Tim Watts wrote:

On Friday 20 September 2013 15:09 Michael Chare wrote in uk.d-i-y:

I am probably going to change my electricity supplier (i.e. the people I
pay for the supply) to make a small saving.

This has lead me to wonder about smart meters. I would quite like one if
it would provide the data for me to end up with an MS excel graph
showing how much power I use in each hour of the day. Is this likely to
be possible? I don't want to read the meter every hour, I could do that
now.

From what I have learnt so far, not all meters are the same, and if you
have one and then change supplier, the new supplier may say that the
meter is incompatible with their systems.

I should say that as a way of life supplying meter readings once a year
and then sorting out the bill is quite good enough for me.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22665918

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22608085

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04...meter_hacking/

Still want one?

Once upon a time, back in the 70s, electricity had to be rationed due
to supply problems. This was done in the only way possible at the
time: rolling power cuts.

These days, like lines of pensioners queueing outside a
possibly-collapsing bank, this sort of thing is very bad publicity
for the government. They have made it a law to keep the news of
possible bank failures secret, so that gets rid of that particular
embarrassment.

The next one is when we start to run out of electricity, currently
thought to be in 2015, due to the policy of appeasing the greens by
closing perfectly viable coal-fired power-stations and replacing them
with nothing effective. No-one dare mention the N-word, and anyway
it's too late to get them rolling by then.

So, the government needs to deal with this uncomfortable situation yet
get itself off the hook. The method? Smart meters!

You pay the £11bn cost, and the electricity companies can now change
the price of electricity moment by moment, the
near-instantanous readings being sent by the smart meter so there's no
escape except to turn things off. So, at no cost to itself, the
government can say 'nothing to do with us, sunshine', while
pensioners freeze and we all get used to using cooking the evening
meal at midnight and using the washing-machine at 3:00am.

Of course, having the smart meters in place beforehand means that they
know your usage pattern, so any attempt to fiddle the meter will stand
out.

--
Terry Fields