Electricity Smart Meter

[Beardy]

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.

[felstedrider]

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.

[Mr Larrington]

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.

[Beardy]

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.

[mrcharly-YHT]

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.

[felstedrider]

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.

[Kim]

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).

[grams]

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.

[felstedrider]

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.

[Cudzoziemiec]

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.

[felstedrider]

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 ?

[Ham]

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?

[Cudzoziemiec]

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.

[Kim]

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.

[Beardy]

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.

[Kim]

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.

[felstedrider]

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.

[Kim]

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.

[rogerzilla]

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/surprise-im-a-prepayment-meter-20230112230293

[felstedrider]

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.

[Tim Hall]

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.

[felstedrider]

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.

[Tim Hall]

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) 

[Beardy]

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.

[felstedrider]

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.