusted off the stupid energy display thinger.  It seems to have gas readings for the week, which would eliminate a meter problem.  I also read the meter directly (because the display thinger is rubbish and doesn't show the absolute readings, like the nPower one did).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: orienteer on 12 November, 2021, 10:06:54 am
I finally gave in to the emails from So Energy asking to install smart meters. In my response I pointed out the electricity meter is under the kitchen sink unit and the washing machine has to be pulled out to access it.

Fitter turned up this morning, hummed and hah'd, and decided he couldn't manage it. To be fair, he was a very large guy who'd have had difficulty squeezing into the available space, but the meter has been replaced before.

Waiting to see what response I get, if any.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: hellymedic on 12 November, 2021, 03:38:15 pm
I have been too lazy to change my electricity supplier, so I've been with Eastern Electricity -> Powergen ->e-on since I moved here.

They installed a Smart Meter 4 years ago and this has been sending readings to the mothership every 3 months/month without issue, until August this year.

My electricity bill for September was estimated, which I thought was strange.

The meter was read on 23 September, according to my online account (It's in an outside box so I wouldn't see a meter reader.)

There have been no further meter readings.

I asked my cleaning lady to read my meter for me earlier this week. The display was blank.

Looked at the e-on website. Looks like the system crashed when it absorbed all the failing power companies.

Hope things get rebooted...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 03 August, 2022, 11:13:51 am
REsurrecting a zombie

I hadn't realised that smart meters rely on their own data signal (via mobile phone masts or radio).  Seems that only one company, Craptiva, run this. Complete monopoly of shite, by all reports.

My brain did a 'wtf' over this. Security is cited as the reason, but since comms such as WhatsApp, that use end-to-end encryption, are secure, really can't see a reason why a dedicated network has had to be created.

Oh, wait. Craptiva and outsourcing. There is the reason. I wonder how much the contract is worth.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 03 August, 2022, 12:07:01 pm
Regular readers will be completely unsurprised that our gas meter never regained its smartness, and I've been obtaining monthly readings using a bike light and a pokey thing.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 03 August, 2022, 12:12:51 pm
I thought the logic was that there would be no guarantee of an established mobile network being available, so they baked their own (whether this offers a better, more effective solution in the real world, I leave as an exercise for the reader).

Security seems, indeed, to be a shit reason. Encryption exists and is used practically everywhere already, you don't need to build a new network, just use existing protocols.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 03 August, 2022, 12:22:49 pm
Possibly they created a network that can roam to everyone else's?  That might make sense, I think the usual way of achieving that is to use a network from ABROAD.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 03 August, 2022, 12:57:57 pm
This has some details:
https://www.smartme.co.uk/smets-2.html

I don’t know why there are two separate networks with competing technologies.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 03 August, 2022, 02:19:26 pm
This has some details:
https://www.smartme.co.uk/smets-2.html

I don’t know why there are two separate networks with competing technologies.

Ah, that makes sense.  Presumably because a cellular system is vastly cheaper, where it's available, which is most of southern England.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 03 August, 2022, 02:38:29 pm
I’ve received emails and texts from my (unchosen) energy supplier to book an appointment to have smart meters fitted. I shall continue to ignore them until it becomes a legal requirement to have one fitted.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 03 August, 2022, 06:47:35 pm
This has some details:
https://www.smartme.co.uk/smets-2.html

I don’t know why there are two separate networks with competing technologies.

Thanks for that. Makes a lot more sense than the previous info I read.

So it is either MESH (good luck with that up here), or mobile comms. Not bad around my house, but not available in many areas.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: giropaul on 03 August, 2022, 09:07:49 pm
Despite the push for efficiency ( and cutting costs), operatives in something data cars are around and about physically reading meters in these parts.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 09 August, 2022, 03:42:31 pm
We got smart meters fitted last month because I'm hoping we might get solar panels one day...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 17 August, 2022, 12:40:18 am
This has some details:
https://www.smartme.co.uk/smets-2.html

I don’t know why there are two separate networks with competing technologies.

Ah, that makes sense.  Presumably because a cellular system is vastly cheaper, where it's available, which is most of southern England.
I would take a stab at it being geography and population density, or in ither words signal gaps in Wales are easier to plug than the vast nothingness of places like yad moss and the far north.

That they've achieved 99.55% coverage of Scotland and Northern England isn't quantified as to whether its population or land mass however given that the BBC manage to have Radio Scotland available in 810 medium wage from almost everywhere using a single transmitter when there are many places of bugger all mobile signal and even places such as Strath Tummel where there is 4g but not 2g or 3g is quite impressive.

Sent from my IV2201 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 17 August, 2022, 12:49:55 am
That they've achieved 99.55% coverage of Scotland and Northern England isn't quantified as to whether its population or land mass however given that the BBC manage to have Radio Scotland available in 810 medium wage from almost everywhere using a single transmitter when there are many places of bugger all mobile signal and even places such as Strath Tummel where there is 4g but not 2g or 3g is quite impressive.

It appears that the LRR network uses 423MHz, so it should propagate a bit better than a cellular signal, but nowhere near as well as the medium wave broadcast band.

(It also sounds suboptimally close to the 433MHz ISM band, so I expect it gets obliterated by car keys and baby monitors and so on.)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 17 August, 2022, 12:53:49 am
Could be tagged onto the existing arquiva TV transmitters at that?

Sent from my IV2201 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 17 August, 2022, 12:55:12 am
Could be tagged onto the existing arquiva TV transmitters at that?

Seems likely they'd use their existing infrastructure, yes.  And broadcast transmitters tend to be in long-established sites with good coverage, from the days before NIMBYs were concerned about the effects of 5G/smart meter mind control radiation.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 17 August, 2022, 06:50:48 pm
Smart meter gave my house price covid! You'll read it in the Mail soon.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: De Sisti on 18 August, 2022, 08:57:18 am
Off-topic slightly; I've initiated action to get a water meter. Might save a few £ each month?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Pickled Onion on 18 August, 2022, 08:31:39 pm
Unless you keep koi carp or have a pristine lawn you like to keep in golf course condition throughout a drought, you almost certainly will. The flat-rate water charge has gradually increased since water meters were invented, on the (justifiable) grounds that half the people still on it didn't care how much they used wasted.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 19 August, 2022, 12:23:37 pm
Just ordered a smart meter for Mum.   BG booking dates early Nov so they must be busy rolling these out.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 19 August, 2022, 01:39:37 pm
Unless you keep koi carp or have a pristine lawn you like to keep in golf course condition throughout a drought, you almost certainly will. The flat-rate water charge has gradually increased since water meters were invented, on the (justifiable) grounds that half the people still on it didn't care how much they used wasted.
Things must have changed.  I remember my bill doubling when I bought a house with a meter.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: JellyLegs on 19 August, 2022, 01:54:43 pm
Unless you keep koi carp or have a pristine lawn you like to keep in golf course condition throughout a drought, you almost certainly will. The flat-rate water charge has gradually increased since water meters were invented, on the (justifiable) grounds that half the people still on it didn't care how much they used wasted.
Things must have changed.  I remember my bill doubling when I bought a house with a meter.

I definitely save money on a water meter and I can see what I use, so encouraging me to use water sparingly.

One other thing that might be worth checking, certainly if you live out in the sticks and / or in a pre 1950’s house, is what happens to your rainwater. Water companies, or mine at least, assume it goes into part of their drainage system and there is an element of your bill that pays for this.  For a few years, I was paying them for rainwater discharge despite the fact that none of the rain that fell on my house and garden went any further than a soak away under the lawn.  It wasn’t a huge amount but the £20 (in 1997) was better off in my pocket than theirs.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 19 August, 2022, 04:16:31 pm
Unless you keep koi carp or have a pristine lawn you like to keep in golf course condition throughout a drought, you almost certainly will. The flat-rate water charge has gradually increased since water meters were invented, on the (justifiable) grounds that half the people still on it didn't care how much they used wasted.
Things must have changed.  I remember my bill doubling when I bought a house with a meter.

Ditto - we moved from the house with a meter to one without and are now paying a lot less (same water company) - occupancy/life-style is pretty much unchanged.   Interestingly the houses either side have meters - the water co doesn't know where our incoming fee/street stopcock is so can't seem to be able to fit a meter  (I know where it is  :thumbsup:)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 19 August, 2022, 05:09:03 pm
At some point our water company installed meters at every property, but as we’ve not signed up for one we’re still on a flat rate. At some point I might take some readings and do some sums, in the meantime while we have a third person living with us, I’ll stay on the flat rate thank you.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 19 August, 2022, 05:58:49 pm
Thinking about this as a wider principle, no one, as far as I know, has flat rate electricity or gas bills. OTOH, telecoms cos seem keen to shove us all onto flat rate deals rather than PAYG, most streaming and TV is flat rate but there's still a lot of pay per view, and buses are increasingly flat rate rather than having any distance or time element but this is unheard of with trains and planes. And there is continual talk about replacing annual VED with road pricing. So moves towards metering in some areas and away from it in others.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 August, 2022, 10:54:45 pm
If I owned a house, and was contemplating the benefits of a water meter, I'd probably install my own water meter under the sink to find out what's actually being used.  They're not particularly expensive, and you can get ones with dry contact outputs for automagic counting (and it wouldn't be hard to implement a useful "something's dribbling" alarm).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 August, 2022, 10:56:18 pm
Thinking about this as a wider principle, no one, as far as I know, has flat rate electricity or gas bills.

Some tenants do.  Usually ones renting a room, rather than a whole house/flat.  It tends to come with moaning every time you use an appliance.


The ultimate cost of providing telecoms (voice or data) is determined by peak network capacity, so PAYG doesn't really make things easier for the provider to manage.  Flat rates at least make your revenue predictable and your billing simpler.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tod28 on 20 August, 2022, 12:04:12 am
Down here (South West Water) metered rate is about 50% that of unmetered unless one is either extravagant with the wet stuff or the house still appears to only have an outside tap on SWW's "records". If they can't physically fit a meter when requested [recent experience of a house supplied via next door's main coming up through a concrete floor and behind a fitted kitchen) the inspector completes a chit which reduces the unmetered charge by 50%. Even with the tea towel folding chancellor's £50 annual rebate, the unmetered rate for 2 in our 2 bed band B property is north of £800 pa. Metered we pay £350-400 pa and we do wash!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: fd3 on 20 August, 2022, 12:18:15 am
I consider a meter for water rates from time to time, the I consider that we are a family of five and come to my senses.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 20 August, 2022, 07:00:21 am
Being cynical, they ramp up the metered costs to (a) cover the considerable cost of reading them and (b) to ensure their revenue isn't impacted by reduced usage.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: wajcgac on 20 August, 2022, 09:49:52 am
Anglia water have recently notified me that they will be fitting a Smart Water Meter to my property, we've always had a metered supply from when the house was built in the early 90s.

In the FAQs in response to the question of whether you can choose not to have the Smart Meter fitted.

Quote
No. We have a legal obligation to manage and protect the water supply in our region. We’re upgrading meters to smart meters to help support our public interest obligations set out by our regulator which include finding leaks and helping our customers save water.

I'm curious to know why you can opt out of having a smart Electric/Gas meter fitted but not a Smart Water meter?

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 20 August, 2022, 11:52:54 am
Because the water meter can't cut your supply off, maybe?

Being able to opt out of smart meters was always daft.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 20 August, 2022, 11:55:30 am
Anglia water have recently notified me that they will be fitting a Smart Water Meter to my property, we've always had a metered supply from when the house was built in the early 90s.

In the FAQs in response to the question of whether you can choose not to have the Smart Meter fitted.

Quote
No. We have a legal obligation to manage and protect the water supply in our region. We’re upgrading meters to smart meters to help support our public interest obligations set out by our regulator which include finding leaks and helping our customers save water.

I'm curious to know why you can opt out of having a smart Electric/Gas meter fitted but not a Smart Water meter?
Because the gas and electric companies are not charged with protecting the supply?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Pickled Onion on 20 August, 2022, 12:39:43 pm
Unless you keep koi carp or have a pristine lawn you like to keep in golf course condition throughout a drought, you almost certainly will. The flat-rate water charge has gradually increased since water meters were invented, on the (justifiable) grounds that half the people still on it didn't care how much they used wasted.
Things must have changed.  I remember my bill doubling when I bought a house with a meter.

I think they must have done. My water + sewerage is around £300 a year (average 2.5 people, house with 3 bathrooms and courtyard garden that needs watering daily in the summer). The flat rate is close to £600 plus 30p per £ of RV.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 21 August, 2022, 09:22:09 am
Anglia water have recently notified me that they will be fitting a Smart Water Meter to my property, we've always had a metered supply from when the house was built in the early 90s.

In the FAQs in response to the question of whether you can choose not to have the Smart Meter fitted.

Quote
No. We have a legal obligation to manage and protect the water supply in our region. We’re upgrading meters to smart meters to help support our public interest obligations set out by our regulator which include finding leaks and helping our customers save water.

I'm curious to know why you can opt out of having a smart Electric/Gas meter fitted but not a Smart Water meter?
Because the gas and electric companies are not charged with protecting the supply?

It is very, very difficult to disconnect a domestic consumer.   Energy is deemed a necessity by the regulator.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rafletcher on 21 August, 2022, 10:52:00 am
We currently can’t have a water meter fitted as we’re on a common supply to a terrace, apparently. I guess this is because at present all meters are at the stop cock in the street. Why that is, I’ve no idea, I had a colleague some 30 years ago (he lived near Shipston on Stour) who had a data logger fitted to his supply inside his house, and he periodically got a replacement “memory” and sent the other back. We could (now, since we had a new supply pipe fitted, though still on the common main) have a meter fitted on our incomer. Perhaps with the advent of smart water meters that’ll start to happen.

We’ve also had a message that SO energy will be in touch about smart meters for gas and electricity. I shall decline, again.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 21 August, 2022, 12:00:09 pm
Thinking about this as a wider principle, no one, as far as I know, has flat rate electricity or gas bills.

Some tenants do.  Usually ones renting a room, rather than a whole house/flat.  It tends to come with moaning every time you use an appliance.
GPWM but the landlord is still presented with a bill based on consumption. It's just too difficult to then break it down by tenant.


Quote
The ultimate cost of providing telecoms (voice or data) is determined by peak network capacity, so PAYG doesn't really make things easier for the provider to manage.  Flat rates at least make your revenue predictable and your billing simpler.
So the cost to the service provider is the same whether you make a call every hour or once a year, it's only when everyone calls at once that it's a problem? Didn't realise this but it does explain why we used to have peak and off-peak calls.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 21 August, 2022, 12:07:00 pm
The ultimate cost of providing telecoms (voice or data) is determined by peak network capacity, so PAYG doesn't really make things easier for the provider to manage.  Flat rates at least make your revenue predictable and your billing simpler.
So the cost to the service provider is the same whether you make a call every hour or once a year, it's only when everyone calls at once that it's a problem? Didn't realise this but it does explain why we used to have peak and off-peak calls.

Also explains long-distance rates (trunk lines are expensive).  And why cheap ISP's networks become congested at peak times (oversubscribe your transit, and hope the users put up with it or aren't tech-savvy enough to realise you're the problem).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 21 August, 2022, 12:09:02 pm
How does it explain long distance rates? I though that was to do with needing booster stations (if we're talking about landlines) and presumably multiple relays for cellphones?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 21 August, 2022, 12:54:31 pm
How does it explain long distance rates? I though that was to do with needing booster stations (if we're talking about landlines) and presumably multiple relays for cellphones?

