In article ,
Geo wrote:
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.

There's an idea - only put the clothes driers on when the wind is just
the right speed to turn the windmills...

Can you just imagine getting a text message when down the pub -

'Now is the time to do your washing, as leccy is 0.1% cheaper at this
minute'

--
*Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
Tests have shown the effect lasts less than 3 months. Then it
backfires when people realise that boiling a kettle, running the
washing machine, etc costs vastly less than they would have guessed
beforehand, they stop worrying about energy use and consumption
goes up.

How many boil a kettle just for the fun of it? Do a washing load because
they're bored and it didn't need doing?

If you had electric heating an the meter told you that lowering the
temperature would save you money, some might take notice. But do they
really need to be told that leaving things on when not needed wastes
money?

Some do need to be told that if they do most of their clothes drying
and dishwashing in the middle of the night at the cheapest rate, that
that will save them say £30 a year etc.

In article ,
harry wrote:
On Saturday, 26 March 2016 02:58:33 UTC, 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."

Hum, 53 million by end 2020.

Finished by: 31 Dec 2020
Today: 26 Mar 2016
Days reamining: 1741
Meters: 53000000
Meters/day: 30443
Meters/man/day: 6
Installers: 5074

5075 installers where are they going to come from? And the above
calculation assumes that every single ones one of those installers
does 6 installs/day everyday from now to 31 Dec 202, 4 3/4 years.
With no holidays, no sick, no days off (aka weekends...).

Another target they ain't going to meet. Even if you half the number
of meters to 25 million (about the actual number of households in the
country) they still aren't going to make it.

"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.

--
Cheers
Dave.

I don't think there are 53 million households in the UK.

True, but the vast majority of homes will have both gas and electricity
meters as will many businesses. Add them all up and you could get 53
million.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Chris J Dixon writes:
tim... wrote:

but that's because it requires smart appliances - which no-one makes,
because no-one can use...

Which is the classic chicken and egg problem for which someone has to
broker
a solution (or not).

Has anyone even agreed the tariff regime which might be
implemented to take advantage of this potential mechanism?

There was a program on Radio 4 around lunchtime on this.
Suppliers said they'll offer variable charging tarrifs when there
are more people on smart meters. Austrialia has been offering them
for 5 years and there's only a 1% uptake.

Its much more complicated than that. In some areas you get no choice.

I think they said 39% of those who switched
to them found themselves worse off.

That only happens when the smart meter tariff does that deliberately.

Also, tarrifs changing through the day will only apply to
electricity. There is no variation in gas prices through the day,
as the pressurised supply pipework stores several days worth of
gas.

The other thing the program mentioned is that there's still no
agreement between suppliers on smart meter technology to be used,
so at the moment, you need to assume your smart meter will become
a dumb meter if you switch supplier.

"harry" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, 26 March 2016 02:58:33 UTC, 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."

Hum, 53 million by end 2020.

Finished by: 31 Dec 2020
Today: 26 Mar 2016
Days reamining: 1741
Meters: 53000000
Meters/day: 30443
Meters/man/day: 6
Installers: 5074

5075 installers where are they going to come from? And the above
calculation assumes that every single ones one of those installers
does 6 installs/day everyday from now to 31 Dec 202, 4 3/4 years.
With no holidays, no sick, no days off (aka weekends...).

Another target they ain't going to meet. Even if you half the number
of meters to 25 million (about the actual number of households in the
country) they still aren't going to make it.

"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 don't think there are 53 million households in the UK.

Or even 53M homes and small businesses either.

On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 11:24:32 -0000, tim... wrote:

Or if they are really tight on money and need to force-budget,
there
are key meters.

being on a key meter is the last way to solve a "tight budget" problem

Yeah, I've never quite understood why anyone would choose to have a
pre-payment meter. But I guess those that have them have them don't
have a choice as they can't get credit or have failed to pay in the
past.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 08:59:15 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

There are other objectives here I think - such as being able to ramp
costs up and down in the day according to demand, as they will not be
able to generate enough in a few years.

Without any linked, automatic, method of load shedding when the price
is high all the adjusting the rate for the consumer is going to do is
make the costs totaly unpredictable. Even if you could load shed I
doubt the savings will be that great.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 15:23:32 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

But do they really need to be told that leaving things on when not
needed wastes money?

In this household my ration fo switching lights on to switching
lights off is about 1:4... And it's the smaller loads that are on for
a long time that really bump up the bill.
--
Cheers
Dave.

