On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:42:22 -0800 (PST), harry wrote:

The ultimate purpose of the smart meter is for our brave new world of
renewable energy when tariffs will be continuously varied depending on
availability of electricity. It will then be possible to make big
savings.

Only if you let the tail wag the dog. Base load is base load, there
is very little one can do about that unless you're still using
incandescant light bulbs.

Our next largest consumer is cooking, normally takes place close or
at the evening peak, odd that. Prices would have to be extremely
dynamic and guaranteed to make me shift cooking very far. Say normal
rate 15p kWHr and 1800 to 1830 50p kWHr but unless it was guranteed
to be back down to 15p at 1831 and I could see what my tariff
actually is, I'd just take the hit. No point in delaying the cooking
30 mins only to find that the next 30 mins is also 50p kWHr... I'd
also need to see these guaranteed prices at least 24, or better 48
hours, in advance so things can be planned.

What would be more useful would be a dynamic E7 tariff. You still got
your 7 hours reduced rate but those 7 hours could be split up into 30
min periods through out the day. There would have to be some
guarantee that the overall energy "stored" never fell below "zero".
ie an off period was never so long that it required more energy than
that provided by the previous on/off periods.

--
Cheers
Dave.