In the early days a trunk might have been a literal bundle of twisted pairs, with each pair of wires carrying one phone call as baseband audio.  For decades it would be tens of calls multiplexed into a broadband signal on a coaxial cable (or point to point radio link[1]), with regular repeaters.  Either way, more capacity means you need to add more cables, which is expensive.  Now it's all fibre optics, with each fibre being able to carry literally thousands of calls, with fewer repeaters, and a lot less maintenance.  It's not a bottleneck any more; there are only so many people wanting to make phone calls.

You need to have a complete network (with all the expense of digging trenches and such), but the cost of the capacity becomes marginal (indeed, fibre itself is so cheap that it's now standard practice to install additional 'dark' fibres which aren't intended to be used until some non-specific time in the future) so you don't need to manage people's telephonic habits by billing them at different rates.

For cellular, the scarce resource is radio spectrum.  You've got a finite number of channels to play with, and once you start hitting that limit, the only way to win - short of new technology appearing - is to make the cells smaller (so you can re-use the same bit of spectrum in the next cell over), which means more infrastructure (masts, and cables or point-to-point radio links for the back-haul) to cover the same geographic area.  Then at some point you have to connect your network to everyone else's, and suck up *their* charges for completing the call.  Hence mobile calls used to be astronomically expensive.

Now we're living in The Future, and telecoms is all about shifting data around.  Voice calls themselves are such a comparatively small amount of the data that they don't need much special treatment any more.  Unavoidable[2] bottlenecks are usually at the local level, where infrastructure is old or insufficient.

I can imagine a world where electricity generation is increasingly decentralised, and billing might undergo a similar shift as distribution costs begin to dominate.  Maybe we'll be charged according to the current capacity of our supply, rather than the number of kilowatt-hours consumed.  Maybe we'll pay Western Power Distribution by the amp, and then West Midlands Renewables Cooperative by the killowatt-hour?


[1] Hence the Post Office Tower and inferior concrete equivalents up the spine of England, which used to be sprawling with microwave dishes, and are now home to a couple of cellular sites and the occasional family of peregrine falcons.
[2] As opposed to ISPs being cheap about transit capacity.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 21 August, 2022, 01:14:44 pm
Comprehensive and clear.  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andrewc on 21 August, 2022, 01:48:08 pm
If they can't physically fit a meter when requested [recent experience of a house supplied via next door's main coming up through a concrete floor and behind a fitted kitchen) the inspector completes a chit which reduces the unmetered charge by 50%.


They did that to me, when the chap said he couldn't fit a meter in my single occupant top floor flat.  They put me on an assessed charge of £260 per year . 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 23 August, 2022, 08:04:05 am
Conversation with our office manager yesterday.   Seems to be paying quite a lot for energy (sits in a room full of energy experts.....).

We got onto smart meters and I spent 15 minutes correcting all of the bad press.   'They can switch your supply whenever they want'.....'They can tell when you are on holiday'....'Just a way to charge you more'......

I, as usual, blame the Daily Mail.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 27 August, 2022, 08:54:02 am
'parently most Electricity SM installed are now SMETS2.  What kind of data can you extract from them?  kWh per hour/time of day/day/wk etc?  Do they have apps/PC software assoc'd?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 27 August, 2022, 12:09:24 pm
'parently most Electricity SM installed are now SMETS2.  What kind of data can you extract from them?  kWh per hour/time of day/day/wk etc?  Do they have apps/PC software assoc'd?

Configured properly they can record half-hourly consumption.   The data you can see via your supplier will depend how clever they are and what their software can offer.  When I just went through the application for Mum I opted for monthly reading, but half-hourly was an option.  She’s with BG.

I believe you can read the data direct and do your own analytics.  Kim seems to have done something like this.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 27 August, 2022, 12:12:23 pm
I don't think there's much scope for talking to the meter automagically, unless you can intercept the Zigbee comms to the display thinger.  It's not like the ones in ABROAD that have a standard serial interface for the purpose.  You can see various parameters manually by poking buttons on the meter.

The meter sends, at best, half-hourly data[1] to the supplier.  Which you can access at some point the following day, if your supplier provides an API (or pretty website or app or something) to do that.

If the meter has a blinkenlight (regardless of whether it's smart), you can use a photodiode to count the blinks and do your own arithmetic.  I'm doing this to obtain minutely readings, which gives enough detail to infer something useful about appliance power consumption from the graphs:

(http://www.ductilebiscuit.net/gallery_albums/electricity/mainsgraph24hrwithoctopus.png)

(The blue 'power' line is from the blinkenlight on the meter.  The orange 'billing' line shows what's available from the meter via the Octopus API (see posts earlier in this thread), which is much less useful.)


[1] Which I suspect is literally just kWh.  Because anything else would be joined-up thinking[2].
[2] Obviously it would be useful for the distribution company to be able to monitor voltage (and probably current and power factor) trends, but that appears not to be possible.  They have to come out and physically install their own data loggers.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 27 August, 2022, 12:18:49 pm
On telephone call time and distance charges of old, I can go in to much greater detail than Kim is anyone is interested  ;D

On correction, the point to point microwave links connection to the Post Office tower were primarily a fallback network and used for television traffic. The microwave channels were much higher bandwidth than the coax cables used on trunk and junction calls.

I’ll stop there.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: MikeFromLFE on 27 August, 2022, 01:11:48 pm
'parently most Electricity SM installed are now SMETS2.  What kind of data can you extract from them?  kWh per hour/time of day/day/wk etc?  Do they have apps/PC software assoc'd?
There are a number of apps that will give you some easily digestable information.
On Android I can think of Hugo and Bright. Smartthings will show your electricity info.
You might want to think carefully about sharing this data with unknown app purveyors.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 27 August, 2022, 03:01:11 pm
I suspect my gas meter is rather inaccurate.  It seems to have a lot of latency (like, a minute or so after turning off the hob) and, more usefully, registers an unrealistically low kW reading (about 30W) if only the small gas ring is in use.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 27 August, 2022, 03:07:17 pm
My supplier has sent me two emails and a text message this week in an attempt to get me to make an appointment for a smart meter install. I’m continuing to ignore them.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 27 August, 2022, 03:22:07 pm
I suspect my gas meter is rather inaccurate.  It seems to have a lot of latency (like, a minute or so after turning off the hob) and, more usefully, registers an unrealistically low kW reading (about 30W) if only the small gas ring is in use.

It's probably good at volume and rubbish at rate.  Presumably the electronics gets a pulse every time the bellows expands, which isn't going to be very often at low flow rates.  The filtering algorithm will then take time to determine when the next pulse hasn't arrived for long enough to qualify as 'off'.  And then there'll be a transmit interval optimised for battery life.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Basil on 27 August, 2022, 03:27:52 pm
My supplier has sent me two emails and a text message this week in an attempt to get me to make an appointment for a smart meter install. I’m continuing to ignore them.

I ignore them too, and cut short the phone calls.
I'm not sure what it is I have against having one installed.  It's probably the constant nagging has resulted in stubborn negativity on my part.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rafletcher on 27 August, 2022, 04:54:14 pm
My supplier has sent me two emails and a text message this week in an attempt to get me to make an appointment for a smart meter install. I’m continuing to ignore them.

I ignore them too, and cut short the phone calls.
I'm not sure what it is I have against having one installed.  It's probably the constant nagging has resulted in stubborn negativity on my part.

Snap. Plus we’re in a poor signal area (no matter what the telco’s state) with the meters about 10m apart. And I’ll gain nothing from having one.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: orraloon on 27 August, 2022, 05:28:25 pm
Alt approach:  smarts x2 due to be fitted on Tuesday.  Depending on whether installer goes 'yebbut...'
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 27 August, 2022, 05:30:44 pm
Smart meters have worked well for us, in that we haven't had anyone wake us at morning o'clock and require us to dig out the meters from behind a pile of bicycles and camping kit.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 27 August, 2022, 05:50:54 pm
We got ours fitted in July. Gas in the box outside the front door and electric just inside the front door. So far Octopus have not managed to talk to the electric meter.
 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 27 August, 2022, 06:04:11 pm
Our gas meter remains out of reach of the cephalopod's purple tentacles, though it did work for a while.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Basil on 27 August, 2022, 09:44:18 pm
Smart meters have worked well for us, in that we haven't had anyone wake us at morning o'clock and require us to dig out the meters from behind a pile of bicycles and camping kit.

We don't get that. I just enter a reading online. They obviously think I'm trustworthy.
But what would be the point of under reporting?  I'd have to settle up eventually, at probably a much higher rate.

Thinks.  Hmm.  Maybe I should over report.  Pay for next year's leccie at this year's price.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 27 August, 2022, 10:14:04 pm
Mine went in a year ago.  I opted for monthly billing.  The install was quite easy as the house is only 5 years old and the meters are on the outside wall.

Ovo have managed to interface with them both OK and billing is automated.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Basil on 15 September, 2022, 10:01:33 am
One of the regular Please, Please, Please Have A Smart Meter letters this morning.
With a new angle.
Quote
From 1 October, 100% renewable electricity will only be available to customers with a smart meter

How does that work then?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 15 September, 2022, 10:56:57 am
AIUI electricity providers buy green energy credits equivalent to the number of customers they’ve promised renewable energy. If only a fraction of customers have smart meters they only have to buy a fraction of the number of credits.

(And of course the credits are kind of a meaningless fiction anyway)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 15 September, 2022, 11:09:44 am
We got ours fitted in July. Gas in the box outside the front door and electric just inside the front door. So far Octopus have not managed to talk to the electric meter.

Duff meter?  I thinking about 'registering interest' in an Octopus SM, but not taken the plunge.  Apparently they're pretty busy with installs.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 15 September, 2022, 12:29:37 pm
We got ours fitted in July. Gas in the box outside the front door and electric just inside the front door. So far Octopus have not managed to talk to the electric meter.

Duff meter?  I thinking about 'registering interest' in an Octopus SM, but not taken the plunge.  Apparently they're pretty busy with installs.
They tried rebooting it remotely which didn't fix it so am waiting on an engineer coming in November.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 15 September, 2022, 12:54:19 pm
One of the regular Please, Please, Please Have A Smart Meter letters this morning.
With a new angle.
Quote
From 1 October, 100% renewable electricity will only be available to customers with a smart meter

How does that work then?

That’s the suppliers choice.  There’s nothing in regulation that says that’s the case.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 15 September, 2022, 12:57:54 pm
AIUI electricity providers buy green energy credits equivalent to the number of customers they’ve promised renewable energy. If only a fraction of customers have smart meters they only have to buy a fraction of the number of credits.

(And of course the credits are kind of a meaningless fiction anyway)

For a tariff to be green the supplier needs to source 1 REGO per MWh of consumption.  Average is 3 REGOs per domestic customer.   The type of metering has no effect on this*.

Agreed, though, that all of the my tariff is greener than yours debate is largely tosh.


* There is a potential move to half hourly auditing of renewable tariffs.  If this goes in domestic supply points will need a smart meter.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: JellyLegs on 16 September, 2022, 06:08:38 pm
I would just love my smart meter to work. It has been totally dumb since the day it was installed, refusing to connect up to anything.  The supplier isn’t interested in sorting it out, I guess they get their subsidy payment for putting me on a smart meter whether it works or not.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 19 September, 2022, 09:01:53 am
Mine work intermittently, i.e. Eon sometimes get automated readings and sometimes say they were unable to get one.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: hellymedic on 20 September, 2022, 01:10:37 pm
Mine work intermittently, i.e. Eon sometimes get automated readings and sometimes say they were unable to get one.

Mine likewise; went several months without a smart reading.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 20 September, 2022, 01:12:11 pm
On request I provided one of the Cephalopod's minions with a photo of our yes-it's-actually-smart gas meter last week, in the hope that they might be able to fix whatever database is claiming that it's not.

As yet, no progress.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 20 September, 2022, 01:31:38 pm
On request I provided one of the Cephalopod's minions with a photo of our yes-it's-actually-smart gas meter last week, in the hope that they might be able to fix whatever database is claiming that it's not.

As yet, no progress.

This was the mechanism in which I finally demonstrated that our meter was metric (or imperial, can't remember which way around they had confused matters). Complete with a copy of that day's newspaper, in a proof-of-life sort of gig.

Given they claimed what was in the database had always been that way and it wasn't a new meter, I still wonder if the people before us were paying 3x their gas bill. Or whether it was just British Gas bluster for yet another billing fuckup.

Our smart meters just work (though oddly, on a few occasions I've peeked into the cupboard to turn on the NAS at the end of the world, the little monitor has lost its connection, despite being about 30 cm away from the meters themselves). That cupboard truly is a place where radio waves don't dare to propagate. I was disappointed, if unsurprised, to find that when rates change, they still estimate, rather than take an actual reading.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 20 September, 2022, 01:52:24 pm
On request I provided one of the Cephalopod's minions with a photo of our yes-it's-actually-smart gas meter last week, in the hope that they might be able to fix whatever database is claiming that it's not.

As yet, no progress.

Said company refused to believe the registers on the E7 meter at our rented place were set up the wrong way round.   I tried reasonably hard to convince them as I'm an honest person but eventually gave up and used daytime energy for the price of nighttime guilt-free.

Our smart meters at the current place have been pretty good so far but they are on the outside wall and the signal is clearly quite good.  The water meter has a different type of logger and the old one had died quietly with no-one noticing.   The last owners had never had a proper read and never noticed (this is not entirely a surprise).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 20 September, 2022, 04:10:10 pm
We've got a Gen 1 smart meter, that hasn't worked since we changed supplier. Except that our current supplier, Outfox the Market, appear to be getting info from it. Except that they don't mark it as a smart meter reading. And they only show one reading a month. All very odd. I've asked them woss goin' on, we'll see what they say.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 26 September, 2022, 09:36:53 pm
We got ours fitted in July. Gas in the box outside the front door and electric just inside the front door. So far Octopus have not managed to talk to the electric meter.

Duff meter?  I thinking about 'registering interest' in an Octopus SM, but not taken the plunge.  Apparently they're pretty busy with installs.
They tried rebooting it remotely which didn't fix it so am waiting on an engineer coming in November.

Despite both meters being visible on the IHD this morning, tonight there is no evidence of a gas meter. When I went to check the Octopod app sure enough it's stopped getting readings from the gas meter, but it appears to have populated a whole load of electric data back as far as the 26th August. So looks like maybe they don't need an engineer out to the electric meter at all. But might do for the gas now.
Doesn't exactly fill you with confidence does it...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 26 September, 2022, 09:45:56 pm
Despite both meters being visible on the IHD this morning, tonight there is no evidence of a gas meter. When I went to check the Octopod app sure enough it's stopped getting readings from the gas meter, but it appears to have populated a whole load of electric data back as far as the 26th August. So looks like maybe they don't need an engineer out to the electric meter at all. But might do for the gas now.
Doesn't exactly fill you with confidence does it...