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
idual.net...
On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 08:59:15 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

There are other objectives here I think - such as being able to ramp
costs up and down in the day according to demand, as they will not be
able to generate enough in a few years.

Without any linked, automatic, method of load shedding when the price
is high all the adjusting the rate for the consumer is going to do is
make the costs totaly unpredictable. Even if you could load shed I
doubt the savings will be that great.

Smart meters arent about load shedding, they are
about charging a different rate for the power you
use depending on the time of day you use that power.

In article ,
Huge writes:
On 2016-03-26, tim... wrote:

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...


None of the consumer side of smart metering is being rolled out
at all.


I wonder how many of our heading-towards-3rd-world-standards roads 11
billion would fix

I was driving in parts of Yugoslavia in 1990 when the country was
still getting used to its new freedom (but unknowingly, only a few
weeks from civil war breaking out). A lack of money meant that about
1 on 10 streetlamps still worked, which I found quite eerie, like
a former civilisation had fallen.

On Thursday, I drove around the M25, and it was exactly the same.

As the consumer has show a complete aversion to road "tolling" there would
be no way of collecting this extra 11 billion to fix the roads.

The Government already collects 10's of billions in taxes from motorists. They
just choose not to spend it on the roads.

Building roads is about the most profitable thing the government does,
with around a 5-fold return on cost of new roads and maintenance
through motoring taxes.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Rod Speed wrote:


"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Chris J Dixon writes:
tim... wrote:

Has anyone even agreed the tariff regime which might be
implemented to take advantage of this potential mechanism?

There was a program on Radio 4 around lunchtime on this.
Suppliers said they'll offer variable charging tarrifs when there
are more people on smart meters. Austrialia has been offering them
for 5 years and there's only a 1% uptake.

Its much more complicated than that. In some areas you get no choice.

I think they said 39% of those who switched
to them found themselves worse off.

That only happens when the smart meter tariff does that deliberately.

I still really, really don't understand why smart meters should be
necessary or even useful for this.

If the supplier knows that they can supply eletricity more cheaply at
some time in the small hours how does having a smart meter help in the
slightest in communicating this to either the user or to an appliance
using electricity?

--
Chris Green
·

On 26/03/2016 19:02, charles wrote:
True, but the vast majority of homes will have both gas and electricity
meters as will many businesses. Add them all up and you could get 53
million.

Many also have water meters...

--
Rod

Rod Speed wrote:
But it will work fine with clothes drying, dishwashing etc
where its fine to do it at the cheapest rate in the middle
of the night. Same with water heating and heatbanks
and would allow charging at the higher cost when you
run out of hot water etc without needing to duplicate
the heating elements as you do currently.

That's how the systems that already have smart meters do it.

How?

I already run my dishwasher, tumble drier and washing machine in the
small hours. How will a smart meter help me do that?

Why can't the supplier simply tell me (or the appliance) directly
over the internet? How does a smart meter help?

--
Chris Green
·

Rod Speed wrote:


wrote in message ...
tim... wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 26/03/16 11:28, tim... wrote:


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


What is both possible and practical is to key the mains frequency to
the
price, or have some online access to live markets, and then have very
smart appliances that gobble up e,g. freezer power when a gust of wind
hits scotland.

But we need the smart appliances

... but the smart meter is pointless in this case. The information
that "electricity is cheap now" is coming from the electricity
supplier. It can go direct to the appliance. We have this clever
thing called the internet for doing such things.

The smart meter is still needed to record the fact that
the power was used when the electricity was cheap.

My economy 7 meter does that to some extent already.

--
Chris Green
·

On 26/03/2016 22:25, wrote:
If the supplier knows that they can supply eletricity more cheaply at
some time in the small hours how does having a smart meter help in the
slightest in communicating this to either the user or to an appliance
using electricity?

A simplistic reason might be that instead of every appliance having to
communicate with the electricity suppliers, only every meter needs to.
So quite simply a much lower number of connections for the companies to
deal with.

Also, how would each appliance know which supplier to talk to? Would you
have to tell every one of them each time you change your supplier?

--
Rod

On 26/03/16 11:24, tim... wrote:

"Tim Watts" wrote in message
...



Or if they are really tight on money and need to force-budget, there
are key meters.

being on a key meter is the last way to solve a "tight budget" problem


Unless you have no credit rating in which case it's the only tarrif
anyone will offer you...

