On 07/03/2015 12:27, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

The main consumer benefit quoted is that you can see your power
usage in real-time. This has been available for many years with
consumer self-install monitors, and smart metering is not required
to do this. Indeed, research with early smart meter adopters has
shown that after a couple of months, the interest in this wears
off, and consumers find that appliances actually cost vastly less
to use that they guessed beforehand, and they quickly stop
bothering to try saving.

And they see for themselves that devices such as phone chargers, and
tellies in standby mode use an immeasurably tiny amount of juice, in
direct contradiction to what the green brigade keep on saying.



--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

In message , at 06:49:15 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:

The TV programme thing is also related to being able to filter out a
pattern where the power consumption of the TV varies with the
brightness of the picture,

I'm not convinced that it does anymore with modern TVs.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinio...ur-hdtv_Page-4

...the dynamic contrast feature carried by most LCD and a few
plasma TVs. The idea behind these is that the TV continually
assesses the content of the picture you're watching, to see how
bright or dark a shot is. And if it detects that a shot is
predominantly dark, it will reduce the TV's light output in a
bid to make blacks look less grey. Then, when it detects a scene
that's brighter, it will up the light output again to give this
scene more intensity.
--
Roland Perry

"Mike Clarke" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 07/03/2015 11:32, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
16:44:47 on Fri, 6 Mar 2015, Mike Clarke
remarked:
"... Energy meters show which appliances use the most electricity so
that you can plan energy use effectively. Because of the different
ways that appliances use electricity, such data could, for example,
reveal whether you use medical devices or baby monitors, or even show
the TV programme you're watching. And obviously, it can give
information on when you're in or out, or track when you toilet light
goes on. So, technically, it might know when you are on the loo."

So smart meters have magical telepathic powers.

These sorts of comments are based on an ability to do a waveform
analysis (of your total consumption) and pick out the components using
fairly basic digital filtering methods.

For example, if you see a 2kW spike that lasts around 90 seconds, you
can hypothesise that it's an electric kettle or a toaster. And if it
happens during Coronation Street advertising breaks, more likely the
latter (and will also correlate fairly well with watching ITV).

Yes but this would require continuous real time analysis, probably too
complex for a design that just sends power usage for each 30 minute
period.

Other appliances will have their own characteristic components.

The TV programme thing is also related to being able to filter out a
pattern where the power consumption of the TV varies with the brightness
of the picture, and seeing if any of the contemporaneously broadcast TV
channels has a likely candidate.

These variations will be very small compared to total usage by everything
else in the house. I doubt if smart meters will have that sort of
computing power. And likely to be unable to sort out what's happening if 2
TV's are in use in the house at the same time with people watching
different channels.

And as to the claim "track when you toilet light goes on" - it's going to
be a very smart meter to know the difference between the light in the
toilet and any other light in the house.

But not necessarily very smart at all with the usage pattern.

There aren't any other lights with that usage pattern.

What I'm not convinced about, however, is whether the smart meter in
your house [one of which was shown on Breakfast TV this morning] can use
those sorts of techniques to tell you how much power your deep freeze is
using

That would probably depend the use of smart devices capable of talking to
the meter.

Meanwhile, one of the hiccups with the scheme is apparently that telling
people what the cost of their consumption is *now* [I have had a
clamp-on meter for that for over five years now] results in them using
*more* electricity not less.

For example mine is telling me that my current consumption [the
background on a Saturday mid-morning] is ~600W at a cost of £1.77/day.

Exactly. instantaneous values are pretty well useless for overall cost
calculation purposes.

But could for example tell you that the way you use the outside
lights could save you useful money if you changed them to LEDs
or that the way you use them means that changing to LEDs isn't
going to save you anything much.

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at
12:40:27 on Sat, 7 Mar 2015, Mike Clarke
remarked:

For example, if you see a 2kW spike that lasts around 90 seconds, you
can hypothesise that it's an electric kettle or a toaster. And if it
happens during Coronation Street advertising breaks, more likely the
latter (and will also correlate fairly well with watching ITV).

Yes but this would require continuous real time analysis,

The analysis can be later.

probably too complex for a design that just sends power usage for each 30
minute period.

Yes, it requires the power usage to be transmitted much more often than
that.

Other appliances will have their own characteristic components.

The TV programme thing is also related to being able to filter out a
pattern where the power consumption of the TV varies with the brightness
of the picture, and seeing if any of the contemporaneously broadcast TV
channels has a likely candidate.

These variations will be very small compared to total usage by everything
else in the house.

Every radio receiver is picking up programmes which are very small
compared to the total RF arriving on their aerial.