*laughs in oh no, not you as well*

Although probably not the same problem, if your IHD isn't working.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 28 September, 2022, 04:32:38 pm
Gas meter appears to be reporting to the IHD and Octopus again and it seems like some electric data has made it's way to Octopus over the last month, so maybe I won't need that engineer visit after all. I shall wait until meter reading day and check what's on the meter is the same as on the Octopus appbefore I cancel the engineer though.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 03 October, 2022, 09:36:47 pm
Gas meter appears to be reporting to the IHD and Octopus again and it seems like some electric data has made it's way to Octopus over the last month, so maybe I won't need that engineer visit after all. I shall wait until meter reading day and check what's on the meter is the same as on the Octopus appbefore I cancel the engineer though.

And now neither of the meters are talking to Octopus  ::-)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 05 October, 2022, 03:43:32 pm
Meter saga continues apace, with an appointment booked for an engineer to install the meter we've already got on the 28th, followed by an email telling me to ignore it.

Seriously, it's like trying to make printers work in Windows.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 05 October, 2022, 06:15:33 pm
Gas meter has populated all the missing data with Octopus again, electric still not talking.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: numbnuts on 05 October, 2022, 06:49:29 pm
I had my smart meter fitted on August 31st  and have just found out the gas side is OK and the reading are being sent, but the electric side has never worked from day one !!!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 18 October, 2022, 09:09:35 am
We've got a Gen 1 smart meter, that hasn't worked since we changed supplier. Except that our current supplier, Outfox the Market, appear to be getting info from it. Except that they don't mark it as a smart meter reading. And they only show one reading a month. All very odd. I've asked them woss goin' on, we'll see what they say.

Well, what they said was, yes we've got smartmeter feeds from you, no we didn't tell you but you don't need to send readings, and no we can't give you any more info.

To be fair they also pointed me to the third party apps that do smart meter data, so I have tried Loop, and blow me down but it works (after a shaky start) and I now have > 1 year of data accessible by half hour. Shame I can't download the data, wonder if any of the apps do.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: giropaul on 18 October, 2022, 02:23:22 pm
Around here, the electric supplier/s would appear to trust the much vaunted smart meters so much that Meter readers’ cars are a regular sight as I cycle around.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 18 October, 2022, 09:14:34 pm
We've got a Gen 1 smart meter, that hasn't worked since we changed supplier. Except that our current supplier, Outfox the Market, appear to be getting info from it. Except that they don't mark it as a smart meter reading. And they only show one reading a month. All very odd. I've asked them woss goin' on, we'll see what they say.

Well, what they said was, yes we've got smartmeter feeds from you, no we didn't tell you but you don't need to send readings, and no we can't give you any more info.

To be fair they also pointed me to the third party apps that do smart meter data, so I have tried Loop, and blow me down but it works (after a shaky start) and I now have > 1 year of data accessible by half hour. Shame I can't download the data, wonder if any of the apps do.

How do the 3rd party apps get your data then? I had a quick look at Loop and saw it wanted credit card details?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 18 October, 2022, 10:13:44 pm
Yes, to validate your address, I can see that is needed. It validates a zero debit on the account, all you need is the mpan number and the address, so some form of security is good. Loop works quite well, but I would like to find one that lets me download data (>1 year data comes off the meter). (It did take a few days for it to synch, but send fine now)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 18 October, 2022, 10:32:54 pm
If you're with Octopus, you can download your consumption as a CSV file from the website.  Or access it via the API (https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/) if you want to do something more automated.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 18 October, 2022, 10:55:54 pm
Not so much with outfucks the market
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 19 October, 2022, 12:37:46 pm
If you're with Octopus, you can download your consumption as a CSV file from the website.  Or access it via the API (https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/) if you want to do something more automated.

That only works if octopus can see the consumption though, I assume.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 October, 2022, 12:41:05 pm
If you're with Octopus, you can download your consumption as a CSV file from the website.  Or access it via the API (https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/) if you want to do something more automated.

That only works if octopus can see the consumption though, I assume.


Yes.   >:(
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Adam on 19 October, 2022, 08:21:07 pm
Octopus are having a glitch with my account.  I'd noticed the actual bills don't charge for any electricity used after 29th April.  The very last one dated 13th September for some reason only relates to electricity used on 28th January.  All of the data is however fully visible on their website.

Although they haven't yet emailed me to notify me, the website states they've reduced my payment from £80 pm to £13pm, as I'm building up a massive credit.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: cygnet on 20 October, 2022, 01:11:41 am
80-(400/6) = 13

400 being the gov discount, paid over 6months

If you are in massive credit (possible after a warm summer) rest assured you are not receiving this discount because you are using less energy than the DD computer expected.

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Adam on 20 October, 2022, 07:28:53 am
Thank you!  I'd forgotten about the rebate.  I've emailed Octopus several times about the unbilled electricity since 29th April, so if they eventually respond, that will eat up a bit of the surplus.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: TimC on 20 October, 2022, 10:47:21 am
My smart meter display unit, which has been working perfectly for the last couple of years, has just gone into a terminal reboot loop. It’s right next to me at my desk, and it’s bloody annoying!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Jasmine on 20 October, 2022, 01:18:11 pm
I've emailed Octopus several times about the unbilled electricity since 29th April, so if they eventually respond, that will eat up a bit of the surplus.

I had this exact problem with Eon, who don't seem to have a functioning email account, just a hellish website with an FAQ loop. When I phoned up billing they fixed it immediately, although the fix was weird. Essentially my entire electricity usage for 9 months was plonked onto the day after my previous successful bill. This resulted in my account history as appearing to be in debt for the first few of those months as the direct debits working into the "usage". The net result works out, but I'm keeping an eye on credit reports to make sure that this hasn't resulted in looking like unpaid bills.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 04 November, 2022, 06:47:10 am
BG just cancelled Mum’s installation next week.  ‘Shortage of engineers’.

No ability to re-book.  They will be back in touch.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rafletcher on 09 November, 2022, 06:47:16 am
A reason for perhaps not switching…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63554879#:~:text=More%20than%20152%2C000%20households%20with,doubled%20to%20108%2C000%20in%202021.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 09 November, 2022, 07:48:47 am
A reason for perhaps not switching…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63554879#:~:text=More%20than%20152%2C000%20households%20with,doubled%20to%20108%2C000%20in%202021.
Yes, it didn't say that in the puff about why you should have one fitted.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 09 November, 2022, 12:44:53 pm
A reason for perhaps not switching…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63554879#:~:text=More%20than%20152%2C000%20households%20with,doubled%20to%20108%2C000%20in%202021.

Was just coming here to link to this.

That they can do this as a remote switch is frankly horrific. I had been pro the idea of smart meters and flexible billing. But this feature creep to me is an absolute no.

:(

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 09 November, 2022, 12:49:29 pm
I dunno, on one hand it's better than having them gain access to your home in a less-than-polite manner to swap the meter.  But if it makes it easier for the supplier to do then that's likely to encourage them.

And you can bet that just because it also makes it easier for the supplier to switch you off pre-payment, they won't.  (When I was a PSO we spent a couple of years trying to persuade British Gas or whoever to give us a normal meter, without success.  Even the scamming bastards at London Electricity couldn't manage it when they fraudulently signed us up, which is how we ended up buying our gas from nobody for the remainder of our tenancy.)

TBH, this wouldn't be anywhere near as big a problem if the unit rates on pre-payment meters were fair.  I reckon that's what needs fixing.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 09 November, 2022, 01:04:17 pm
TBH, this wouldn't be anywhere near as big a problem if the unit rates on pre-payment meters were fair.  I reckon that's what needs fixing.

Actually, that's the more salient point.

It's not like you can shop around on prepayment.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 09 November, 2022, 01:11:30 pm
It's not like you can shop around on prepayment.

Which raises another good question: Why not?

Pre-payment is a convenient way to pay for things you don't use very much of.  It's extremely popular in telecoms.  Given that we now have suitable tech to implement it, why shouldn't electricity work that way?

(The answer is probably that the providers want a guaranteed income to cover the costs of maintaining the network.  And you can imagine a future where people switch to PAYG electricity to cover the handful of units they aren't able to generate themselves with solar and battery storage, which isn't going to be very lucrative for the supplier.)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 09 November, 2022, 01:18:01 pm
Suppliers can only switch you to prepayment if there's a debt and the supplier has made reasonable efforts to come to a settlement.

Of the 27m domestic meter points in the UK 4m are prepayment so it's pretty common.

Prepayment tariffs are also subject to the price cap.   Tariffs are higher than standard credit but not significantly.   It's right, though, that not all suppliers are interested.   There are a couple (Utilita and E) that specialise in this space.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 09 November, 2022, 01:48:43 pm
Suppliers can only switch you to prepayment if there's a debt and the supplier has made reasonable efforts to come to a settlement.

Define reasonable.

Quote

Of the 27m domestic meter points in the UK 4m are prepayment so it's pretty common.

Prepayment tariffs are also subject to the price cap.   Tariffs are higher than standard credit but not significantly.   It's right, though, that not all suppliers are interested.   There are a couple (Utilita and E) that specialise in this space.

Those 4m are going to be disproportionately poorer people, who are then faced with a higher cost. It's another case of Sam Vime's theory. It costs more to be poor than it costs to be rich.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 09 November, 2022, 03:04:33 pm
Suppliers can only switch you to prepayment if there's a debt and the supplier has made reasonable efforts to come to a settlement.

Define reasonable.

Quote

Of the 27m domestic meter points in the UK 4m are prepayment so it's pretty common.

Prepayment tariffs are also subject to the price cap.   Tariffs are higher than standard credit but not significantly.   It's right, though, that not all suppliers are interested.   There are a couple (Utilita and E) that specialise in this space.

Those 4m are going to be disproportionately poorer people, who are then faced with a higher cost. It's another case of Sam Vime's theory. It costs more to be poor than it costs to be rich.

J

As I've mentioned previously I don't work in supply so I only interject to add a bit of reason or the odd fact.

The definition of reasonable efforts to get a customer to pay debt is in the regulators hands.   We're running into a period where bad debt on energy will get much, much worse but it's the suppliers that will bear the burden.   As I've said before it's desperately thin margin market so this will make the sector even worse.   I'm slightly surprised we've not seen more supplier failures but there's not many left.

Prior to the intervention on the 1st Oct the cap was as follows (assuming average usage) :-

Credit meter - £3,549
Prepay - £3,608

about a fiver a month......

The intervention capped everyone on a SVR at £2,500 (assuming average usage) - prepay and credit all pay the same.   

Not sure what will happen come April. 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 15 November, 2022, 10:27:06 am
Gotta love the Daily Heil

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11321855/Chinese-smart-meters-threat-power-supplies-Britain-critics-fear.html
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: De Sisti on 15 November, 2022, 10:39:48 am
My smart meter was fitted yesterday. It has already drained three new AAA batteries, and has now
reverted to a foreign language for data read-outs. I've contacted Octopus and await their resolution.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 15 November, 2022, 10:48:46 am
My smart meter was fitted yesterday. It has already drained three new AAA batteries, and has now
reverted to a foreign language for data read-outs. I've contacted Octopus and await their resolution.
I presume you mean the cheapo monitor, rather than the meter itself?  Mine runs off the mains, or would if I used it.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: De Sisti on 15 November, 2022, 10:53:44 am
My smart meter was fitted yesterday. It has already drained three new AAA batteries, and has now
reverted to a foreign language for data read-outs. I've contacted Octopus and await their resolution.
I presume you mean the cheapo monitor, rather than the meter itself?  Mine runs off the mains, or would if I used it.
Yes, that's correct, it's the monitor. It has frozen, showing the same reading, despite items being
switched on and off.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 15 November, 2022, 11:01:37 am
The monitors are only designed to have battery backup, not operation, they should run from mains.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tim Hall on 15 November, 2022, 11:13:25 am
The monitors are only designed to have battery backup, not operation, they should run from mains.

Presumably so that in the event of a power cut you can tell you're not using any electricity.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: De Sisti on 15 November, 2022, 11:47:23 am
The monitors are only designed to have battery backup, not operation, they should run from mains.
So the guy who carried out the work didn't do his job properly, as he didn't explain this. :(
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 November, 2022, 12:06:51 pm
The monitors are a waste of time anyway. Play with it for a few days then consign it to the dusty box of random cables.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: phantasmagoriana on 15 November, 2022, 12:12:57 pm
My monitor lives in the little box I put on the wall that also holds the router and smart hub. Used to have it out on display, but it just got a bit depressing to watch.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 15 November, 2022, 12:15:05 pm
Actually not quite useless, for a couple of reasons.

1) The MAC address on the unit will give you access to your data https://data.n3rgy.com/consumer/home - there appears to be no other way to access this

2) Is useful for a visual validation of energy usage of any individual thing, especially those you can't plug into a meter
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 November, 2022, 12:35:02 pm
I've got better ways of doing both those things, but I accept that's unusual.

Our older smart meters let you access the raw meter reading from the monitor, which was useful, because the supplier couldn't access the data and I had to submit readings.  The new ones don't have that feature.  It's like when Garmin removed the 'stay on' setting.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 15 November, 2022, 12:48:27 pm
I pretty much lost interest in mine within a day and, indeed, consigned it to the dusty IT cupboard under the stairs. I'm not sure they really contribute to more efficient energy usage – I imagine it's a mechanism of terror if you're struggling to pay your energy bills and of little arbitrary interest to everyone else. Sure, I could sit in the cold and dark, scratching out emails on a chalkboard. That might get the numbers down, I suppose.

I just went to check that's it's OK in there, and we're using 13p/hr for electricity and 0p/hr for gas at the moment. I guess that's two computers and assorted monitors, the fridge, and the multitude of devices with lights on top (wifi, speakers, security cameras, cats).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Flite on 15 November, 2022, 01:12:48 pm
Quote
(wifi, speakers, security cameras, cats).
You didn't think we would notice the cats, did you?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 November, 2022, 01:49:48 pm
What's far more useful is this kind of analysis:

(https://www.ductilebiscuit.net/gallery_albums/random/electricity_consumption.png)

Unfortunately, you need a lot of power meters[1] and a bit of programming-fu to achieve it.

(No apologies for my use of canonical SI units.  They're more intuitive than kilowatt-hours per minute or dollarpounds per fortnight or whatever.)


[1] The 'other' bar comes from the electricity meter itself.  Via the blinkenlight on the front in this case, but it could be obtained from the smart meter API.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Lightning Phil on 15 November, 2022, 02:06:19 pm
The monitors are only designed to have battery backup, not operation, they should run from mains.

So that having a smart meter monitor on means you use more electricity than without.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: DaveReading on 15 November, 2022, 02:33:30 pm
Gotta love the Daily Heil

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11321855/Chinese-smart-meters-threat-power-supplies-Britain-critics-fear.html

"Mr Hunn said it ‘shows a frightening lack of complacency'".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd have thought that a lack of complacency was highly commendable ...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 15 November, 2022, 03:21:21 pm
The monitors are only designed to have battery backup, not operation, they should run from mains.

So that having a smart meter monitor on means you use more electricity than without.

Indeed, consumption of mine doesn't seem to be more than 500mw (doesn't register on my meter)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 15 November, 2022, 03:26:37 pm
My monitor was consigned to the dusty cupbiard of cables when I realised it shows the wrong tariff all the time.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Diver300 on 15 November, 2022, 10:13:22 pm
Our smart meter wouldn't communicate with a test device where the gas meter is, so we've been left with the mechanical gas meter and I have to brave the spiders every now and then to read the digits.