On 26/03/2016 20:11, hanja wrote:



Smart meters arent about load shedding, they are
about charging a different rate for the power you
use depending on the time of day you use that power.

Is there anything you can't get wrong? The impact assessment of UK
smart meters devotes a lot of words, figures and references to the
benefits from load shifting as well as time-of-use tariffs; and reflects
such benefits in the costs and benefits.

I'm not saying I believe all the savings will be realised but at least
they have *not* scored the more optimistic benefits which might come
with, eg, dynamic tariffs, remote control of appliances, and greater use
of heat pumps with storage capacity.
--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

In article l.net,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
But do they really need to be told that leaving things on when not
needed wastes money?

In this household my ration fo switching lights on to switching
lights off is about 1:4...

Increase their pocket money but get them to pay a part of the leccy bill.
;-)

And it's the smaller loads that are on for
a long time that really bump up the bill.

Yes. Many say it's only lights - but most devices in the home other than
heating don't tend to take a lot of current for long.

--
*Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Andrew Gabriel wrote
Chris J Dixon wrte
tim... wrote

Has anyone even agreed the tariff regime which might be
implemented to take advantage of this potential mechanism?

There was a program on Radio 4 around lunchtime on this.
Suppliers said they'll offer variable charging tarrifs when
there are more people on smart meters. Austrialia has
been offering them for 5 years and there's only a 1% uptake.

It's much more complicated than that. In some areas you get no choice.

I think they said 39% of those who switched
to them found themselves worse off.

That only happens when the smart meter tariff does that deliberately.

I still really, really don't understand why smart meters should be
necessary or even useful for this.

There is no other way to charge a different rate for the electricity
used by normal appliances at different times of the day, when it
is cheaper for the supplying operation to supply the electricity.

If the supplier knows that they can supply eletricity more
cheaply at some time in the small hours how does having
a smart meter help in the slightest in communicating this
to either the user or to an appliance using electricity?

Because it keeps track of the time that the power is used.

The stupid meters just keep track of the total amount
of power used, regardless of what it was used.

The most that can be done is to have two stupid meters
and some system that only allows power to be delivered
to a separate circuit that only has a couple of types of
device that uses power at times when the switch specifys.
That was originally done with a clock in the switch but
now has the switch commanded remotely by the power
supply operation.

wrote
Rod Speed wrote

But it will work fine with clothes drying, dishwashing etc
where its fine to do it at the cheapest rate in the middle
of the night. Same with water heating and heatbanks
and would allow charging at the higher cost when you
run out of hot water etc without needing to duplicate
the heating elements as you do currently.

That's how the systems that already have smart meters do it.

How?

By having the smart meter keep track of the time of day the
power is used so the supply operation can charge less for
the electricity used in the middle of the night than it does
for electricity which is used at peak demand times when it
cost the supply operation more for that electricity.

Usually called a time of use tariff.

I already run my dishwasher, tumble drier and washing machine
in the small hours. How will a smart meter help me do that?

By keeping track of when you use that electricity.

Why can't the supplier simply tell me (or the appliance)
directly over the internet?

Because the appliances aren't listening to the internet.

How does a smart meter help?

See above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_pricing

wrote in message news
Rod Speed wrote:


wrote in message ...
tim... wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 26/03/16 11:28, tim... wrote:


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


What is both possible and practical is to key the mains frequency to
the
price, or have some online access to live markets, and then have
very
smart appliances that gobble up e,g. freezer power when a gust of
wind
hits scotland.

But we need the smart appliances

... but the smart meter is pointless in this case. The information
that "electricity is cheap now" is coming from the electricity
supplier. It can go direct to the appliance. We have this clever
thing called the internet for doing such things.

The smart meter is still needed to record the fact that
the power was used when the electricity was cheap.

My economy 7 meter does that to some extent already.

That only allows 2 rates. Smart meters with a time of use tariff
usually has at least 3 different prices for electricity used during
the 24 hour day and often has two intermediate bands on
either side of the peak band as well as a lowest price band.

Before smart meters we have a different system where just
heatbanks and storage hot water cylinders use the cheapest
power and they are remotely switched on and off by signalling
on the mains by the supply operation. Normally the heatbank
gets something like 8 hours in the middle of the night on
week days with another couple of hours in the afternoon,
and with some systems 24 hours a day on weekends.