I doubt if smart meters will have that sort of computing power.

Me too. This is something which I think has to be done centrally.

And likely to be unable to sort out what's happening if 2 TV's are in use
in the house at the same time with people watching different channels.

That's no different to a radio being able to tune into either of two weak
transmissions.

And as to the claim "track when you toilet light goes on" - it's going to
be a very smart meter to know the difference between the light in the
toilet and any other light in the house.

There's probably some journalist licence there. It could of course be just
as likely as the light in the cupboard under the stairs, assuming you
visit that briefly several times a day.

That wouldn't have the same usage pattern, particularly wouldn't
be seen last thing or first thing in the morning, or during the night.

What I'm not convinced about, however, is whether the smart meter in
your house [one of which was shown on Breakfast TV this morning] can use
those sorts of techniques to tell you how much power your deep freeze is
using

That would probably depend the use of smart devices capable of talking to
the meter.

Hmm, they appear to be promising this data without me having to upgrade my
appliances.

Meanwhile, one of the hiccups with the scheme is apparently that telling
people what the cost of their consumption is *now* [I have had a
clamp-on meter for that for over five years now] results in them using
*more* electricity not less.

For example mine is telling me that my current consumption [the
background on a Saturday mid-morning] is ~600W at a cost of £1.77/day.

Exactly. instantaneous values are pretty well useless for overall cost
calculation purposes.

They are quite useful (eg my quarterly bill is fairly consistently about
twice the displayed cost of my base load), it's just that telling someone
how much it's costing for *today's* consumption gives such a low figure
they are likely to think "so what".

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 06:49:15 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:

The TV programme thing is also related to being able to filter out a
pattern where the power consumption of the TV varies with the
brightness of the picture,

I'm not convinced that it does anymore with modern TVs.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinio...ur-hdtv_Page-4

...the dynamic contrast feature carried by most LCD and a few
plasma TVs. The idea behind these is that the TV continually
assesses the content of the picture you're watching, to see how
bright or dark a shot is. And if it detects that a shot is
predominantly dark, it will reduce the TV's light output in a
bid to make blacks look less grey. Then, when it detects a scene
that's brighter, it will up the light output again to give this
scene more intensity.

Still not convinced that it changes the consumption of the
whole TV enough to make any real measurable difference.

On 07/03/2015 19:01, Tim Watts wrote:
On 07/03/15 18:19, Dennis@home wrote:
On 07/03/2015 13:49, Tim Watts wrote:
On 07/03/15 13:26, Dennis@home wrote:

No problem at all.
Just wear the gloves and googles and you will be fine.
It isn't a difficult job.


And you've done it then?

You don't hear about thousands of people getting killed so it can't be
dangerous.
Being a fireman is probably more dangerous and you get about one killed
every few years.

That's because 1000's of people don't poke their heads in link boxes
every day and pull fuses for the sake of it.

But the ones that do don't have a problem.

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
On 07/03/2015 12:27, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

The main consumer benefit quoted is that you can see your power
usage in real-time. This has been available for many years with
consumer self-install monitors, and smart metering is not required
to do this. Indeed, research with early smart meter adopters has
shown that after a couple of months, the interest in this wears
off, and consumers find that appliances actually cost vastly less
to use that they guessed beforehand, and they quickly stop
bothering to try saving.

And they see for themselves that devices such as phone chargers, and
tellies in standby mode use an immeasurably tiny amount of juice, in
direct contradiction to what the green brigade keep on saying.

How can you see something that can't be measured?

In message , at 08:27:24 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:
The TV programme thing is also related to being able to filter out a
pattern where the power consumption of the TV varies with the
brightness of the picture,

I'm not convinced that it does anymore with modern TVs.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinio...ur-hdtv_Page-4

...the dynamic contrast feature carried by most LCD and a few
plasma TVs. The idea behind these is that the TV continually
assesses the content of the picture you're watching, to see how
bright or dark a shot is. And if it detects that a shot is
predominantly dark, it will reduce the TV's light output in a
bid to make blacks look less grey. Then, when it detects a scene
that's brighter, it will up the light output again to give this
scene more intensity.

Still not convinced that it changes the consumption of the
whole TV enough to make any real measurable difference.

The backlight is probably the biggest power consumption factor in a TV.
I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel the
heat coming off the screen from six inches away.
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 08:27:24 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:
The TV programme thing is also related to being able to filter out a
pattern where the power consumption of the TV varies with the
brightness of the picture,

I'm not convinced that it does anymore with modern TVs.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinio...ur-hdtv_Page-4

...the dynamic contrast feature carried by most LCD and a few
plasma TVs. The idea behind these is that the TV continually
assesses the content of the picture you're watching, to see how
bright or dark a shot is. And if it detects that a shot is
predominantly dark, it will reduce the TV's light output in a
bid to make blacks look less grey. Then, when it detects a scene
that's brighter, it will up the light output again to give this
scene more intensity.