The monitor made connection with the the smart meter about once and then refused to talk, in spite of being within 2 metres. The supply company's website has much better historical information anyhow.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 01 December, 2022, 08:28:45 pm
A few days ago I had an email from someone at Octopus asking for photos of my gas meter.  It wasn't deja-vu, so I forwarded a copy of the ones I sent them in September, which apparently they'd failed to attach to my account or something.

Shockingly, I've just noticed my script downloaded some new gas consumption data from the API this morning.  On further investigation, there's now data available as far back as July.

Even more impressively, the pointless IHD thing is now showing the correct unit rates.


Place your bets on when the next cockup happens...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 01 December, 2022, 08:43:18 pm
 :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 01 December, 2022, 08:51:46 pm
They pointed me at https://octopus.energy/blog/solving-smart-meter-issues-octopus-energy/ which is well into "someone is always having a worse day than you" territory.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: SoreTween on 05 December, 2022, 01:24:47 pm
Yay!  Just finished commissioning 11 new solar panels on my garage roof.
Boo!  Now to switch them all off while I wait goodness knows how for a smart meter to be installed.  Double boo.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: aidan.f on 05 December, 2022, 09:46:21 pm
Quote
Yay!  Just finished commissioning 11 new solar panels on my garage roof.
Boo!  Now to switch them all off while I wait goodness knows how for a smart meter to be installed.  Double boo.
Why do you need a smart meter to consume the solarelectrons personally? - Not that many will be generated in December...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 05 December, 2022, 09:51:07 pm
Place your bets on when the next cockup happens...

I was going to reply to this with something along the lines of "suspicious absence of gas meter readings since midnight on the 3rd", but a full set just came in for the 4th, so it's merely a missing day, rather than reinstatement of the previous b0rkage.  (Presumed karmic retribution for making my data fetching script more efficient by way of celebration.)


Meanwhile, I got a satisfaction survey about my recent interaction with customer services.  On the basis that they were very polite and reasonable, but it's still taken forever to resolve this, I selected 'meh'.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: SoreTween on 06 December, 2022, 09:02:19 am
Quote
Yay!  Just finished commissioning 11 new solar panels on my garage roof.
Boo!  Now to switch them all off while I wait goodness knows how for a smart meter to be installed.  Double boo.
Why do you need a smart meter to consume the solarelectrons personally?
Basically because peak production could in theory all go to the grid, my system isn't able to only produce what we consume.  Even down to the street level the grid needs to be balanced, if everyone starts pushing out 5kW unannounced bad things could happen if we were all on the same phase.
Previously we only had 2 panels / 800W peak, the grid operators don't care about that little.  It was legal without being registered.  Now I need to register our system with the DNO and they won't sign it off without a meter that measures outgoing power.  Our current one doesn't, I've just been giving away our excess uncounted not that it amounted to much.  The meter doesn't actually have to be smart, if they turn up & find there's no signal they can still upgrade us to a dumb 2 way meter & I'll be fine.  That is a real possibility, the guy who redid the roof for me lives in the next village a mile away.  They could not get a smart meter because no signal.  I'm nearer to the mast but my house with it's 18" thick stone walls is between the meter box & mast.

Not that many will be generated in December...
You might be surprised.  Enphase microinverters work down to below 10W (IQ7A, 366W peak).  Yesterday was a very dull day and they were all producing 20-35W as the cloud thickness ebbed & flowed.  It has to be a tremendously dull day to get nothing at all.  At 25W per panel production we were producing a third to half house load as stuff cut in & out.  I have another 14 matching panels in the garage to be installed when the wallet allows.  I'm hopeful it'll make us close to self sufficient daylight hours year round.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 09 December, 2022, 10:15:04 am
We're with Octopus & still not taken the SMETS2 plunge yet, despite continual notifications.

How long before the companies start charging more for peak rate energy use, rather than payments to users for avoiding high demand times?   Stick rather than carrot.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: DaveReading on 09 December, 2022, 11:00:00 am
We're with Octopus & still not taken the SMETS2 plunge yet, despite continual notifications.

How long before the companies start charging more for peak rate energy use, rather than payments to users for avoiding high demand times?   Stick rather than carrot.

A good reason not to have a smart meter, then ?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 09 December, 2022, 11:32:50 am
We're with Octopus & still not taken the SMETS2 plunge yet, despite continual notifications.

How long before the companies start charging more for peak rate energy use, rather than payments to users for avoiding high demand times?   Stick rather than carrot.

A good reason not to have a smart meter, then ?

Probably, if it were to likely to happen...  :)  Atm, my guess it would be a customer relations disaster for any company attempting 'peak price gouging' unilaterally - unless it was a govt mandated 'drastic times/drastic measures'.  Probably unlikely until SM 'targets are met', & most people have one. 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 09 December, 2022, 01:41:04 pm
Pretty much what Economy 7 is...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 09 December, 2022, 01:46:05 pm
How long before the companies start charging more for peak rate energy use, rather than payments to users for avoiding high demand times?   Stick rather than carrot.

1978 I think.

It's down to what tariff you chose.  I don't think flat-rate ones are going away any time soon, but if you have the ability to shift your load a variable rate tariff is likely to be a better deal.

You don't have to have a variable rate tariff if you have smart meters.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 09 December, 2022, 02:06:01 pm
We're with Octopus & still not taken the SMETS2 plunge yet, despite continual notifications.

How long before the companies start charging more for peak rate energy use, rather than payments to users for avoiding high demand times?   Stick rather than carrot.

A good reason not to have a smart meter, then ?

Probably, if it were to likely to happen...  :)  Atm, my guess it would be a customer relations disaster for any company attempting 'peak price gouging' unilaterally - unless it was a govt mandated 'drastic times/drastic measures'.  Probably unlikely until SM 'targets are met', & most people have one.

Hmmmm.....gouging.   I'm no defender of the industry but there's a reason peak prices can/will be high.   It's because it costs the supplier more to deliver power at that time of day - wholesale, distribution, transmission and balancing costs all hit their highest at that point.   At the moment the cost is included in domestic tariffs, it's just blended in so no-one can see it.   If you increase peak prices and decrease off-peak it's a zero sum game if you don't change your consumption pattern.

Time of day tariffs in business supply have been common for 20+ years.    If you switch from flat rate to time of days but don't change your habits then the cost is the same.   You then make savings as you change the way you use your energy.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 12 January, 2023, 07:57:02 am
This is a bit POBI . . .

It seems that if you have a smart meter, you can be switched (remotely) onto a prepay tariff.

Approval for this requires a magistrate, however, magistrates are being presented with lists of hundreds of people at a time, and are block-signing permission for the switch.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 12 January, 2023, 08:35:46 am
This is a bit POBI . . .

It seems that if you have a smart meter, you can be switched (remotely) onto a prepay tariff.

Approval for this requires a magistrate, however, magistrates are being presented with lists of hundreds of people at a time, and are block-signing permission for the switch.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/11/smart-meter-prepayment-switched-remotely-rights/#:~:text=If%20you're%20on%20a,warrant%20(in%20some%20cases).

They're not allowed to do that without communicating with you.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 12 January, 2023, 09:32:25 am
This is a bit POBI . . .

It seems that if you have a smart meter, you can be switched (remotely) onto a prepay tariff.

Approval for this requires a magistrate, however, magistrates are being presented with lists of hundreds of people at a time, and are block-signing permission for the switch.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/11/smart-meter-prepayment-switched-remotely-rights/#:~:text=If%20you're%20on%20a,warrant%20(in%20some%20cases).

They're not allowed to do that without communicating with you.

You have faith in suppliers both:

After all, it's not like suppliers have ever sent out spurious ridiculous bills because of internal errors, is it?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rafletcher on 12 January, 2023, 09:40:23 am
This is a bit POBI . . .

It seems that if you have a smart meter, you can be switched (remotely) onto a prepay tariff.



Tip of the iceberg, there will be surge pricing, supply limiting etc. ect. rolled in eventually I have no doubt.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 12 January, 2023, 10:34:08 am
And of course apparent power charging.

My supplier have, for the time being at least, stopped spamming me with ‘get control of your power usage with a smart meter’ emails. I’m sure they’ll start again when they’ve stopped pre-paying all the poor people.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 12 January, 2023, 11:23:29 am
Let's play devils advocate just for a second.   

There's no money in energy supply.   It's pretty much a loss making business for any of the suppliers.   Therefore, why should they add customer bad debt to an already disastrous sector.   It's not the suppliers fault that the wholesale market has ballooned up and increased the overall cost of energy.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mr Larrington on 12 January, 2023, 11:33:29 am
EDF had their chance to smarten my meters a Several of years ago but every time they phoned up to arrange a convenient time for installation it turned out that they didn’t actually have anyone available to do it.  Sorry, chaps, but you blew it.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 12 January, 2023, 11:39:18 am
Utility supply is a natural monopoly and should not be in the hands of capitalists. By their very nature, capitalists are incapable of long term strategic planning  needed for the service delivery security required in utilities. Capitalists will alwasy sweat the assets and pay large dividends when the times are good and will then bleat to the authorities when the service collapses due to their neglect.

Social provision of utilities is an aside to service delivery security and will always remain the responsibility of the government of the day.

The current situation is a perfect storm of ill prepared utility companies and an actively negligent government. Technology merely exacerbates the situation allowing poorly devised and badly policed policies to be implemented widely without checks and balances being in place.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 12 January, 2023, 11:47:22 am
Let's play devils advocate just for a second.   

There's no money in energy supply.   It's pretty much a loss making business for any of the suppliers.   Therefore, why should they add customer bad debt to an already disastrous sector.   It's not the suppliers fault that the wholesale market has ballooned up and increased the overall cost of energy.

You seem to be making a case for Supply to be nationalised.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 12 January, 2023, 12:00:57 pm
Let's play devils advocate just for a second.   

There's no money in energy supply.   It's pretty much a loss making business for any of the suppliers.   Therefore, why should they add customer bad debt to an already disastrous sector.   It's not the suppliers fault that the wholesale market has ballooned up and increased the overall cost of energy.

You seem to be making a case for Supply to be nationalised.

I think my main point, and I've said this elsewhere is that the suppliers are being hit, wrongly, with a big stick.   If they had been printing cash in the past I can understand this, but it's not the case.   The profit is between the production and the wholesale market and not between the wholesale market and the consumer.

I started work in the sector just after the introduction of competition and I genuinely believe that the consumer received massive benefits from the ability to shop around and the efficiency savings forced on the energy businesses.   The problem became, and this is a Government strategy issue, that we were over-supplied with energy so prices were on a downward spiral.   This meant no-one invested in new production.   So, 20 years later, there's a supply shock and the market fails.

Several new businesses entered the sector a few years ago, I'm thinking Robin Hood Energy and Bristol Energy, on an assumption that big players were making huge margins in domestic supply.   The reality dawned pretty quickly and they both dumped a tonne of taxpayers cash.

I'm divided on nationalisation of energy.   I've never been a fan of the regulator but, also, this Government ran Bulb for nearly a year and made a royal clusterfuck of it.   They just continued doing all the wrong things but in bigger size.   That and I'm still a good few years from retirement and I need to pay for the teenagers education.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 12 January, 2023, 12:08:24 pm
They're not allowed to do that without communicating with you.

Presumably that can be a letter in third-class post, thobut.


I reiterate my point that PAYG utilities aren't inherently evil, and should be regulated so that the prices are fair (no using PAYG meters to recoup some previous tenant's bad debt in perpetuity, and so on).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 12 January, 2023, 12:14:05 pm
The flip side of energy privatisation allegedly saving us a few pennies is that every person in the country was left with a lingering thought at the back of their mind every minute of the day that they’re on the wrong energy tariff.

Fuck that.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 12 January, 2023, 12:19:46 pm
The flip side of energy privatisation allegedly saving us a few pennies is that every person in the country was left with a lingering thought at the back of their mind every minute of the day that they’re on the wrong energy tariff.

Fuck that.

How often do you review your financial and insurance arrangements ?

There's an entire industry set up around supplier switching.   The internet has meant that the consumer can be as aware as they need to be.   There's no excuse for not understanding if you have a good deal.   

Of course there's a difference between an educated consumer and an engaged consumer.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 12 January, 2023, 01:59:36 pm
There's an entire industry set up around market comparisons. All those cute meerkats and things. I think that's grams's point; it's introduced FOMO to your gas and electricity bills.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 12 January, 2023, 03:52:50 pm
Competition on domestic energy supply opened over 20 years ago.   I don't have a great deal of sympathy for anyone that hasn't taken the time to understand how it all works, particularly when you can give the job to someone else to do.

Does anyone believe that if this returned to a Gov't owned monopoly that they would be better looked after ?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Ham on 12 January, 2023, 04:19:21 pm
My monitor was consigned to the dusty cupbiard of cables when I realised it shows the wrong tariff all the time.

The real question is, do you have a smut meter installed?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 12 January, 2023, 05:46:44 pm
Does anyone believe that if this returned to a Gov't owned monopoly that they would be better looked after ?
That's the antidote to FOMO: ROBLI. Resentment of being locked in.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 12 January, 2023, 05:57:42 pm
Does anyone believe that if this returned to a Gov't owned monopoly that they would be better looked after ?
That's the antidote to FOMO: ROBLI. Resentment of being locked in.

I suppose in practical terms it comes down to whether, say, HMRC are more annoying to deal with than, say, nPower.  Anecdotally, I'd say they were on a par, at least in terms of randomly applied bistromatics that never seems to go in your favour.

Whether you get a good deal on the price of energy is another question, but if the last year has taught us anything, it's that energy suppliers have a lot less control over that than you might expect.  I suspect the long-term problem would be reluctance to innovate.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 12 January, 2023, 09:28:13 pm
Utilities have two major aspects to them, supply and distribution.

The supply side is basically a strategic operation with big things like service continuation and security. In electricity terms that is ensuring that country wide demand is planned for this weekend, this year and in ten years time. Not really a market driven situation beyond this weekend, and requiring massive long term investments, which aren’t really in capitalist interests.

Distribution is again driven by strategic imperatives, with spend being constant to maintain service in the years to come. Again, not a capitalist strongpoint, with their focus being mainly on this years balance sheet (and thus this years bonus). Look to leaking water pipes, crumbling sewers, patchy broadband provision and poor mobile coverage for examples of just how well private enterprise can run utilities.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 12 January, 2023, 10:01:24 pm
Yeahbut electricity suppliers don't do any of that useful generation, transmission or distribution stuff.  They just push money around and fail to answer the phone.  Pure B-ark stuff.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 12 January, 2023, 10:12:09 pm
Yeahbut electricity suppliers don't do any of that useful generation, transmission or distribution stuff.  They just push money around and fail to answer the phone.  Pure B-ark stuff.

This.  But don’t let that stand in the way of a load of headline grabbing.

25 years of deregulation and still the public don’t understand who is responsible for what.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 12 January, 2023, 10:36:48 pm
25 years of deregulation and still the public don’t understand who is responsible for what.

To be fair, I think the suppliers should take some responsibility for that.  They're all too willing to let people believe that they're in the electricity business, as that makes them look less pointless.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rogerzilla on 13 January, 2023, 08:17:06 am
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/surprise-im-a-prepayment-meter-20230112230293
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 13 January, 2023, 08:27:15 am
Utilities have two major aspects to them, supply and distribution.