Hot water usually has a much smaller time in the night
and still has the topup in the afternoon too.

"Robin" wrote in message
...
On 26/03/2016 20:11, hanja wrote:



Smart meters arent about load shedding, they are
about charging a different rate for the power you
use depending on the time of day you use that power.

Is there anything you can't get wrong?

We'll see...

The impact assessment of UK
smart meters devotes a lot of words, figures and references to the
benefits from load shifting as well as time-of-use tariffs; and reflects
such benefits in the costs and benefits.

Load SHIFTING isn't the same thing as load SHEDDING.

I'm not saying I believe all the savings will be realised but at least
they have *not* scored the more optimistic benefits which might come with,
eg, dynamic tariffs, remote control of appliances, and greater use of heat
pumps with storage capacity.

hanja wrote:


"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
idual.net...
On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 08:59:15 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

There are other objectives here I think - such as being able to ramp
costs up and down in the day according to demand, as they will not be
able to generate enough in a few years.

Without any linked, automatic, method of load shedding when the price
is high all the adjusting the rate for the consumer is going to do is
make the costs totaly unpredictable. Even if you could load shed I
doubt the savings will be that great.

Smart meters arent about load shedding, they are
about charging a different rate for the power you
use depending on the time of day you use that power.

There is only one reason for smart meters, MONEY, they would not bother
if they were not going to get more money out of the consumer.(Or save
money by not having to update supply equipment)

F Murtz wrote
hanja wrote
Dave Liquorice wrote
Tim Watts wrote

There are other objectives here I think - such as being able
to ramp costs up and down in the day according to demand,
as they will not be able to generate enough in a few years.

Without any linked, automatic, method of load shedding when
the price is high all the adjusting the rate for the consumer is
going to do is make the costs totaly unpredictable. Even if
you could load shed I doubt the savings will be that great.

Smart meters arent about load shedding, they are
about charging a different rate for the power you
use depending on the time of day you use that power.

There is only one reason for smart meters, MONEY, they would not
bother if they were not going to get more money out of the consumer.
(Or save money by not having to update supply equipment)

Its more complicated than that. Anything that allows the
supply operation to reduce demand at peak times by getting
the consumer to shift some of that they do out of peak times
to other times means both that less generating capacity is
needed, and that less has to paid for power at that time, and so
the consumer gets the same amount of power for less money spent.

On Saturday, 26 March 2016 22:33:07 UTC, wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
But it will work fine with clothes drying, dishwashing etc
where its fine to do it at the cheapest rate in the middle
of the night. Same with water heating and heatbanks
and would allow charging at the higher cost when you
run out of hot water etc without needing to duplicate
the heating elements as you do currently.

That's how the systems that already have smart meters do it.

How?

I already run my dishwasher, tumble drier and washing machine in the
small hours. How will a smart meter help me do that?

Why can't the supplier simply tell me (or the appliance) directly
over the internet? How does a smart meter help?

--
Chris Green
·

Smart meters will be nothing to do with time in the future.
It will be to do with availability of electricity.
ie electricity will be cheaper on windy and sunny days.

It's called electricity demand management.
A lot of the brain dead here can't understand this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_demand_management

On Saturday, 26 March 2016 22:28:37 UTC, polygonum wrote:
On 26/03/2016 19:02, charles wrote:
True, but the vast majority of homes will have both gas and electricity
meters as will many businesses. Add them all up and you could get 53
million.

Many also have water meters...

--
Rod

So you divide the number of meter change visits by three?

Can't see them changing every water meter on expense grounds.
Also water caqn be stored as can gas so smart metering is not relevent.

On Saturday, 26 March 2016 19:01:05 UTC, charles wrote:
In article ,
harry wrote:
On Saturday, 26 March 2016 02:58:33 UTC, 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."

Hum, 53 million by end 2020.

Finished by: 31 Dec 2020
Today: 26 Mar 2016
Days reamining: 1741
Meters: 53000000
Meters/day: 30443
Meters/man/day: 6
Installers: 5074

5075 installers where are they going to come from? And the above
calculation assumes that every single ones one of those installers
does 6 installs/day everyday from now to 31 Dec 202, 4 3/4 years.
With no holidays, no sick, no days off (aka weekends...).

Another target they ain't going to meet. Even if you half the number
of meters to 25 million (about the actual number of households in the
country) they still aren't going to make it.

"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.

--
Cheers
Dave.