Still not convinced that it changes the consumption of the
whole TV enough to make any real measurable difference.

The backlight is probably the biggest power consumption factor in a TV.

I don't buy that.

I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel the heat
coming off the screen from six inches away.

Yes, but that isn't the backlight.

Bob Minchin wrote:

I've gone back to Jock power, slightly lower tariff and lower Std charge
than the new OVO one and no exit penalty.

Been with them for a while. Recently I have had to change tariff
every month to get the newest "Best Deal". Whilst this works for
me, surely we shouldn't have to micro-manage it in this way.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Plant amazing Acers.

In message , at 19:34:17 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:

The backlight is probably the biggest power consumption factor in a TV.

I don't buy that.

There's some numbers here :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ht,2930-5.html

Executive summary:

For LED the delta for 25% *brightness setting* change is 3W, so at zero
brightness the total (ie the consumption of the non-backlight components
alone) would be ~16W, while at 100% brightness the backlight is
consuming 29-16 = 13 watts. I doubt there's any one non-backlight
component taking 13 watts (of the 16 watts) on its own.

Meanwhile, the delta between black and white visible *content* is
smaller, at about 1W, which is the fluctuation we'd need to be looking
for.

CCFL similarly.

I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel the
heat coming off the screen from six inches away.

Yes, but that isn't the backlight.

What is it then (it goes away when I put the screen into standby).

--
Roland Perry

On 08/03/2015 01:41, harryagain wrote:
How can you see something that can't be measured?

If it's too small to be measured then you can see that it uses
negligible power. So if you turn off all the things on standby and your
meter shows no reduction in power use the point is proven.

--
Mike Clarke

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:34:17 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:

The backlight is probably the biggest power consumption factor in a TV.

I don't buy that.

There's some numbers here :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ht,2930-5.html

Executive summary:

For LED the delta for 25% *brightness setting* change is 3W,

Which is bugger all in the total power consumption.

so at zero brightness

That is never seen with a TV when watching TV.

the total (ie the consumption of the non-backlight components alone) would
be ~16W, while at 100% brightness the backlight is consuming 29-16 = 13
watts. I doubt there's any one non-backlight component taking 13 watts (of
the 16 watts) on its own.

Meanwhile, the delta between black and white visible *content* is smaller,
at about 1W, which is the fluctuation we'd need to be looking for.

Which is again bugger all in the total consumption.

And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

CCFL similarly.

I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel the
heat coming off the screen from six inches away.

Yes, but that isn't the backlight.

What is it then (it goes away when I put the screen into standby).

The rest that isn't the backlight.

And I don't get anything like that with a LED TV.

In message , at 09:42:49 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, Roland Perry remarked:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ht,2930-5.html

....

I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel the
heat coming off the screen from six inches away.

Yes, but that isn't the backlight.

What is it then (it goes away when I put the screen into standby).

It's also more noticeable when the computer goes into black-screen-saver
mode, which is consistent with that being the highest power consumption
situation in the table in the article linked above.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 21:12:26 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:


"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:34:17 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, john james remarked:

The backlight is probably the biggest power consumption factor in a TV.

I don't buy that.

There's some numbers here :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ht,2930-5.html

Executive summary:

For LED the delta for 25% *brightness setting* change is 3W,

Which is bugger all in the total power consumption.

Irrelevant. It's a way of determining the power usages at full
brightness setting.

so at zero brightness

That is never seen with a TV when watching TV.

Ditto.

the total (ie the consumption of the non-backlight components alone)
would be ~16W, while at 100% brightness the backlight is consuming
29-16 = 13 watts. I doubt there's any one non-backlight component
taking 13 watts (of the 16 watts) on its own.

Meanwhile, the delta between black and white visible *content* is
smaller, at about 1W, which is the fluctuation we'd need to be
looking for.

Which is again bugger all in the total consumption.

And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

Then you'll have two channels to pick out of the total household
consumption - no different to a radio receiver picking out one signal
from hundreds of others.

CCFL similarly.

I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel
the heat coming off the screen from six inches away.

Yes, but that isn't the backlight.

What is it then (it goes away when I put the screen into standby).

The rest that isn't the backlight.

And I don't get anything like that with a LED TV.