The supply side is basically a strategic operation with big things like service continuation and security. In electricity terms that is ensuring that country wide demand is planned for this weekend, this year and in ten years time. Not really a market driven situation beyond this weekend, and requiring massive long term investments, which aren’t really in capitalist interests.

Distribution is again driven by strategic imperatives, with spend being constant to maintain service in the years to come. Again, not a capitalist strongpoint, with their focus being mainly on this years balance sheet (and thus this years bonus). Look to leaking water pipes, crumbling sewers, patchy broadband provision and poor mobile coverage for examples of just how well private enterprise can run utilities.

There's 4 major roles in UK Electricity :-

Supply
Generation
Transmission
Distribution

Add to this the System Operator role performed by National Grid.

What you refer to as supply above is actually the SO role.   Grid don't own any generation but do report on system margins in the long and short term.   It is up to the market to react and provide the necessary electrons as required.

At the moment we are seeing relatively low pricing due to healthy system margins (plenty of wind).   Unfortunately the consumer won't benefit from this due to the price cap methodology and Ofgem's policing of supplier hedging.   Things look better from Q2.

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tim Hall on 13 January, 2023, 09:57:05 am
What's the difference between Transmission and Distribution?

I'm guessing Transmission is the National Grid 132kV (and above) stuff while Distribution is done by DNOs at lesser voltages.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 13 January, 2023, 10:06:57 am
What's the difference between Transmission and Distribution?

I'm guessing Transmission is the National Grid 132kV (and above) stuff while Distribution is done by DNOs at lesser voltages.

Exactly that.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tim Hall on 13 January, 2023, 10:20:02 am
What's the difference between Transmission and Distribution?

I'm guessing Transmission is the National Grid 132kV (and above) stuff while Distribution is done by DNOs at lesser voltages.

Exactly that.
Excellent.  Are the substations (correct term?) that step down from National Grid to DNO type voltages owned by National Grid. Or is it More Complicated than that?

What purpose is served by having DNOs and NG?  Why isn't Moving of Electricity carried out by one organisation? 
(although I see that NG own at least one DNO, the former Western Power Distribution) 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Beardy on 13 January, 2023, 10:28:27 am
In my ‘two major aspects’ for electricity I include generation and transmission in the supply side, and also the sourcing of extra energy from outwith the UK when need, what used to be the preview of the CEGB. Distribution in my split to include local delivery of voles to users as well as collecting moneys from the same. This may have been split into extra segments to make it more palatable to capitalists to cherry pick the profitable bits, but that doesn’t make them any less of a false breakdown.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 13 January, 2023, 11:16:24 am
What's the difference between Transmission and Distribution?

I'm guessing Transmission is the National Grid 132kV (and above) stuff while Distribution is done by DNOs at lesser voltages.

Exactly that.
Excellent.  Are the substations (correct term?) that step down from National Grid to DNO type voltages owned by National Grid. Or is it More Complicated than that?

What purpose is served by having DNOs and NG?  Why isn't Moving of Electricity carried out by one organisation? 
(although I see that NG own at least one DNO, the former Western Power Distribution)

Grid handle transmission from the power station to the Grid Supply Point where it becomes the responsibility of the DNO.   They then step the voltage down via sub-stations to the meter point.

(as an aside wholesale trading takes place at a notional balancing point before the power enters the grid)

At privatisation the Regional Electricity Companies owned both the wires and the customers but they had to split the 2 businesses and inset Chinese Walls.   Most of them sold their distribution business as they attracted buyers like pension and infrastrucure funds that liked the stable, regulates returns.   I'm not particularly sure as to the reasoning as I joined the industry post-privatisation.   

I hadn't seen that Grid bought WPD but it makes sense.   After their acquisition of Transco the same organisation balances the power and gas grid systems.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 13 January, 2023, 11:23:12 am
In my ‘two major aspects’ for electricity I include generation and transmission in the supply side, and also the sourcing of extra energy from outwith the UK when need, what used to be the preview of the CEGB. Distribution in my split to include local delivery of voles to users as well as collecting moneys from the same. This may have been split into extra segments to make it more palatable to capitalists to cherry pick the profitable bits, but that doesn’t make them any less of a false breakdown.

You're free to use whatever terms you like and to make whatever accusations about the financial motives of the industry you feel like.   I only seek to help forum members understand the industry.

The problem I have had with the press is the rhetoric of 'energy companies making billions while customers freeze'.   My question is usually 'what do you mean by an energy company ?'.   A lot of people don't know about the range of roles and responsibilities and where the margin, if any, sits.

Roughly :-

Gas production - extremely profitable after a few bad years
Power production - reasonably profitable after lots of bad years but now about to be taxed to the eyeballs
Transmission - profitable but regulated returns
Distribution - profitable but regulated returns
Supply - complete basket case of an industry - if you manage your business properly there's a chance you'll make 1-2% gross margin
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 13 January, 2023, 12:32:35 pm
Out of interest, where does metering come in?  I assumed they were historically the responsibility of the DNO, but my recent adventures in smart metering suggests they're managed by the supplier, presumably by outsourcing to a third party?

And presumably there's some other company that operates the comms infrastructure and unwieldy database that collects readings from smart meters and delivers it to suppliers a day later...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 13 January, 2023, 12:57:21 pm
Out of interest, where does metering come in?  I assumed they were historically the responsibility of the DNO, but my recent adventures in smart metering suggests they're managed by the supplier, presumably by outsourcing to a third party?

And presumably there's some other company that operates the comms infrastructure and unwieldy database that collects readings from smart meters and delivers it to suppliers a day later...

Ah, yes.   Metering was originally part of the RECs.   I think it was part of the DNO business.   Ofgem were keen to introduce competition in metering as well so they were carved out, sold or closed down.   Some suppliers have their own metering businesses whilst others outsource.   As a domestic customer you still contact your supplier to get the meter fixed.   Large businesses can negotiate their own metering contracts so, if they change supplier, they just need to let them know who to appoint as the meter operator when they register the site.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: giropaul on 18 January, 2023, 01:52:33 pm
Returning to an earlier discussion about “ smart” meters

We have a smart meter, supported by promises
The house monitor failed - “it will be ££ for a replacement sir” (refused)
Bills arrive, using, presumably, the signals from the smart meter on the outside wall.
Man appears to read meter - I didn’t catch him this time.
More bills, using a reading, I guess from the smart meter on the wall
Correspondence from supplier that “ it is x time since you provided a reading “
Me - “ but you’re getting one from the smart meter, and billing me on these readings”
“ But we need a reading”
OK, easy enough, send reading. Am told that I am significantly in credit.

Today man arrives to read meter. He’s a lovely chap. I won’t use his exact terminology, but basically he says that the whole setup, across a lot of companies, is a total mess.
I said that I was pleased that he was making a living from the mess. He agreed, and said that he’d even put his price up.
Great chap, but what a fiasco of a system.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 18 January, 2023, 08:04:46 pm
Bills arrive, using, presumably, the signals from the smart meter on the outside wall.

I made this assumption for a couple of years after Robin Hood installed our smart meters.  It was not correct.

Octopus eventually got them to work, which I could confirm on account of their website/API providing access to the data.


In normal countries, the DNO does the metering, has an incentive to specify equipment that actually works, and upgrades equipment with a fraction of the faffing about.  I'm betting some of them can even use the smart meters to monitor performance parameters of the distribution network when needed, rather than going and installing their own temporary monitoring hardware.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Adam on 18 January, 2023, 08:27:52 pm
Octopus had also sent someone round to read the meter for me.  Even though they have all the data. 
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 18 January, 2023, 08:35:27 pm
There used to be a requirement to physically check the meter every couple of years.  It was definitely the case with gas due to the safety issues.  I’m not sure what happened to this with the smart meter rollout but it wouldn’t surprise me if the metering company didn’t have to eyeball them every now and again.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: hellymedic on 18 January, 2023, 08:58:04 pm
There used to be a requirement to physically check the meter every couple of years.  It was definitely the case with gas due to the safety issues.  I’m not sure what happened to this with the smart meter rollout but it wouldn’t surprise me if the metering company didn’t have to eyeball them every now and again.

I think they do.
They've definitely physically read my meter within the last year, during which time the outside display had been blank for several months and the smart meter had not been transmitting to the mothership.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: cygnet on 18 January, 2023, 09:25:48 pm
I moved 2 1/2 years ago. Smart meters were already fitted. No visits. (Both are internal, so they can't unless I let them in)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 19 January, 2023, 08:18:46 am
There used to be a requirement to physically check the meter every couple of years.  It was definitely the case with gas due to the safety issues.  I’m not sure what happened to this with the smart meter rollout but it wouldn’t surprise me if the metering company didn’t have to eyeball them every now and again.

That is the case according to the BG meter man that has been (once) since we had SMs in June 21.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: toontra on 19 January, 2023, 10:03:14 am
Similar to solar FIT meters being physically inspected every couple of years.  Maybe also to check there's no fraudulent stuff going on
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 08 February, 2023, 09:05:28 pm
Interesting, I didn't realise that the govt is now receiving all SM data.  Why would this be?
Quote
These personal data will be shared with our data processors Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.
We do not allow third parties to use this data.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electricity-meter-data-collected-through-the-energy-bills-support-scheme-privacy-notice/use-of-electricity-meter-data-collected-through-the-energy-bills-support-scheme-privacy-notice

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 08 February, 2023, 09:11:27 pm
So they can use it to generate specious DWP and TV Licensing investigations, no doubt.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 08 February, 2023, 10:35:52 pm
Says consumption data but not the level of granularity.  I can see why they would need ‘amount of energy used during Q1’ as they can validate the amount of subsidy paid to the supplier to be passed to the consumer.  For any smart meters settling half-hourly I can’t see the point of the extra data.

I suspect after the problems with spurious Covid claims they’re looking to be seen to be at least checking the amount being paid out actually tallies.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 08 February, 2023, 11:46:30 pm
I read that by 2025 SM data will be collected every 30 mins, to allow national grid 'flexibility & efficiency'.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: cygnet on 08 February, 2023, 11:47:02 pm
So they can use it to generate specious DWP and TV Licensing investigations, no doubt.

TBF their current TVL "Revenue Collection Agent" licencee needs no excuse to generate specious "investigations"
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 09 February, 2023, 08:26:49 am
I read that by 2025 SM data will be collected every 30 mins, to allow national grid 'flexibility & efficiency'.

Industrial and large business consumers are already half-hourly metered.   Domestic smart meters can be switched to half-hourly settlement by the supplier if the customer wants.   Domestic tariffs use an assumed consumption profile to calculate the cost of supply so, if your consumption pattern is flatter or uses much more off-peak power then you would be better off switching.   This is where tariffs like the Octopus Agile product come into their own.

Ofgem are pushing the switch to half-hourly settlement but the industry is resisting.   For a supplier it means going from 3 or 4 data points a year to 17,000+ for every single customer on supply.   I think current systems would likely fail.

On the flexibility point it will start to help.   Grid have been trialing domestic demand turn down for system peaks.   You can only get this to work if you can meter what is used or not used for the hour or two that they are interested in.   Useful, yes, and probably the way forward.   By 2025 ?   The industry has enough issues to deal with at the moment.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 14 February, 2023, 04:15:35 pm
https://watt-logic.com/2023/02/14/smart-meters-stalled/
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: FifeingEejit on 14 February, 2023, 04:32:00 pm
Interesting, I didn't realise that the govt is now receiving all SM data.  Why would this be?
Quote
These personal data will be shared with our data processors Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.
We do not allow third parties to use this data.

That could mean anything from being held on a non-private non-self-hosted cloud to something suspicious.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: ian on 14 February, 2023, 08:40:39 pm
Interesting, I didn't realise that the govt is now receiving all SM data.  Why would this be?
Quote
These personal data will be shared with our data processors Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.
We do not allow third parties to use this data.

That could mean anything from being held on a non-private non-self-hosted cloud to something suspicious.

It just means it's hosted by AWS or Microsoft. It would be a bit strange to run a scheme like this and not monitor it.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 23 February, 2023, 12:35:01 pm
Octopus have said our Electricity meter is 'nearing the end of it's certification period', and so 'arrange a smart meter' install.  Any way to check the dates of meter certification?  Looks like the SM looms...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 23 February, 2023, 01:01:55 pm
I'd have thought there'd be a sticker or something on the meter...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: lissotriton on 23 February, 2023, 01:03:09 pm
My meter has a sticker on, says certified 06/88. It was made by Ferranti, Dundee.
I've not been offered a smart meter yet, not sure if I have coverage here.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: andyoxon on 23 February, 2023, 01:39:27 pm
Thanks missed the brown sticker: Certified July 06.  So 20 yrs - 2026?  15yrs exp would have passed.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: giropaul on 18 April, 2023, 09:39:13 am
Resurrection- of thread or Smartmeter  .
As reported previously, I’m regularly asked for a reading - I thought the idea was that this would be done. We also get a regular man in a car who reads them. He’s delightful, and very grateful that despite all the hype, his job is still essential. May it continue for him.
The next chapter is a letter that tells me that we need a new meter, the current one has been superseded. There’s a telephone number to ring.
Eventually getting through, I ask why a new meter is needed. The person doesn’t know, she just makes the bookings
Someone must be at home, for the whole of the day in effect.
I ask if the fitter will need access to the mains isolation switch. She doesn’t understand the question. I keep being told that the electricity in the house will be off, I get that, but does the isolation switch on the fuse box need to be off ( this requires access to a different part of the house. Again, she doesn’t recognise the question.

And - I bet the nice man in his logo’d car will return regularly.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: rafletcher on 18 April, 2023, 09:47:41 am
To replace a meter I would expect them to pull the main fuse on the incoming cable to the property, the one with a wire and lead seal (in our case) which is before the meter, and that of cousre is before the consumer unit/fuse box. So, the fuse box isolatioin is irrelevant.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Little Jim on 18 April, 2023, 10:39:00 am
I've not seen them doing a meter change recently but at out last house we had the meter moved and the man doing it just wore a pair of orange industrial Marigolds.  I did comment to him afterwards that he must need to keep his mind focused on the job.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 18 April, 2023, 12:39:55 pm
Since we've lived in this house we've had a couple of replacement meters and a new cut-out installed.  For meter changes they just pull the cut-out fuse.  Indeed, when one of the meter tails came out of the bottom of the meter without unscrewing, I suggested that checking they were done up properly at the consumer unit end, and the engineer remarked that they weren't allowed to touch that side of things.

Replacing the cut-out is another matter entirely, with linesman's gloves and knowing where your limbs are taking the place of safe isolation.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: sojournermike on 18 April, 2023, 07:04:22 pm
Since we've lived in this house we've had a couple of replacement meters and a new cut-out installed.  For meter changes they just pull the cut-out fuse.  Indeed, when one of the meter tails came out of the bottom of the meter without unscrewing, I suggested that checking they were done up properly at the consumer unit end, and the engineer remarked that they weren't allowed to touch that side of things.

Replacing the cut-out is another matter entirely, with linesman's gloves and knowing where your limbs are taking the place of safe isolation.

When we had a cutout replaced they dug a hole in the garden and cut the incoming cable while they replaced the cutout in our house and next door - originally shared the supply and fuse, but now just the supply and have our own fuses. The supply runs from our cutout before the fuse, through the shared wall in the under stairs cupboard and into next doors fuse.