I don't think there are 53 million households in the UK.

True, but the vast majority of homes will have both gas and electricity
meters as will many businesses. Add them all up and you could get 53
million.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England

Electricity is the important one, it can't be stored in large quantities.
The others it's just about meter reading and cutting you off for non-payment.

"harry" wrote in message
...

On Saturday, 26 March 2016 22:33:07 UTC, wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
But it will work fine with clothes drying, dishwashing etc
where its fine to do it at the cheapest rate in the middle
of the night. Same with water heating and heatbanks
and would allow charging at the higher cost when you
run out of hot water etc without needing to duplicate
the heating elements as you do currently.

That's how the systems that already have smart meters do it.

How?

I already run my dishwasher, tumble drier and washing machine in the
small hours. How will a smart meter help me do that?

Why can't the supplier simply tell me (or the appliance) directly
over the internet? How does a smart meter help?

--
Chris Green
·

Smart meters will be nothing to do with time in the future.
It will be to do with availability of electricity.
ie electricity will be cheaper on windy and sunny days.

And, there will be no electricity to meter on windless nights. Don't need a
****ing smart meter for that.


It's called electricity demand management.
A lot of the brain dead here can't understand this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_demand_management

On 26/03/16 15:23, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
Tests have shown the effect lasts less than 3 months. Then it
backfires when people realise that boiling a kettle, running the
washing machine, etc costs vastly less than they would have guessed
beforehand, they stop worrying about energy use and consumption
goes up.

How many boil a kettle just for the fun of it? Do a washing load because
they're bored and it didn't need doing?

If you had electric heating an the meter told you that lowering the
temperature would save you money, some might take notice. But do they
really need to be told that leaving things on when not needed wastes money?

Ask those who fill a kettle with water every time they want to make a
cup of tea or coffee.

--

Jeff

On 27/03/2016 09:22, harry wrote:
On Saturday, 26 March 2016 22:28:37 UTC, polygonum wrote:
On 26/03/2016 19:02, charles wrote:
True, but the vast majority of homes will have both gas and electricity
meters as will many businesses. Add them all up and you could get 53
million.

Many also have water meters...

--
Rod

So you divide the number of meter change visits by three?

Can't see them changing every water meter on expense grounds.
Also water caqn be stored as can gas so smart metering is not relevent.

Which completely misses one of the good reasons for water meters. Leak
detection.

If your consumption rises from a few litres a day to many thousands,
that could indicate a leak. The trouble with existing water meters is
that they are in holes in the ground and not connected to anything other
than the pipe. They have no way of alerting anyone. A smarter version
that could tell the householder of unusually high consumption could help.

In a rather more big brother-ish way, if the water company could see
that change in consumption they could investigate. A highly-metered
water distribution system, which metered at every branch of the entire
system, could both detect the fact of a substantial leak and narrow its
location to quite a limited amount of pipework.

Yes, it would cost. Yes, we can have a gigantic thread about the merits
versus the demerits. But if the government is pushing smart water and
gas metering, and has any intention of implementing smart water
metering, the number of meters would be substantially due to adding
water. And it would make a lot of sense to ensure that the smart meter
for gas and electricity could also handle a remote link to the water
meter before they are installed.

For anyone who says electricity and water don't mix...

--
Rod

On Sun, 27 Mar 2016 02:18:32 -0700, harry wrote:

On Saturday, 26 March 2016 22:33:07 UTC, wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
But it will work fine with clothes drying, dishwashing etc where its
fine to do it at the cheapest rate in the middle of the night. Same
with water heating and heatbanks and would allow charging at the
higher cost when you run out of hot water etc without needing to
duplicate the heating elements as you do currently.

That's how the systems that already have smart meters do it.

How?

I already run my dishwasher, tumble drier and washing machine in the
small hours. How will a smart meter help me do that?

Why can't the supplier simply tell me (or the appliance) directly over
the internet? How does a smart meter help?

--
Chris Green ·

Smart meters will be nothing to do with time in the future. It will be
to do with availability of electricity.
ie electricity will be cheaper on windy and sunny days.

When it's not needed nearly as much anyway. And really expensive on cold,
still days in mid winter.