That's because the total power consumption involved is smaller (but half
of it is still the backlight). This monitor here is a quite old 23-inch
CCFL. It keeps the whole room warm!

FWIW I've got an old 19-inch Dell "Ultrasharp" monitor in the other room
that's a little furnace.
--
Roland Perry

john james wrote:


"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:34:17 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, john james remarked:

The backlight is probably the biggest power consumption factor in a TV.

I don't buy that.

There's some numbers here :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ht,2930-5.html

Executive summary:

For LED the delta for 25% *brightness setting* change is 3W,

Which is bugger all in the total power consumption.

so at zero brightness

That is never seen with a TV when watching TV.

the total (ie the consumption of the non-backlight components alone)
would be ~16W, while at 100% brightness the backlight is consuming
29-16 = 13 watts. I doubt there's any one non-backlight component
taking 13 watts (of the 16 watts) on its own.

Meanwhile, the delta between black and white visible *content* is
smaller, at about 1W, which is the fluctuation we'd need to be looking
for.

Which is again bugger all in the total consumption.

And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

CCFL similarly.

I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel the
heat coming off the screen from six inches away.

Yes, but that isn't the backlight.

What is it then (it goes away when I put the screen into standby).

The rest that isn't the backlight.

And I don't get anything like that with a LED TV.

How about with a plasma?

On 07/03/2015 09:30, Tim Watts wrote:

Now,
especially if there are ready fitted currant transformers,

The transformers are retro fitted in tens of minutes and come as part of
the equipment.

--
mailto: news {at} admac {dot] myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

On 07/03/2015 11:37, Roland Perry wrote:


Are you on a monthly-DD-estimate tariff because you've been told it's
cheaper?


It was no more expensive when I signed up and no more expensive than the
best BG tariff a year later. The difference was that I never built up
more than a few quid credit with them because the bills were accurate
+/- a few days consumption.

Now that my contract has finished all of the BG offerings, irrespective
of payment method, are around £200/240 more expensive than the deals
from more than a dozen other suppliers. It looks if BG is attempting to
entice existing customers into signing up to very expensive fixed price
deals with £30 quid switch penalties per fuel for the next year.


--

mailto: news {at} admac {dot] myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

Tim Watts wrote:
Now,
especially if there are ready fitted currant transformers.

Do they turn into raisins?

In message , at 12:42:56 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, alan_m remarked:

Are you on a monthly-DD-estimate tariff because you've been told it's
cheaper?

It was no more expensive when I signed up and no more expensive than
the best BG tariff a year later. The difference was that I never built
up more than a few quid credit with them because the bills were
accurate +/- a few days consumption.

One of the very first energy supplies I had, back in the 80's, was a
monthly instalments one, and resulted in me lending them every
increasing sums of money in the summer, which got paid off in the
winter. I've had a dislike of that sort of scheme ever since.

Now that my contract has finished all of the BG offerings, irrespective
of payment method, are around £200/240 more expensive than the deals
from more than a dozen other suppliers. It looks if BG is attempting to
entice existing customers into signing up to very expensive fixed price
deals with £30 quid switch penalties per fuel for the next year.

BG tried to switch me to a fixed price scheme, but they seemed far too
keen for me to do it, which rang alarm bells.
--
Roland Perry

On Friday, March 6, 2015 at 12:57:57 PM UTC, newshound wrote:
Just had an email from my supplier (OVO) saying that a meter needs
replacing and giving me an option to have a smart meter.

Are there any down-sides?
Moneybox said they are not compatible if you change supplier, but will be soon.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054gnrk

"Nick" wrote in message
...
In message , Tim Watts
writes
On 06/03/15 18:59, ARW wrote:
"Nick" wrote in message
...

Also, if you want to support your local organic cannabis farm, I
understand they compare smart meter readings with the street
sub-station to see if anyone has accidentally bypassed their meter.

Don't be silly. Sub stations are not metered.

But where did I say that that they were?

In your quote above. If the substation has no meter then what are you
comparing the sum of the smart meters usage with?

The concept is that the supply co. has some way of knowing how much juice
is being supplied from the station. If all of the houses supplied have
smart meters and there's a difference then there's a problem and/or someone
has bypassed their meter. Oh, 'accidentally' should have had a smiley after
it, sorry.

The substation also powers hundreds of legally unmetered supplies such as
street lights and traffic crossings.


--
Adam

In message , at 16:12:12 on Sun, 8 Mar 2015,
ARW remarked:
Also, if you want to support your local organic cannabis farm, I
understand they compare smart meter readings with the street
sub-station to see if anyone has accidentally bypassed their meter.