After doing all the work they went back to garden and reconnected the supply (with linesman’s gloves), filled in the hole and put the square of turf back very neatly.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 April, 2023, 12:10:01 am
Yes, they did that too (digging up the road and swapping our incoming cable to a different phase) after replacing the cutout did nothing to improve our low voltage problems.

I suppose you can get quite "it's only low voltage" about 240/415V if your day job also involves the spicier stuff with a nasty habit of jumping gaps.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: aidan.f on 19 April, 2023, 07:38:09 am
Quote
I suppose you can get quite "it's only low voltage" about 240/415V if your day job also involves the spicier stuff with a nasty habit of jumping gaps.

When I worked in TV broadcasting our voltage defenitions were conservative by network power distribution standards. The 25 kV DC klystron supplies was alway referred to as a 'High Voltage'  - but then they contained some rather large capacitors and we did have take everything apart quite a bit to fix it. Isolation (apart from a big incoming 3 phase switch) was observing  the Voltmeters* then operating a row of moving earth connectors inside the cabinet to with a  window to confirm operation - and strategic points should be discharged.  Interlocked keys ensured cabinet front doors could only then be opened.

Around the back the panels were just secured with sheet metal screws. If you had to remove these a key in pocket was your security.

On occasions we had panels off and stood back (with the lights off) to see which part was flashing over (usually the filament transformer). A later improvement was a portable HV tester. Using that required defeating the interlocks and isolation of the knarly capacitors from the bit you thought could be faulty.

I have not yet mentioned the instrument of last resort - an earthing wand, this  was applied as a final check before approaching said capacitors with your spanners.

All this was spiced up by the Klystron collector cooling, a big copper slug in a water jacket sitting on top of the klystron assembly and boiling off the energy left over from electrons that had not done something useful generating 25 Kw of RF in the output cavity. The gravity return from the steam condensors reguarly used to leak into the cabinets until I did something imaginative with convoluted copper pipe.

*Occasionally the Klystron bias resistor chain would fail  - this also acted as HV capacitor bleed. If the HV meter did not drop you went for a long tea break before discharging the final few kV with the earth switch.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 26 April, 2023, 08:31:20 am
We finally have a smart meter.

Engineer who fitted it said that it uses longwave radio to communicate with the supplier - he had major problems at one customer site, couldn't get a signal (ironically, it was at one of the places on the island that has Gb broadband and a good 4G signal).

The little display is interesting; prompted us running around switching things on/off. Yes, we have a lot on standby, but they really don't consume much power.

We'd casually ignored the old fluorescent tubes; they turn out to be 90W each. 5 of them in the barn! Well, we were intending on replacing them anyway . . .
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Feanor on 26 April, 2023, 10:00:13 am
Smart Meters call home using the DCC network.
https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/
( The DCC was set up by the gubbinsment to centralise smart-meter communications to overcome the old proprietery systems operated by individual energy providers, in order to help make switching suppliers work whilst maintaining the Smart capability.)

They contract out the actual comms to two suppliers, one in the North, the other in the Central and Southern Communication Areas:
https://www.smartme.co.uk/smets-2.html

In the North, Arquiva (the same company that runs the UHF TV transmitters) uses the Long-Range Radio system, which is UHF at frequencies 412-414 MHz and 453-455 MHz. The Smart Meter Tx has an output power of 1W. Here's an example of the kind of thing that's being used (P7 gives the WAN spec):
https://www.edmi-meters.com/europe/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EDMI-Variant-450-DB-Comms-Hub-User-Manual-v1.2.pdf
(The Dual-Band that's mentioned refers to the Home-Area Network, which can operate at 2 different frequencies to overcome range issues due to thick walls etc. Nothing to do with the Wide Area Network.)

I don't know if Arquiva are running this entirely out of their existing TV UHF sites, or if they have added infill masts.
But I think your UHF TV coverage will be a better guide than 3G coverage.

In the South, Telefonica (O2) provide the comms over 2G/3G.

In both cases, the meters operate in a Mesh mode, so that if one is out of range of the main infrastructure, it can pass it via others in the mesh.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: aidan.f on 30 April, 2023, 12:42:55 pm
When I was working for Arqiva* I got involved in some smart metering design work. It's been a while but IIRC the broadcast site are not used, as with kilowatts of transmission there are problems receiving low level meter signals.
*When we first got that name the posties used to ask if we could spell properly.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 01 May, 2023, 07:07:03 am
Smart Meters call home using the DCC network.
https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/
( The DCC was set up by the gubbinsment to centralise smart-meter communications to overcome the old proprietery systems operated by individual energy providers, in order to help make switching suppliers work whilst maintaining the Smart capability.)

They contract out the actual comms to two suppliers, one in the North, the other in the Central and Southern Communication Areas:
https://www.smartme.co.uk/smets-2.html

In the North, Arquiva (the same company that runs the UHF TV transmitters) uses the Long-Range Radio system, which is UHF at frequencies 412-414 MHz and 453-455 MHz. The Smart Meter Tx has an output power of 1W. Here's an example of the kind of thing that's being used (P7 gives the WAN spec):
https://www.edmi-meters.com/europe/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EDMI-Variant-450-DB-Comms-Hub-User-Manual-v1.2.pdf
(The Dual-Band that's mentioned refers to the Home-Area Network, which can operate at 2 different frequencies to overcome range issues due to thick walls etc. Nothing to do with the Wide Area Network.)

I don't know if Arquiva are running this entirely out of their existing TV UHF sites, or if they have added infill masts.
But I think your UHF TV coverage will be a better guide than 3G coverage.

In the South, Telefonica (O2) provide the comms over 2G/3G.

In both cases, the meters operate in a Mesh mode, so that if one is out of range of the main infrastructure, it can pass it via others in the mesh.
Lack of smart meters and 'different' geography (some houses are on little islands, facing the sea) will be causing problems.

AFAIK, OVO/SSEN are installing the meters according to whoever shouts loudest, not according to proximity/signal range of the masts. If they planned it, then coverage wouldn't be a problem.

As it is, some places are getting new smart meters, but there isn't any direct or mesh connection.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 19 May, 2023, 07:26:08 pm
Got my Octopus mini this week. Just set it up and now I should be able to inspect my gas readings every 30m and my electricity readings every 50 femtoseconds (slight exaggeration there)
https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/#:~:text=from%20your%20phone.-,The%20Octopus%20Home%20Mini%20is%20a%20brand%20new%2C%20cutting%2Dedge,gas%20consumption%20every%2030%20minutes.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Sergeant Pluck on 19 May, 2023, 08:48:10 pm
Does anyone know if smart meters can now be fitted in blocks of flats where the meters for each floor are all next to each other in  a shared meter cupboard?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Feanor on 19 May, 2023, 08:51:35 pm
Does anyone know if smart meters can now be fitted in blocks of flats where the meters for each floor are all next to each other in  a shared meter cupboard?

Can't think of any reason why not.
Was it historically a problem?
What exactly was the problem?
Was it just a case of physical space?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Sergeant Pluck on 19 May, 2023, 09:56:31 pm
At first, I couldn’t remember how I had acquired the notion that one can’t have them in a communal area, but a quick search has reminded me that it arose from something on the Octopus site:

https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/articles/what-is-a-smart-meter-and-can-i-have-one/#

Quote
Although smart meters will work in most properties, there are a few factors that may mean we can't install one for you just yet:
If you live in a flat with a meter in a communal area (i.e not in your own flat)

I was hoping things had moved on but clearly not.

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: SoreTween on 20 May, 2023, 08:24:49 am
Quote
Although smart meters will work in most properties, there are a few factors that may mean we can't install one for you just yet:
If you live in a flat with a meter in a communal area (i.e not in your own flat)

I was hoping things had moved on but clearly not.
I wonder why. I can see that you'd not be able to have a readout widget due to distances but backhaul from the meter to the mothership, I can't think of reason for that not working.
Are the two inseparable now? They can't 'sell' a smart meter without a readout due to customer expectation created through years of slightly tenuous marketing, even to an intelligent customer who can understand the distinction?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Canardly on 20 May, 2023, 08:43:44 am
Splitting landlord and tenant areas may be difficult if the building is not wired accordingly and signals seems to be an issue depending upon the design of the flats. Service charges with leaseholders may be another complication.
https://forum.ovoenergy.com/smart-meters-136/smart-meter-in-block-of-flats-is-it-possible-to-have-one-fitted-408 (https://forum.ovoenergy.com/smart-meters-136/smart-meter-in-block-of-flats-is-it-possible-to-have-one-fitted-408)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Sergeant Pluck on 20 May, 2023, 10:17:45 am
In our case, the meters for each floor (3 flats per floor) are all in (accessible) cupboards on the landing. I can’t see signal strength being an issue. Power for the lift, fire alarms and landing lights are on a separate meter, billing for that is via the service charge and split equally.

I hope that as time goes on there will be solutions to this.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: numbnuts on 20 May, 2023, 10:51:05 am
I'm in a small block of flats 9 in all, the only trouble I've had was trying to find which room was best.
It would not work in the lounge or bedroom, but it is quite happy in the kitchen by the window
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: SoreTween on 20 May, 2023, 01:19:54 pm
In our case, the meters for each floor (3 flats per floor) are all in (accessible) cupboards on the landing. I can’t see signal strength being an issue. Power for the lift, fire alarms and landing lights are on a separate meter, billing for that is via the service charge and split equally.

I hope that as time goes on there will be solutions to this.
Your earlier quote says 'may', it does not say absolutely cannot.  Reading the Ovo forum linked by Canardly the issues are:
So on the face of it Ovo should be able to give you a smartmeter and would attempt an install.  I'll be surprised in Octopus cannot but best you talk to a human to make the booking.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 20 May, 2023, 04:11:33 pm
If you are with Octopus try giving them a message on Twitter, I've had better comms with their team on there than by email.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: sojournermike on 20 May, 2023, 05:58:48 pm
If you are with Octopus try giving them a message on Twitter, I've had better comms with their team on there than by email.

Indeed, the CEO is very accessible

Mike
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: MikeFromLFE on 20 May, 2023, 06:06:49 pm
My daughter’s block of flats - converted factory - has a ground floor room full of smart meters. The room has a common key. She hasn't got a display and I doubt one would work at the distance.
She's with Octopus
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 26 May, 2023, 10:50:32 am

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65544654

Some are blaming this on the smart meters. It feels more like the company's internals are just fucked up.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 26 May, 2023, 12:13:29 pm
Got my Octopus mini this week. Just set it up and now I should be able to inspect my gas readings every 30m and my electricity readings every 50 femtoseconds (slight exaggeration there)
https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/#:~:text=from%20your%20phone.-,The%20Octopus%20Home%20Mini%20is%20a%20brand%20new%2C%20cutting%2Dedge,gas%20consumption%20every%2030%20minutes.

A slightly classier bodge than my arduino and a lump of blutack.  Functionality that really ought to be built into the meter, but there's far too much inertia in the industry for that to happen any time soon.  Crucially, it should allow for more meaningful analysis than the instantaneous power and daily/monthly totals you get from the silly display units.

It would be nice if it could speak MQTT or HTTP or something locally instead of sending everything to The Man, maybe they'll add that later.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mzjo on 27 May, 2023, 09:55:17 pm
Yes, they did that too (digging up the road and swapping our incoming cable to a different phase) after replacing the cutout did nothing to improve our low voltage problems.

I suppose you can get quite "it's only low voltage" about 240/415V if your day job also involves the spicier stuff with a nasty habit of jumping gaps.
I don't know about UK but in France electrical "habilitation" is low voltage ("basse tension") which is up to 1000v and high voltage ("haute tension") which is everything over. Basse tension doesn't mean it won't kill you if you get it wrong, just that the rules about how you do it safely and how much care you take to keep innocent bystanders well out of harm's way are different. The fact of being habilitated high voltage doesn't give you any right to interven on low voltage! The joker in the pack is (or at least was when I did my habilitation tests 8 years ago) was the habilitation for solar panels which has elements of low and high voltage in the same package. (Habilitations vary in purpose, intervening to repair or replace individual components, installing new stuff under the control of a more qualified engineer or being the top man on a new installation).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: quixoticgeek on 28 May, 2023, 01:31:50 pm


Current wholesale electricity prices in .NL are €-400 per mwh. Yes, MINUS 400 euro.

(https://twitter.com/Sustainable2050/status/1662488409842020354 - source).

Alas none of us can take advantage of it, because even tho there's lots of smart meters out there, time of use tariff has not hit this swamp yet.

Combination of a very sunny afternoon, lots of wind (it's about 40kph winds out there), and a Sunday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend means demand is really low.

J
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 29 May, 2023, 12:17:17 pm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65544654

Some are blaming this on the smart meters. It feels more like the company's internals are just fucked up.

J
Very fucked up.
Our Ovo-supplied smart meter shows a daytime and nighttime rate. Neither match what we expect to be charged.
So MrsC phoned them. Summary -
"Oh, don't worry, you aren't paying that much"
"so how much will we pay"
"The daytime and nighttime rates will be x and y""
"Can you send me a document stating that?"
"Err, no, the smartmeter will show what you are being charged"
"But currently that isn't what it shows"
"Well, it will sometime"

FFS
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 29 May, 2023, 08:57:03 pm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65544654

Some are blaming this on the smart meters. It feels more like the company's internals are just fucked up.

J
Very fucked up.
Our Ovo-supplied smart meter shows a daytime and nighttime rate. Neither match what we expect to be charged.
So MrsC phoned them. Summary -
"Oh, don't worry, you aren't paying that much"
"so how much will we pay"
"The daytime and nighttime rates will be x and y""
"Can you send me a document stating that?"
"Err, no, the smartmeter will show what you are being charged"
"But currently that isn't what it shows"
"Well, it will sometime"

FFS

I’m with Ovo.  If you log onto your online account you can see your tariff and back check against the monthly bills that are pdf’d.  It did take a little while to catch up after the smart meter went in.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 30 May, 2023, 07:28:25 am

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65544654

Some are blaming this on the smart meters. It feels more like the company's internals are just fucked up.

J
Very fucked up.
Our Ovo-supplied smart meter shows a daytime and nighttime rate. Neither match what we expect to be charged.
So MrsC phoned them. Summary -
"Oh, don't worry, you aren't paying that much"
"so how much will we pay"
"The daytime and nighttime rates will be x and y""
"Can you send me a document stating that?"
"Err, no, the smartmeter will show what you are being charged"
"But currently that isn't what it shows"
"Well, it will sometime"

FFS

I’m with Ovo.  If you log onto your online account you can see your tariff and back check against the monthly bills that are pdf’d.  It did take a little while to catch up after the smart meter went in.