All comes down to a crap method of generation.

wrote in message ...
tim... wrote:

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

It needs intelligent white goods etc. that would be able to be
activated by the smart meter.

that only enables you to modify the operation of things that are on
"variably" such as a fridge or freezer

It isn't of any use in deciding to change the time of cooking dinner, that
decision is going to have to be made by a human, or as a PP pointed out -
not made.

tim

wrote in message ...
tim... wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 26/03/16 11:28, tim... wrote:


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


What is both possible and practical is to key the mains frequency to
the
price, or have some online access to live markets, and then have very
smart appliances that gobble up e,g. freezer power when a gust of wind
hits scotland.

But we need the smart appliances

... but the smart meter is pointless in this case. The information
that "electricity is cheap now" is coming from the electricity
supplier. It can go direct to the appliance. We have this clever
thing called the internet for doing such things.

do "we"?

you may have you fridge connected up to the internet, I do not (and nor do I
want it)

I suspect I am in the set containing the vast majority of punters

tim



--
Chris Green
·

On 26/03/2016 09:47, Tim Watts wrote:

I wonder how many of our heading-towards-3rd-world-standards roads 11
billion would fix

The state of the roads won't matter once they've finished converting
every inch of them to a 20mph speed limit.

--
F

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...



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.

they are not that crude any more

they have a programmable period for the cheap rate and usually that can be
set for more than on on/off set

And you are wrong to say that it only affects certain appliances.

whilst the clock can be used to turn on/off those devices that you want to
only run at cheap rate the cheap rate is valid for all electricity used
during the period.

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.

wrong


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.

there have been such suggestions mooted in the press.

whether as a result of misreporting or not, I have no idea

tim

"harry" wrote in message
...
On Saturday, 26 March 2016 22:33:07 UTC, wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
But it will work fine with clothes drying, dishwashing etc
where its fine to do it at the cheapest rate in the middle
of the night. Same with water heating and heatbanks
and would allow charging at the higher cost when you
run out of hot water etc without needing to duplicate
the heating elements as you do currently.

That's how the systems that already have smart meters do it.

How?

I already run my dishwasher, tumble drier and washing machine in the
small hours. How will a smart meter help me do that?

Why can't the supplier simply tell me (or the appliance) directly
over the internet? How does a smart meter help?

--
Chris Green
·

Smart meters will be nothing to do with time in the future.
It will be to do with availability of electricity.
ie electricity will be cheaper on windy and sunny days.

It's called electricity demand management.
A lot of the brain dead here can't understand this.

Oh yes we can

what we can't understand is how TPTB think we will change our life style to
work within a system that says:

"On some days leccy will be cheaper/more expensive, but we wont be able to
tell you which days until after it has happened"

tim

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...


wrote in message
...
On Saturday, 26 March 2016 11:58:48 UTC, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

What is both possible and practical is to key the mains frequency to the
price, or have some online access to live markets, and then have very
smart appliances that gobble up e,g. freezer power when a gust of wind
hits scotland.

The problem of course is how much consumption is 'dispatchable' in the
sense that it can be time shifted without affecting economic activity.

I'd say that's the best option.

IMO it's better to allow the consumer to choose when to run the
appliances based on when it's viable to use the cheaper power.

Sure, most consumers won't bother, but its not feasible to have
the system turn things off and on when it decides to do that.


it's technically feasible

whether it will be popular is another matter

On 26/03/16 18:41, Geo wrote:
On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 21:07:29 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:


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.

There's an idea - only put the clothes driers on when the wind is just
the right speed to turn the windmills...

...and when the sun is shining brightly on the Silly Panels. Just the ticket!


--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

On 26/03/16 19:59, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 26 Mar 2016 08:59:15 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

There are other objectives here I think - such as being able to ramp
costs up and down in the day according to demand, as they will not be
able to generate enough in a few years.

Without any linked, automatic, method of load shedding when the price
is high all the adjusting the rate for the consumer is going to do is
make the costs totaly unpredictable. Even if you could load shed I
doubt the savings will be that great.

well the real issue is peak clipping.

There have been a couple of times that leccy prices peaked at up to 40p
wholesale, for a few minutes.

getting rid of those is good



--
All political activity makes complete sense once the proposition that
all government is basically a self-legalising protection racket, is
fully understood.

"F" news@nowhere wrote in message
o.uk...
On 26/03/2016 09:47, Tim Watts wrote:

I wonder how many of our heading-towards-3rd-world-standards roads 11
billion would fix

The state of the roads won't matter once they've finished converting every
inch of them to a 20mph speed limit.


With speed bumps.


--
Adam