Don't be silly. Sub stations are not metered.

But where did I say that that they were?

In your quote above. If the substation has no meter then what are you
comparing the sum of the smart meters usage with?

The concept is that the supply co. has some way of knowing how much
juice is being supplied from the station. If all of the houses
supplied have smart meters and there's a difference then there's a
problem and/or someone has bypassed their meter. Oh, 'accidentally'
should have had a smiley after it, sorry.

The substation also powers hundreds of legally unmetered supplies such
as street lights and traffic crossings.

You still might be able to spot serious greedy [unmetered] sinks of
power like the said cannabis farm. I think they prefer using infa-red
cameras in helicopters though.
--
Roland Perry

Chris J Dixon wrote:
Bob Minchin wrote:

I've gone back to Jock power, slightly lower tariff and lower Std charge
than the new OVO one and no exit penalty.

Been with them for a while. Recently I have had to change tariff
every month to get the newest "Best Deal". Whilst this works for
me, surely we shouldn't have to micro-manage it in this way.

Chris

I don't disagree but each business needs its 'levers' to pull to attract
new customers. If they automatically moved each customer to the new
cheapest tariff as it was announced then the changes would have to be
minimal to keep their turnover within their internal budgets and they
would largely fail to attract new customers.

For good or evil we have a de-regulated energy market and whilst the
Govt can fiddle round the edges, the bottom line is that business
principles will win out unless they re-nationalise.

I don't know if you use the energy saving club comparison tools but you
can set this up to email you when there is a useful saving to be made by
switching. I think it triggers at £25pa saving.

On 07/03/2015 12:27, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
newshound writes:
Just had an email from my supplier (OVO) saying that a meter needs
replacing and giving me an option to have a smart meter.

Are there any down-sides?

Just been a small mention of smart meters on Moneybox (Radio 4).
At the moment, none of the smart meters are interoperable between
suppliers.

Also, government has not made any progress standardising the
meters to be used in the national role-out, meaning it now can't
happen in the original timescales, as that required the roll-out
to start this year, which cannot now happen.

Lots of doubt is being raised on the viability of the whole
program in other places.

The main consumer benefit quoted is that you can see your power
usage in real-time. This has been available for many years with
consumer self-install monitors, and smart metering is not required
to do this. Indeed, research with early smart meter adopters has
shown that after a couple of months, the interest in this wears
off, and consumers find that appliances actually cost vastly less
to use that they guessed beforehand, and they quickly stop
bothering to try saving.



being able to see power usage in real time is usefull in cases of
appliances being left on, you become used to the "normal" reading and
soon realise something is still consuming power.

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
http://www.avast.com

On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 17:18:42 +0000, critcher wrote:

being able to see power usage in real time is usefull in cases of
appliances being left on, you become used to the "normal" reading and
soon realise something is still consuming power.

Well we did spot that SWMBO'd had left the iron on but not by the
(CurrentCost not smart meter) real time display but from the ploted
power use graph from the logged data.

The iron being intermiitent and not overly large isn't that obvious
on the real time display. When I started watching the display after
seeing the plot (where it was very obvious) it was several minutes
before I saw it come on and then it was only on for 30s or so.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In message , Roland Perry
writes
The substation also powers hundreds of legally unmetered supplies such
as street lights and traffic crossings.

You still might be able to spot serious greedy [unmetered] sinks of
power like the said cannabis farm. I think they prefer using infa-red
cameras in helicopters though.

Brocket estate had a C&E raid on a heated farm building let for costume
storage:-)

--
Tim Lamb

On 08/03/15 16:16, Roland Perry wrote:

You still might be able to spot serious greedy [unmetered] sinks of
power like the said cannabis farm. I think they prefer using infa-red
cameras in helicopters though.

They found one not far from me - EDF (as was) had the road up and the
jointer noticed a branch cable to a derelict farm was running warm.

It was raided by the police in short order who found hidden near the
back behind the derelict buildings was a fairly serious and large growhouse.

In message , Roland Perry
writes
In message , at 12:42:56 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, alan_m remarked:

Are you on a monthly-DD-estimate tariff because you've been told it's
cheaper?

It was no more expensive when I signed up and no more expensive than
the best BG tariff a year later. The difference was that I never
built up more than a few quid credit with them because the bills were
accurate +/- a few days consumption.

One of the very first energy supplies I had, back in the 80's, was a
monthly instalments one, and resulted in me lending them every
increasing sums of money in the summer, which got paid off in the
winter. I've had a dislike of that sort of scheme ever since.


