"tim..." wrote in message
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"Rod Speed" wrote in message
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"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
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On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 02:58:29 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35894922

"The British government has committed to getting 53 million smart
meters into our homes and small businesses by the end of 2020, at an
estimated cost of £11bn."

analysis snipped

"The EU has said that all its members must provide smart meters by
2020 as long as there is a positive economic case to do so."

Economic case for whom, energy companies or consumers?

Germany said no on ecomonic grounds, Austraila and Canada found it
too expensive and of little benefit.

I can't see the benefit for most people. Is the government really
expecting people to be looking at their meters every few hours to see
what electricity they're using, and thereby cutting back? I can't see
it happening. If people aren't aware of what kit uses how much
electricity, they're unlikely to be interested in the usage at any one
moment, or what is using it. If people are sufficiently interested,
they either know what uses large amounts, or they can go out and buy a
monitor that tells them.

The only useful smart meter would be one that can be interrogated
remotely from some central computer, so that it's not necessary to
employ someone to come and read it every six months.

The other obvious useful feature is that you can charge a different
rate for electricity used when there is surplus electricity available,
to encourage people to do the high load stuff like drying clothes
when there wont be any need to use the high cost power generators
at peak demand times etc.

We already have meters that do that

I meant do it better than those do.

They are "dumb" in the sense that the period of time that charges a lower
rate is fixed,

And is just a very crude once a day block of time with
the devices that use that cheaper power not being normal
appliances like say clothes driers which can be used at
cheap or more expensive electricity rates depending
on when the user chooses to use the appliance.

but realistically that is how it has to be if you are going to encourage
culture shift,

Yes, but currently you can't run the clothes drier etc
at the cheap rate because the cheap rate use is
determined by the electricity supply authority
choosing to turn the use of the electricity on
or off for water heating and other stuff like
heatbanks and under floor heating etc.

and there is no reason why they can't be adjusted to have more than one
"fixed" period/rate

Yes, but that is only half the problem. The other half
of the problem is that the meter needs to be able to
charge for ALL the power used at the cheaper rate
when the consumer chooses to use the appliance
during that time band.

Telling people that at some random part of the day their electricity is
going to be cheaper and that they should "look out for it", just aint
gonna work

Sure, but no one was suggesting anything like that.

What a smart meter can do and the meter it replaces
doesn't do is charge ALL the power used in a particular
time band at a particular rate. The systems that already
have smart meters doing it like that normally have 3
price bands, peak rate, intermediate rate and cheapest
rate and all the power used is charged at the appropriate
rate depending on the time of day the power is used.