On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 00:04:36 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

Presumably the display on the smart meter will show the spot
price,
and give a colour coded easy to read "Cheap, average, expensive"
kind
of quick indication.

but 99% of the time you wont be able to do anything to change your

usage when the spot price changes

What if the technology does it for them and does not offer the choice?

That'll only work for appliances that, to the consumer, are "always
on", things like fridges/freezers etc.

Still at least it could all be "joined up", so when you kid's jumper is
still wet in the morning because the system decided not not run the
tumble drier when you wanted it, you won't have to worry since it also
used too much of the power in your EV and now you have not got the range
to drive them to school anyway ;-)

Like it. B-)

Are you going to stop the washing machine mid cycle, or stop
cooking
dinner, or stop watching your favourite TV program, all on zero
notice?

Personally, no.

Same here. There is a certain amount of "novelty value" when you
first get a display that shows current consumption and you can make
savings. But there are only some many things you can switch off
rather than leave in standby or plugged in and "on". Once the novelty
has worn off, habit will have those things being left in standby/on
again in fairly short order.
However I expect that some people were sold on the idea that this kind
of scheme would make intermittent power generation somehow more
"useful", by allowing automatic "demand management".

If any "automatic demand management" impinges on when people can do
things they want to do they'll opt out. It can only be effective if
it has no or very minimal affect on what people want to do and when
they want to do it.

Of course any demand management is more to do with clipping the peak
off the early evening winter peak deamnd. By knocking 500 MW of that
you can "save" a whole power station being required but sit idle for
the vast majority of the year.

500 MW, how many fridges is that?

Lets assume that when the compressor is running a fridge takes 100W.
500,000,000 / 100 = 5,000,000 fridges, hum a lot...

BUT a fridge doesn't run it's compressor all the time. Lets assume a
20% duty cycle. That means to save 100 W on average you need to
control 5 fridges. 5,000,000 * 5 = 25 million fridges, thats more
than the number of households in the country...

It ain't going to happen any time soon.

--
Cheers
Dave.