I prefer the monthly DD arrangement - , winter gas consumption pretty
high due to biggish old victorian house, summer consumption low. So
whilst we do built up credit in the summer, for some of the winter we
can be running significant debits as well.

It is also the best rates as well and every little helps, and is one
less household budget aspect to worry about.

Now that my contract has finished all of the BG offerings,
irrespective of payment method, are around £200/240 more expensive
than the deals from more than a dozen other suppliers. It looks if BG
is attempting to entice existing customers into signing up to very
expensive fixed price deals with £30 quid switch penalties per fuel
for the next year.

BG tried to switch me to a fixed price scheme, but they seemed far too
keen for me to do it, which rang alarm bells.

We've been on fixed deals for a few years now I think, as they have been
the cheapest.

The only downside really is that some deals have exit penalties - in the
£15-30 range it seems - which isn't that much on an annual energy bill
for most people. But not all fixed deals have it - eg our Scottish Power
electricity doesn't, and they can't apply it within 49 days of the end
of the tariff.

Best rates at the moment (and for a few years now) seem to be on fixed
rates - in fact since there were forced to simplify their tariff ranges
often there seems to only be a choice between the standard tariff and
fixed deals
--
Chris French

In message , at 18:56:06 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, Chris French remarked:

I prefer the monthly DD arrangement - , winter gas consumption pretty
high due to biggish old victorian house, summer consumption low. So
whilst we do built up credit in the summer, for some of the winter we
can be running significant debits as well.

After having been jerked around right royally by nPower's "sculpting"
scheme (where they overcharged by manipulating the way tariff changes
interacted between periods of high and low consumption) I never again
want to be in the situation of having to check I've been billed the
correct amount when estimated consumptions and my billing periods don't
co-incide with the timing of price increase/decreases.

I'll pay for what I use, when I use it; thanks.

BG tried to switch me to a fixed price scheme, but they seemed far too
keen for me to do it, which rang alarm bells.

We've been on fixed deals for a few years now I think, as they have
been the cheapest.

The fixed price they offered me was higher than I was already paying,
expecting me to bet that ad-hoc energy prices were going to increase
more. As it happens, they've gone down, as has BG's ad-hoc rate.
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 21:12:26 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:


"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:34:17 on Sun, 8 Mar
2015, john james remarked:

The backlight is probably the biggest power consumption factor in a
TV.

I don't buy that.

There's some numbers here :

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ht,2930-5.html

Executive summary:

For LED the delta for 25% *brightness setting* change is 3W,

Which is bugger all in the total power consumption.

Irrelevant. It's a way of determining the power usages at full brightness
setting.

so at zero brightness

That is never seen with a TV when watching TV.

Ditto.

the total (ie the consumption of the non-backlight components alone)
would be ~16W, while at 100% brightness the backlight is consuming
29-16 = 13 watts. I doubt there's any one non-backlight component
taking 13 watts (of the 16 watts) on its own.

Meanwhile, the delta between black and white visible *content* is
smaller, at about 1W, which is the fluctuation we'd need to be looking
for.

Which is again bugger all in the total consumption.

And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

Then you'll have two channels to pick out of the total household
consumption - no different to a radio receiver picking out one signal from
hundreds of others.

Very different to a radio receiver because there is no turning mechanism.

CCFL similarly.

I've got a large non-LED TV as a computer monitor and I can feel the
heat coming off the screen from six inches away.

Yes, but that isn't the backlight.

What is it then (it goes away when I put the screen into standby).

The rest that isn't the backlight.

And I don't get anything like that with a LED TV.

That's because the total power consumption involved is smaller (but half
of it is still the backlight). This monitor here is a quite old 23-inch
CCFL. It keeps the whole room warm!

FWIW I've got an old 19-inch Dell "Ultrasharp" monitor in the other room
that's a little furnace.

None of my monitors are.

In message , at 06:38:35 on Mon, 9 Mar
2015, john james remarked:
And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

Then you'll have two channels to pick out of the total household
consumption - no different to a radio receiver picking out one signal
from hundreds of others.

Very different to a radio receiver because there is no turning mechanism.

The tuning(sic) mechanism is digital signal processing, which produces
the same effect as analogue signal processing with inductor/capacitor
circuits/PLLs etc.

FWIW I've got an old 19-inch Dell "Ultrasharp" monitor in the other
room that's a little furnace.

None of my monitors are.

Because their overall power consumption is lower, not because the
percentage used for the backlight is less.
--
Roland Perry

In message , Bob Minchin
writes
Mike Clarke wrote:
On 06/03/2015 19:52, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Interesting - what supplier is this? I am not aware that mine provides
any monthy direct debit scheme that is based on real usage, rather than
an estimate which results in me lending them large amounts of money at
a zero interest rate.