Mrs C manages the bills and accounts - she said it wasn't visible online. Could be because we are actually SSEN, but that is now run by OVO.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 11 July, 2023, 03:22:36 pm
My meter is not smart and now never will be. It's been marked "permanently impaired".  :D Meter fitter came to smarten us today, looked at the meter, traced the path of various cables, and said it can't be changed unless everything in the whole building is turned off – which obviously requires everyone to be home at the same time. Possibly that could be organised via landlord but it would take a lot of organising. This is because the mains feed comes and is split at a box which sends it three ways: one to us, one to the boiler room, and one to another meter which then feeds all the other flats (there's six, I think, spread over four floors). Unless everything served by that box is off, there's apparently a risk of arcing. A lot less fun than arking. He also said, in contradiction of officialdom, that the meter as is will probably carry on working indefinitely. So he's marked it as "permanently impaired", meaning we shouldn't hear from them again.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mr Larrington on 11 July, 2023, 05:27:49 pm
Not one but two txt msgs from EDF inviting me to smarten my meters this arvo. Right at an exciting bit of the Tour stage too.  You had your chance, guys, a Several of years ago, and you blew it by ringing up and only then realising you didn’t have any meter-smarteners available.  Three (3) times.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 14 September, 2023, 08:28:33 pm
Octopus mini

Mine arrived this morning.  Just set it up, which was painless.  Not sure how useful it's likely to be if you have to get your phone out to look at the data (it doesn't seem to be available on the website, dunno if the API has access to it).

Inadvertent teardown, on account of the thing falling apart when I dropped it out of the box, reveals - unsurprisingly - an ESP32, a Zigbee wossname, some power regulation gubbins and not a lot else.  Plenty of debugging/programming headers, which may get probed in due course.


ETA:  It appears to be working.  The instantaneous power figure agrees (to within the error expected from different sampling strategies) with my blinkylightmeter, and the half-hourly gas readings are there.  The high-resolution electricity consumption graphs are rubbish though, seemingly implying that we're pulse-width modulating our electricity use so that everything is consumed in one minute out of every five.  They also appear to be calibrated in Watt-hours per minute or something daft.  Will give it a day or two and see if it sorts itself out.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 22 September, 2023, 12:32:35 am
The high-resolution electricity consumption graphs are rubbish though, seemingly implying that we're pulse-width modulating our electricity use so that everything is consumed in one minute out of every five.  They also appear to be calibrated in Watt-hours per minute or something daft.  Will give it a day or two and see if it sorts itself out.

Update:  The graphs are still a waste of time, as if it's only reporting consumption in 50 Wh chunks.  Possibly a limitation of this SMETS1 meter?

(https://www.ductilebiscuit.net/gallery_albums/random/Screenshot_20230922_002139.sized.png)

Which makes the whole thing a waste of time, as all you get is the instantaneous power display on your phone (which I already had courtesy of the arduino, and the crappy IHD devices manage to do just fine), and not having to wait >24 hours for the 30-minutely consumption data to become available (but again, only on your phone - it's not available in the Octopus API, or even the website).

Will probably unplug it and save myself a Watt.  Maybe they'll add more useful functionality in future.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mr Larrington on 22 September, 2023, 04:29:11 pm
Someone purporting to be EDF keeps ringing my mobile.  It's an 0191 number, and genuine calls from EDF do usually feature cheery if ineffectual Geordies.  The evidence suggests, however, that these are not from EDF.  0191 543 3402.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tim Hall on 22 September, 2023, 04:32:55 pm
According to the EDF webby SCIENCE that number is kosher. Whether it's been spoofed or not I cannot say.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 22 September, 2023, 05:22:01 pm
The high-resolution electricity consumption graphs are rubbish though, seemingly implying that we're pulse-width modulating our electricity use so that everything is consumed in one minute out of every five.  They also appear to be calibrated in Watt-hours per minute or something daft.  Will give it a day or two and see if it sorts itself out.

Update:  The graphs are still a waste of time, as if it's only reporting consumption in 50 Wh chunks.  Possibly a limitation of this SMETS1 meter?

(https://www.ductilebiscuit.net/gallery_albums/random/Screenshot_20230922_002139.sized.png)

Which makes the whole thing a waste of time, as all you get is the instantaneous power display on your phone (which I already had courtesy of the arduino, and the crappy IHD devices manage to do just fine), and not having to wait >24 hours for the 30-minutely consumption data to become available (but again, only on your phone - it's not available in the Octopus API, or even the website).

Will probably unplug it and save myself a Watt.  Maybe they'll add more useful functionality in future.

Tried to reply to this earlier but mobile signal at work was useless.
When I look at the live view it gives me a bar for every minute in the last 30 mins. Our meters are less than 2 years old though. Might be worth raising it with them.
My export graph doesnt really update properly during the day, but that's ok cos I have the inverter app for that.
And now that I've read your post properly I can tell you the y axis on mine is scaled to 5.88Wh.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 22 September, 2023, 05:41:01 pm
Right, sounds like it's likely to be the meter's fault.  That can go on next week's to-do list.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Adam on 23 September, 2023, 09:12:33 pm
In my shop, my supplier* has put in a smart gas meter - which I didn't know was a thing.  If I've understood what the installer said, it pings a signal to the smart electricity meter which then transmits the data.  So clearly the gas meter can't be that smart if it needs to piggyback off the other one.  ;)



* even though next month they're stopping supplying gas, as they're withdrawing from the market, so it's all being switched to a new provider.  I assume they must get some bonus for putting a smart meter in.

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: aidan.f on 23 September, 2023, 10:58:42 pm
Well that's just physics, the gas meter only has a built in non rechargeable battery so has to conserve power. Electricity meters are connected to lots of POWER so using a bit for transmission over long distances is practical.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Jaded on 02 October, 2023, 08:46:27 am
So, I have just got access to our (community) building's Octopus account, and I'd like to do some digging around. I can download RAW CSV data, and there is a simple dashboard that gives simple graphs - there is also access to an API. We don't have an Agile account.

Are there any good tools out there for analysis? I'm looking to see when most of our usage occurs, and then see how our new solar panels and battery will affect that.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: toontra on 02 October, 2023, 01:06:33 pm
I enquire this every couple of years.  Has anyone got a smart meter working well with solar panels generating feed-in tariff revenue?  I'm aware of serious problems in the past like being charged for your generation rather than credited.  I really don't want to screw this up as I'm getting a tidy income from the FIT payments (fixed at the highest 2009 rate).

Supplier is Ovo (was SSE).
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: chopstick on 02 October, 2023, 01:34:45 pm
In my shop, my supplier* has put in a smart gas meter - which I didn't know was a thing.  If I've understood what the installer said, it pings a signal to the smart electricity meter which then transmits the data.  So clearly the gas meter can't be that smart if it needs to piggyback off the other one.  ;)

Smart gas meters can function without piggybacking.  It's a few years since I worked in the industry but iirc even the SMETS1 meters had a battery life of 15 years.  They contained a SIM and would send a text message twice a day over the 2G network (another issue was the phasing out of the 2G/3G network by 2033).  Even before smart meters, "Cello" devices were available that could read a pulse enabled gas meter and send the data via telemetry (SIM, text message & 2G iirc).  Not very common, but there were also OCR devices that could read the index without utilising a pulse.

Large users have been using what is now known as smart technology for decades, effectively having computer systems hooked up to the meter.  Also large users often use "converters" (devices which pretty much constantly measure pressure and temperature and calculate gas usage "corrected" for variations in pressure and temperature) which not only can be connected to telemetry but can also store months worth of data.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Jaded on 02 October, 2023, 05:37:54 pm
So I have found an online resource that will suck down the Smart data through Octopus's API and perform some simple analyses. That's good for now, I think.

https://energy.guylipman.com/sm/consumption
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: aidan.f on 02 October, 2023, 10:15:57 pm
I enquire this every couple of years.  Has anyone got a smart meter working well with solar panels generating feed-in tariff revenue?  I'm aware of serious problems in the past like being charged for your generation rather than credited.  I really don't want to screw this up as I'm getting a tidy income from the FIT payments (fixed at the highest 2009 rate).

Supplier is Ovo (was SSE).
No problem here. The dumb solar export meter is on the consumer side of the smart meter. Two separate accounts OVO manage my FIT payments Octopus my supply.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: toontra on 02 October, 2023, 10:20:43 pm
Ah - that's reassuring Aidan.  Thanks.  Will enquire with Ovo.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 10 November, 2023, 09:12:44 pm
Octopus Mini arrived today, including a genuine knock-off of an Apple 5W USB charger.

I can see on the minute-by-minute graph exactly how long I’ve left it since the kettle boiled (eight).

The iOS app reports usage in Watt-hours/minute and total watt-hours for 5 minute and 30 minute periods, which could so easily be expressed in average watts.

(It appears to only log whole watt hours, which mean intermittent peaks when consumption is below 1 watt-hour / minute, or 60W in sensible units. Much like a meter blinkenlight)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 16 November, 2023, 02:00:06 pm
So I just looked at my phone.  There's a notification there form Octopus about a saving session at 17:30-18:30 this evening.

Fucksake.  If they'd sent a bloody email I'd have seen it in a timely manner.  We're not all 12 year olds who live on our phones.  There doesn't seem to be any way to configure notifications, so - in light of the pointlessness of the Home Mini - I've uninstalled the app, in the hope that makes them switch to email.

Further digging around the website reveals that they're planning to do special short-notice sessions specifically for Facebook users (https://octopus.energy/blog/saving-sessions-faqs/#surprisesessions).  Because that makes sense(!)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 16 November, 2023, 04:15:29 pm
So I just looked at my phone.  There's a notification there form Octopus about a saving session at 17:30-18:30 this evening.

Fucksake.  If they'd sent a bloody email I'd have seen it in a timely manner.  We're not all 12 year olds who live on our phones.  There doesn't seem to be any way to configure notifications, so - in light of the pointlessness of the Home Mini - I've uninstalled the app, in the hope that makes them switch to email.

Further digging around the website reveals that they're planning to do special short-notice sessions specifically for Facebook users (https://octopus.energy/blog/saving-sessions-faqs/#surprisesessions).  Because that makes sense(!)

Looks like it's "save it Thursday" - we had a text from BG at about 1600 yesterday (Weds) with a follow-up email that we needed to confirm taking part for a session 1700-1800 today. 

An Alexa alarm has been set for 1650 to remind me to switch off our coffee machine (think single-group Costa machine) that has an immersion heater running  . .  that should guarantee we make a reduction in average consumption and at least get the £1 minimum bonus.  [Whether our "average" will be reduced next time there's a saving session . . .?]

Coffee machine will be switched back on at 1805 - takes about 20 mins to get up to temperature . .  and the oven will be switched on then too, Thursday night is pizza night.

BG say that the bonus will show on our account within 2 weeks . . .  I shall be checking.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 16 November, 2023, 04:24:35 pm
So I just looked at my phone.  There's a notification there form Octopus about a saving session at 17:30-18:30 this evening.

Fucksake.  If they'd sent a bloody email I'd have seen it in a timely manner.  We're not all 12 year olds who live on our phones.  There doesn't seem to be any way to configure notifications, so - in light of the pointlessness of the Home Mini - I've uninstalled the app, in the hope that makes them switch to email.

Further digging around the website reveals that they're planning to do special short-notice sessions specifically for Facebook users (https://octopus.energy/blog/saving-sessions-faqs/#surprisesessions).  Because that makes sense(!)

I got that push notification last night (which I think came from their savings sessions What's App group) which then directed me to their website to join. Initially I got a message saying I was not allowed to subscribe (as did others from what I could see on Twitter) but after a while it updated and said I had joined. While I was there I spun the meter reading wheel of fortune and received 8000 Octopoints, which was a nice surprise.

Apparently if you  export during the saving session you can get paid for it as well, but I'm not sure I can be arsed fighting the not very obvious settings in the Solis webpage for the sake of one night to have to undo it again tomorrow. Battery's only 70% full now anyway.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 16 November, 2023, 04:27:26 pm
It definitely came from the Octopus app, because  a) it had a little octopus icon  and  b) my phone is a Facebook-free zone.  But I hadn't looked at my phone since about 1pm yesterday, when I last left the house.

I'm wondering if this is Google/Microsoft's fault, enshittifying email to the point where an energy company can't send a message to a large number of customers in a timely manner without falling foul of 'spam' filters.  That would explain the fixation with social media channels that are notoriously difficult to automate.

Anyway, I've instructed various things to switch themselves off for the duration, and have dug out the trike battery to run the network stuff from.  Place your bets on whether the UPS battery falls flat on its face during the transfer...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 16 November, 2023, 04:35:24 pm
I was struggling to remember whether it came from the app or not but either way it opened What's App. Unless I got a notification from both...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: orraloon on 16 November, 2023, 06:36:48 pm
Newbie to Octopus.  Got a notification yesterday on phone, via app? then had to set up on WhatsApp with the opt in via the app.  I think...

Low battery after several manky weather days but not importing, yet.  Oven about to go on now is post the 1730-1830 window.

Good stuff this tech, like wot I iz learning 😊
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 17 November, 2023, 10:36:58 am
National Grid call on the DFS Service and then notify suppliers so they can notify customers.   Thursday's event was announced on Wednesday.   You can monitor it here :-

https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=transmission/systemwarning

Oddly, the system looked a bit tight yesterday evening but prices over that period weren't particularly toppy.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 19 November, 2023, 04:25:24 pm
Just to satisfy my curiosity I read the meter at the start and end of our 1100-1600 half price electricity deal today - we planned to maximise the possible saving with the washing machine running mutiple loads for the whole period, the tumble drier for almost all of the washing (raining so no outdoor drying) and a run of the dishwasher - plus an hour or so of the oven .... together with the normal usage for lights, coffee machine, technology etc.

Consumption was 11kwh which at our rate of 30.1 = £3.31 = £1.65 saving (actually a little more in real terms as there will be at least one less washing machine run during the coming week)  The deal runs until 31 December 2023 so saving at the same rate every Sunday will net £9.90.

Our Tapo measuring device has just been fitted to the power supply to our plumbed-in, always on(it's on a Hive plug/socket and is programmed to go off from 2030-0600 overnight),  coffee machine to see how much juice it uses  . . . . I may get a fright with the consumption!

I have returned my anorak to the coat hook by the back door  ;D
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 November, 2023, 05:33:29 pm
Just to satisfy my curiosity I read the meter at the start and end of our 1100-1600 half price electricity deal today

Presumably that's based on the assumption that Sunday afternoons are usually relatively low demand, rather than National Grid 24-hour-ahead predictions.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 19 November, 2023, 06:45:23 pm
Just to satisfy my curiosity I read the meter at the start and end of our 1100-1600 half price electricity deal today

Presumably that's based on the assumption that Sunday afternoons are usually relatively low demand, rather than National Grid 24-hour-ahead predictions.

. . . and very few people nowadays have the traditonal roast beef and Yorkshire pudding Sunday lunch.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 November, 2023, 08:48:08 pm
Just to satisfy my curiosity I read the meter at the start and end of our 1100-1600 half price electricity deal today

Presumably that's based on the assumption that Sunday afternoons are usually relatively low demand, rather than National Grid 24-hour-ahead predictions.

. . . and very few people nowadays have the traditonal roast beef and Yorkshire pudding Sunday lunch.

Or if they do, they're doing it later in the day.  I cooked a roast earlier, but started at 5pm.

And having looked it up, apparently about 30% of BRITISH ovens are gas-powered.  I'm surprised it's that few, but then anyone with any choice in the matter is going to want a fan oven, even if they combine it with a gas hob.

Which all plays into the duck curve.  The main difference with Sundays is lower overall demand, and you don't get the same morning peak.