OVO energy. Although they take a fixed monthly direct debit like all the
others they give 3% interest on any excess credit balance. They also
have a "Flexible Direct Debit Plan" which apparently gives the customer
more control over how much to pay each month but I'm happy with 3%
return on any overpayment.

I must admit to having just dumped OVO. they have recently introduced a
lower tariff in much the same way as the big suppliers but are charging
existing customers £30/fuel to change to it!! Cheeky *******s

After a discussion with them they admitted yes, it is £30/fuel to
change tariff and another £30/fuel when you leave them but only £30
fuel to leave them.
It seemed obvious to leave and just pay once and they made no move to
persuade me otherwise. They do not deserve to succeed IMHO
The 3% interest on credit balance was creative I'll give them that.
I've gone back to Jock power, slightly lower tariff and lower Std
charge than the new OVO one and no exit penalty.
I too am with OVO and I too am going to ditch them.
--
bert

In message , Roland Perry
writes
In message , at
12:40:27 on Sat, 7 Mar 2015, Mike Clarke
remarked:

For example, if you see a 2kW spike that lasts around 90 seconds, you
can hypothesise that it's an electric kettle or a toaster. And if it
happens during Coronation Street advertising breaks, more likely the
latter (and will also correlate fairly well with watching ITV).

Yes but this would require continuous real time analysis,

The analysis can be later.

probably too complex for a design that just sends power usage for each
30 minute period.

Yes, it requires the power usage to be transmitted much more often than
that.

Other appliances will have their own characteristic components.

The TV programme thing is also related to being able to filter out a
pattern where the power consumption of the TV varies with the brightness
of the picture, and seeing if any of the contemporaneously broadcast TV
channels has a likely candidate.

These variations will be very small compared to total usage by
everything else in the house.

Every radio receiver is picking up programmes which are very small
compared to the total RF arriving on their aerial.

I doubt if smart meters will have that sort of computing power.

Me too. This is something which I think has to be done centrally.

And likely to be unable to sort out what's happening if 2 TV's are in
use in the house at the same time with people watching different
channels.

That's no different to a radio being able to tune into either of two
weak transmissions.

And as to the claim "track when you toilet light goes on" - it's going
to be a very smart meter to know the difference between the light in
the toilet and any other light in the house.

There's probably some journalist licence there. It could of course be
just as likely as the light in the cupboard under the stairs, assuming
you visit that briefly several times a day.

What I'm not convinced about, however, is whether the smart meter in
your house [one of which was shown on Breakfast TV this morning] can use
those sorts of techniques to tell you how much power your deep freeze is
using

That would probably depend the use of smart devices capable of talking
to the meter.

Hmm, they appear to be promising this data without me having to upgrade
my appliances.

Meanwhile, one of the hiccups with the scheme is apparently that telling
people what the cost of their consumption is *now* [I have had a
clamp-on meter for that for over five years now] results in them using
*more* electricity not less.

For example mine is telling me that my current consumption [the
background on a Saturday mid-morning] is ~600W at a cost of £1.77/day.

Exactly. instantaneous values are pretty well useless for overall cost
calculation purposes.

They are quite useful (eg my quarterly bill is fairly consistently
about twice the displayed cost of my base load), it's just that telling
someone how much it's costing for *today's* consumption gives such a
low figure they are likely to think "so what".
Which is precisely the technique used by our local Crime Commissioner to
sell an increase in the Police part of council tax - it's less than the
price of an apple a day.
--
bert

bert wrote:
In message , Bob Minchin
writes
Mike Clarke wrote:
On 06/03/2015 19:52, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Interesting - what supplier is this? I am not aware that mine provides
any monthy direct debit scheme that is based on real usage, rather than
an estimate which results in me lending them large amounts of money at
a zero interest rate.

OVO energy. Although they take a fixed monthly direct debit like all the
others they give 3% interest on any excess credit balance. They also
have a "Flexible Direct Debit Plan" which apparently gives the customer
more control over how much to pay each month but I'm happy with 3%
return on any overpayment.

I must admit to having just dumped OVO. they have recently introduced
a lower tariff in much the same way as the big suppliers but are
charging existing customers £30/fuel to change to it!! Cheeky *******s

After a discussion with them they admitted yes, it is £30/fuel to
change tariff and another £30/fuel when you leave them but only £30
fuel to leave them.
It seemed obvious to leave and just pay once and they made no move to
persuade me otherwise. They do not deserve to succeed IMHO
The 3% interest on credit balance was creative I'll give them that.
I've gone back to Jock power, slightly lower tariff and lower Std
charge than the new OVO one and no exit penalty.
I too am with OVO and I too am going to ditch them.
They don't deserve to retain customers with their current policy. As it
stands at the moment none of their staff are able to negotiate terms to
retain existing customers.
If I were you, before switching, withdraw the maximum cash available of
any excess balance on your account.

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 06:38:35 on Mon, 9 Mar
2015, john james remarked:
And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

Then you'll have two channels to pick out of the total household
consumption - no different to a radio receiver picking out one signal
from hundreds of others.

Very different to a radio receiver because there is no turning mechanism.

The tuning(sic) mechanism is digital signal processing, which produces the
same effect as analogue signal processing with inductor/capacitor
circuits/PLLs etc.

Nothing even remotely like the same effect.

With two TVs running at the same time, its never going
to be possible to work out from the total house power
consumption what is on the screen of either TV program
wise because it is never going to be possible to work out
what the backlight power of a particular TV currently is.

With some other power consumers like say the toilet light
it is certainly possible to work out that it is the toilet light
from the times that it comes on and how long it stays on
for compared with an internal cupboard light or say a
some other room light.

In message , at 07:35:25 on Mon, 9 Mar
2015, john james remarked:
And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

Then you'll have two channels to pick out of the total household
consumption - no different to a radio receiver picking out one
signal from hundreds of others.

Very different to a radio receiver because there is no turning mechanism.

The tuning(sic) mechanism is digital signal processing, which
produces the same effect as analogue signal processing with
inductor/capacitor circuits/PLLs etc.

Nothing even remotely like the same effect.

It is, but it's clear I won't ever convince you, so I'm out.
--
Roland Perry

In message , Roland Perry
writes
In message , at 18:56:06 on Sun, 8
Mar 2015, Chris French remarked:

I prefer the monthly DD arrangement - , winter gas consumption pretty
high due to biggish old victorian house, summer consumption low. So
whilst we do built up credit in the summer, for some of the winter we
can be running significant debits as well.

After having been jerked around right royally by nPower's "sculpting"
scheme (where they overcharged by manipulating the way tariff changes
interacted between periods of high and low consumption) I never again
want to be in the situation of having to check I've been billed the
correct amount when estimated consumptions and my billing periods don't
co-incide with the timing of price increase/decreases.

I'll pay for what I use, when I use it; thanks.

Fair enough, it suits some people. I prefer to save a few quid

I always take a reading at tariff change times anyway (in fact I
normally send in readings every couple of weeks or so nowadays - easy
with a smartphone to just stand in front of the meter and send it off)

BG tried to switch me to a fixed price scheme, but they seemed far
too keen for me to do it, which rang alarm bells.

We've been on fixed deals for a few years now I think, as they have
been the cheapest.

The fixed price they offered me was higher than I was already paying,
expecting me to bet that ad-hoc energy prices were going to increase
more. As it happens, they've gone down, as has BG's ad-hoc rate.

A while back, fixed price tariffs tended to be more than variable
tariffs and I stayed on a variable tariff. but that seems to have
changed lately - I think maybe because prices stopped rising so much
(and then ahve fallen) and also they have less tariffs now.

All the cheapest deals when I recently checked (and switched gas
supplier) were fixed priced deals. Though I think they have bottomed out
Npowers current fixed tariff is a little higher than the one I moved to
about a month ago.

If you are on the standard variable tariff (which of course you might
not be - could be a legacy variable tariff), I'd be very surprised if a
fixed deal was not cheaper at the moment

--
Chris French

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 07:35:25 on Mon, 9 Mar
2015, john james remarked:
And plenty of places won't have just one TV being watched too.

Then you'll have two channels to pick out of the total household
consumption - no different to a radio receiver picking out one signal
from hundreds of others.

Very different to a radio receiver because there is no turning
mechanism.

The tuning(sic) mechanism is digital signal processing, which produces
the same effect as analogue signal processing with inductor/capacitor
circuits/PLLs etc.

Nothing even remotely like the same effect.

It is, but it's clear I won't ever convince you, so I'm out.

You not being able to explain how you work out what the
backlight intensity of a particular TV from the house power
consumption when there are two TVs on different programs noted.

On 08/03/2015 21:12, john james wrote:

You not being able to explain how you work out what the
backlight intensity of a particular TV from the house power
consumption when there are two TVs on different programs noted.

If you have an LCD set without dynamic contrast enabled the power
doesn't vary anyway (well not enough to be able to tell what program is
on). If you have a plasma set you can probably tell but who has them
these days?