Octopus did a thing a few years ago where they'd give you all-you-can-eat free electrons for a one hour slot each month.  That was based on actual grid prediction, so you got <24 hours notice of when it was going to happen (though it was fairly predictable if you paid attention to the weather forecast), and for astronomical reasons never happened at a sensible[1] cooking time.  I mostly used it to do laundry, de-ice the freezer and bake CAKEs.


[1] Unless you're French.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Morat on 19 November, 2023, 09:03:59 pm
Five years after first registering my interest in a Smart Meter, one has been installed! I was told by the installer that our postcode (YO17) "needs special meters due to the RAF base nearby" which seems very unlikely.
I now have a little screen telling me I've exceeded my weekly budget. Progress.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 19 November, 2023, 09:15:05 pm
I do vaguely recall something in the press about smart meters and Fylingdales.

*googles*

Ob-Grauniad: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/dec/06/i-cant-charge-my-electric-car-cheaply-because-im-too-close-to-an-raf-base

Ob-Bile-Duct: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10521623/Smart-meter-rollout-near-RAF-base-stopped-amid-fears-devices-signals-harm-warning-systems.html
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Morat on 19 November, 2023, 09:44:04 pm
19 miles as the photon flies. At least, that's to where I reckon Fylingdales is because it doesn't appear on Google Maps.
I guess they are _really very_ sensitive antennae so maybe...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 20 November, 2023, 09:01:14 am
Some of the older meters installed have the potential to go dumb when 2g is switched off, as I understand it at the moment.   The early roll out might not have been managed too well.

Octopus are doing out of hours fixed tariffs at 7p/kWh.   The wholesale price is around 9p/kWh.   This is not a sustainable business model.

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Tod28 on 20 November, 2023, 12:19:09 pm
19 miles as the photon flies. At least, that's to where I reckon Fylingdales is because it doesn't appear on Google Maps.
I guess they are _really very_ sensitive antennae so maybe...


Lockton, Pickering YO18 7NT - tagged as Fylingdale Radar Installation
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 28 November, 2023, 06:04:48 pm
Seems like there might be another saving session tomorrow
https://twitter.com/NationalGridESO/status/1729519267874275451?t=yzIJN0m4npMh8rd6nzqdNg&s=19
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 28 November, 2023, 06:06:38 pm
Seems to be confirmed on this link.


https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=transmission/systemwarning

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 28 November, 2023, 06:19:04 pm
Place your bets on whether Octopus send me an email...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 28 November, 2023, 08:46:09 pm
Seems like there might be another saving session tomorrow
https://twitter.com/NationalGridESO/status/1729519267874275451?t=yzIJN0m4npMh8rd6nzqdNg&s=19

Yep - BG 1700-1830 here (note made to turn off the coffee machine at 1655!)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 28 November, 2023, 08:55:18 pm
The system is a bit tight next few days.  Cold weather and low wind.  I’m out the office with clients for two days so will be a bit out of touch.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 28 November, 2023, 09:09:29 pm
I read somewhere that if you export on Octopus you'll get 4 squid per kWh exported. Which is handy being as I'll be baking bread tomorrow and the flattery will be bat.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Lightning Phil on 28 November, 2023, 09:28:55 pm
What is the saving compared to? Had a look through FAQ but it wasn’t clear.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 28 November, 2023, 09:32:26 pm
Oddly the peak in Agile Octopus pricing doesn’t correspond precisely with the session (and didn’t during the last one either).

https://agileprices.co.uk/
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 28 November, 2023, 09:33:02 pm
What is the saving compared to? Had a look through FAQ but it wasn’t clear.

Your average use for that time period over the last n weeks.  Yes, this is obviously flawed, but remember it's about reducing peak demand rather than saving energy.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 28 November, 2023, 09:45:37 pm
Oddly the peak in Agile Octopus pricing doesn’t correspond precisely with the session (and didn’t during the last one either).

https://agileprices.co.uk/

That formatting is horrible.

Here’s another data source for pricing.  The below is the day ahead clearing price.  It sets at 10am D-1.

https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/Market-data1/GB/Auction-prices/UK/Hourly/?view=table

Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 28 November, 2023, 10:31:28 pm
Place your bets on whether Octopus send me an email...

Semi-astoundingly, they did!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Jaded on 28 November, 2023, 11:59:51 pm
So, have had the smart meters about 6 weeks now.

Got an email from Octopus updating me on my latest situation.

They have just charged me £12.63 for 6 weeks of gas. I’m loving this new smart meter!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 29 November, 2023, 07:21:00 am
What is the saving compared to? Had a look through FAQ but it wasn’t clear.

Your average use for that time period over the last n weeks.  Yes, this is obviously flawed, but remember it's about reducing peak demand rather than saving energy.

If the "last n weeks" is a rolling average then if you make savings the effect will reduce over time as, presumably, your average that's the target to reduce will diminish thus reducing the chances of effecting savings made by realistic switchings-off . . . .?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 29 November, 2023, 01:50:31 pm
What is the saving compared to? Had a look through FAQ but it wasn’t clear.

Your average use for that time period over the last n weeks.  Yes, this is obviously flawed, but remember it's about reducing peak demand rather than saving energy.

If the "last n weeks" is a rolling average then if you make savings the effect will reduce over time as, presumably, your average that's the target to reduce will diminish thus reducing the chances of effecting savings made by realistic switchings-off . . . .?

Exactly.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 29 November, 2023, 02:37:54 pm
The National Grid uses the last 10 working days (Page 29 for grizzly details) to calculate their baseline:
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/286976/download

Previous days where demand-shedding (DFS, or "event days") was in force are excluded.

One may reasonably assume Octopus does the same, or at least very similar.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Lightning Phil on 29 November, 2023, 02:57:54 pm
Thus worth moving washing machine usage into in peak window (to push average up) outside of savings day.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 29 November, 2023, 03:19:30 pm
The National Grid uses the last 10 working days (Page 29 for grizzly details) to calculate their baseline:
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/286976/download

Previous days where demand-shedding (DFS, or "event days") was in force are excluded.

One may reasonably assume Octopus does the same, or at least very similar.

If that's the case then our action to turn off the coffee machine for the period of saving will probably ensure we get the stated minimum BG payment of £1 off the bill each time (Just had the saving from the Sunday half-price deal for October at £5.15p - quite a bit of planning with washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, oven, ironing etc to maximise saving)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 30 November, 2023, 06:44:13 pm
Another saving sesh 1630 til 1800 tomorrow.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 30 November, 2023, 07:32:23 pm
Another saving sesh 1630 til 1800 tomorrow.

Ditto - must be cold!    Note made to switch off coffee machine after the cup of tea we have at 1600 (it's HW too, no kettle) and not use the oven until >1800.  Should be another quid!
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 30 November, 2023, 08:05:17 pm
I was in the control room of a company that optimises flexible assets today.  The tech is fascinating.  Anyway they look at the same system signals so they have had a very busy few days providing services to the market and National Grid.

I’m just waiting for Skynet to become self aware and the machines to take over.


(I made that joke and they didn’t get it.  Bloody kids.)
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 01 December, 2023, 08:03:52 am
Incendiary reporting anyone :-

https://news.sky.com/story/cold-weather-prompts-national-grid-to-activate-energy-blackout-scheme-13018206
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: tom_e on 01 December, 2023, 09:46:01 am
That is a particularly shit bit of reporting.  First the over-dramatisation, but then the last paragraph where they appear to be confused and think the whole thing is about "saving" electricity:

Quote
The scheme is estimated to have saved more than 3,300MWh of electricity across 22 activations in 2022, which is enough to power around 10 million homes for an hour.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 01 December, 2023, 01:08:38 pm
Another saving sesh 1630 til 1800 tomorrow.

Not yet had an email for that one, but I've gone and signed up on the website.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 05 December, 2023, 11:53:28 am
BG peak saver 1730-1830 today, 5 Dec
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Jasmine on 05 December, 2023, 12:18:44 pm
Hmm, I've signed up but I think it's likely impossible to hit my target. I won't even be in during that window, but because the reduction target is in comparison to my typical use in that time window, I think I'd need to turn off stuff like the fridge to hit a reduction. If all the events are likely to be 4.30 to 6.30pm, I'll have to start running the washing machine and oven at 6pm a few nights.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: TimC on 05 December, 2023, 12:28:21 pm
Just hit £120 for a week’s worth of Octopus’ finest electrickery - and we still have the coldest months to come! This is for a 2 bed thatched cottage of 800sq ft.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 12 December, 2023, 06:32:57 pm
And I've just found out there was a savings session this evening.  Never got an email about that one.   :facepalm:
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: orraloon on 12 December, 2023, 06:48:43 pm
Got messaged via the Octoplus whatsapp update thing, noticed it with 6 minutes to go...  Seems need that app to be in line, emails they claim to be not so immediate.  Or there is a @SavingSessions thing in the Muskrat world, so they say.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 12 December, 2023, 07:11:02 pm
There was no app push notification either if that makes you feel better.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 12 December, 2023, 08:25:07 pm
BG email at 1436 today for 1700-1800 saving deal.

We've just had a bill for the quarter 2 Sept - 20 Nov* . .  the savings listed don't make a lot of sense as the dates recorded don't tally with the dates on which savings were available (that's half-price Sunday and the peak saving, short notice ones) - total discount/saving on the bill was about £16 with biggest savings being the half-price Sundays** which were all between £1.60 and £2.00.

* we're on quarterly bills, paid for consumpption as received by DD (i.e. not monthly payments)
** strategic planning with washing machine, tumble dryer, oven, dishwasher, breadmaker and more running in the save period
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 12 December, 2023, 08:25:40 pm
I got the WhatsApp notification around 3pm.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 12 December, 2023, 08:44:07 pm
Fediverse discussion lead me to this:

https://twitter.com/OctopusEnergy/status/1729979004399055070

And poking around the GraphQL API schema thingy suggests that it's possible to get details of, and indeed join, savings sessions from there.


Unfortunately, I'm the wrong kind of programmer, so working out how to interact with the GraphQL API will involve voodoo.  It was hard enough getting the REST API to work.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 13 December, 2023, 07:40:14 am
We are changing supplier.

The 'smartmeter' will become a 'dumb' meter.

Remind me again, what was the point of these things? Generate e-waste?
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: toontra on 13 December, 2023, 09:36:14 pm
Finally bit the bullet and had a combined smart meter installed by Ovo today.  Part of the reason was my old leccy meter was in another flat which is often unattended so I had no idea of my usage and couldn't take meter readings.

The new setup seems to be working well.  I'll soon find out if it screws with my (separate meter) FIT payments.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 14 December, 2023, 11:06:15 am
BG email - 1700-1800 Peak Save today, 14 Dec.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: orraloon on 14 December, 2023, 03:39:13 pm
Octopus saving session tonight 1700-1800
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 14 December, 2023, 03:58:12 pm
It's interesting as the Grid doesn't really seem to be struggling and prices are pretty benign.   The whole of Q1 has pretty much collapsed as supply stays healthy and weather has remained mild.

https://bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=transmission/systemwarning

The Elexon website refers to DFS tests so I'm wondering if this is a bit of dry running.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 15 December, 2023, 01:34:40 pm
Another BG saver  1730-1830 today
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Kim on 15 December, 2023, 02:22:38 pm
And Octopus 17:00-18:00.  I actually got an email for this one last night.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Morat on 18 December, 2023, 11:32:00 am
So, now I have a smartmeter and Octopus is my supplier - what tariff would be suitable for a high consumption household (3 adults, 2 kids) with at least one WFH every weekday?
No solar, sadly.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: grams on 18 December, 2023, 11:42:53 am
Tracker is good value at the moment.

Agile requires ability to time shift and avoid peaks (especially 4-7pm) to make any saving.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Morat on 18 December, 2023, 11:46:58 am
Tracker is good value at the moment.

Agile requires ability to time shift and avoid peaks (especially 4-7pm) to make any saving.

Thank you!
I can avoid washing machine/tumble dryer/dishwasher usage between those times. But as for the rest... hmm. I shall ponder.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 18 December, 2023, 04:42:25 pm
I had forgotten Octopus still offered a tracker.  I have just had a dig through the FAQs and it’s not entirely clear which wholesale price/contract it tracks.   If it’s day ahead then great as the pattern has been that the forward prices used to set the cap have collapsed in delivery.   Some commentators have asked why the gains aren’t passed to consumers but the suppliers should have hedged so there are no savings to pass on.  Of course the lack or misunderstanding of risk management that caused so many suppliers to fail last Winter would have yielded pretty decent returns in the last 12mths.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 18 December, 2023, 05:03:56 pm
This any help?
https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-tracker-tariff/
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 18 December, 2023, 07:55:37 pm
This any help?
https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-tracker-tariff/

It doesn’t say specifically but the volatility suggests it’s day ahead.   I used to know someone there I could ask but it has been a while.

This is where details are quite important.  There are 5 different ways of defining the day ahead price as there are different markets and exchanges that clear at different times.  There can be reasonable differences between each.

I recall meeting the founder of an energy company some years ago.   We didn’t exactly hit it off and he was a very difficult individual.  Anyway, he was planning to launch a tracker product and I asked what he was going to track.  For some reason I couldn’t get this point across and he just got really angry.  My point was that if you take out a tracker mortgage you get a pledge that the rate will be the BoE rate plus X.  I figured any consumer wanting a tracker energy rate would want to know what it’s tracking.   The supplier ran out of cash and went bust.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 18 December, 2023, 09:45:08 pm
I expect if you asked Octopus they'd probably tell you...
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Mrs Pingu on 18 December, 2023, 09:53:41 pm
Was this what you were after?
For electricity, the wholesale price W, is the baseload average price (in p/kWh) from the previous day's N2EX GB Day-Ahead auction. For gas, the W is the day ahead or weekend price in p/therm on the previous working day from Marex Spectron.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: felstedrider on 19 December, 2023, 06:00:28 am
Was this what you were after?
For electricity, the wholesale price W, is the baseload average price (in p/kWh) from the previous day's N2EX GB Day-Ahead auction. For gas, the W is the day ahead or weekend price in p/therm on the previous working day from Marex Spectron.

Ah-hah.  Yes, thanks.  It’s exactly what we use for index linking.

I’m not an Octopus customer and we do provide services to one or two of their competitors so I have to be a little careful.  With the arrival of the EV I see myself switching once my current fix rolls off.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: Flite on 19 December, 2023, 09:20:28 am
As from today, we are trying the Octopus CosyOctopus tariff, designed for folks on heat pumps.
Two low price zones, one high price zone and the rest average.
The key is going to be avoiding the high price zone.
It's made more complicated by the fact that our electric AGA has a "smart" system that means it heats up to full temperature twice a day for breakfast and dinner, then drops to low the rest of the time, to save energy. Works fine, as I make sure I do all the cooking in those times. But it is difficult to work out exactly when it powers up to reach full temperature by the designated time.
Work in progress.
Title: Re: Electricity Smart Meter
Post by: robgul on 19 December, 2023, 10:40:05 am
Got an email from BG today with the savings values - better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick for not much effort.

PeakSave Sundays - By moving your electricity usage to between 11am and 4pm every Sunday, you've made the most of half-price electricity and earned £7.59.

PeakSave Winter - By joining into events and cutting back on electricity usage during those busy peak times, you earned £4.31.

Your PeakSave reward for November: £11.90

Your PeakSave reward total to end November: £21.47

(And I got my "old codgers winter fuel payment" today  :thumbsup:)