On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 09:31:21 +0100, Jeff Layman wrote:

On 13/06/18 10:25, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Jeff Layman formulated on Tuesday :
Direct debits are for those who are content to let someone else run their
financial affairs, by abrogating control of their bank account to a third
party. In theory, they are fine; in practice, there can be problems. Just do
a Google search on "direct debit" and "problems". Unfortunately, the DD
guarantee doesn't cover loss resulting from withdrawal of too much money
leading to insufficient funds for other purposes.

They cannot change the amount without giving prior warning. My account
always has enough funds to cover a few months of even the worst case.

From
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/nireland/consumer/energy/energy-supply/energy-bills/problems-with-energy-bills/your-energy-supplier-has-increased-your-direct-debit-payments/:

"Under the rules of the Direct Debit Guarantee, you should be told of
the change at least ten working days before the money is taken from your
account. If you are not told in writing or on your bill, you can
complain and ask for compensation from your bank."
major snippage of stuff that I didn't know - thanks for the link

I don't know what the situation would have been with my experience about 25
years ago:
a DD was taken by a company with which I didn't have - and had never had -
any dealings. This meant not enough to pay other DDs but they went through
and I was in the red.
The bank (Nationwide, then) was very apologetic and all was put right
immediately.
Now, I reckon that there must have been some sort of mistake by the bank or
the other company had got its fingers befuddled when entering the numbers.
If I had suffered loss, it would all have been a right mess to sort out!
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On 14/06/2018 11:22, whisky-dave wrote:

Does your water company need to know how much water you use to wash your car ?
Does it make any differnce whether you wash your car, yourself, or your dog to the water company ?




Yes if drought restrictions are in force.

On 13/06/2018 22:09, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Rod Speed has brought this to us :
The Q is why would anyone need a meter reading every 30 mins ?

To see what is taking the power and what its going to cost them.

Exactly! Three months is a very, very long time to wait, to know what
energy you have been using over the preceding 3 months.

It is very reassuring to have a good idea of what the bill will be,
before you actually get it, on a day by day basis.

Yes its nice to know if the daughter has left the fan heater on in her
shed/greenhouse/studio before its been on for a week+ when she next
visits. 35p an hour soon adds up and there is the fire risk too.

Jeff Layman wrote:

Direct debits are for those who are content to let someone else run
their financial affairs, by abrogating control of their bank account to
a third party. In theory, they are fine; in practice, there can be
problems. Just do a Google search on "direct debit" and "problems".

While you're there, do a search for "computer problems" or "car
problems" or "wife problems", plenty of people seem to manage OK with
one or more of them too ...

whisky-dave wrote
Rod Speed wrote
whisky-dave wrote
dennis@home wrote
Andrew wrote
dennis@home wrote

The consumer pays for all the costs of a business!

But benefits from *none* of any savings that they
(the customer) make on behalf of the company.

Of course they do, if they didn't make the savings the consumer would
have to pay more when they put the price up more to pay the extra
costs.

Take BT, they used to give credits for customers
opting for electronic bills. Then the saving was
quietly removed, along with a variety of call credits
and free caller-id.

And your point being?

BTW you can still have free CI, and there are bill savings
to be had if you pay by DD and have paperless billing.

How long do you think that will last ?
When will they charge extra for NOT paying by DD and then
won't accept any other method of payment other than DD.

You used to be able to get discounts
by paying cash few places do this now.

Because it costs them more to do it that way.

and now yputr saying it doesn't cost them more,

No I'm not.

so what's changed ?

Quite a bit. The surcharge for card transactions has
dropped dramatically, particularly with debit cards
and eftpos. And the retailers have realised that the
credit card operations were lying to them when they
claimed that the merchant agreement meant that
they couldnt apply a surcharge to the customer to
to cover the merchant fee. They used to offer a
discount for cash to get around that. They now
know they are free to slug the customer the fee
if they want to. And now that most dont pay
with cash anymore, they realise that handling
that cash costs them more than using a card does.

You used to be able to hire a car with cash, but its
only the absolute dregs end of the market like 'Rent
a Wreck' that still let you do it like that now, because
of the much higher cost of handling all that cash.

"whisky-dave" wrote in message
...
On Thursday, 14 June 2018 08:32:40 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 16:41, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 16:36:09 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 13:20, Andrew wrote:
On 12/06/2018 17:11, dennis@home wrote:
The consumer pays for all the costs of a business!

But benefits from *none* of any savings that they
(the customer) make on behalf of the company.

Of course they do, if they didn't make the savings the consumer would
have to pay more when they put the price up more to pay the extra
costs.


Take BT, they used to give credits for customers
opting for electronic bills. Then the saving was
quietly removed, along with a variety of call credits
and free caller-id.

And your point being?

BTW you can still have free CI, and there are bill savings to be had
if
you pay by DD and have paperless billing.

How long do you think that will last ?
When will they charge extra for NOT paying by DD and then won't accept
any other method of payment other than DD.

You used to be able to get discounts by paying cash few places do this
now.





That's because they were getting caught with the fiddles for paying in
cash.

Who was getting caught or rather who wasn't making a profit from a
transaction between me and the suplier is key here ?

You don't think that when you paid cash for things that you actually got
legit goods or that the legal taxes were paid do you?

Yes I do.
I think if I go into a shop and pay cash for my lunch I'm getting the same
lunch as if I paid by card, I do it everyday.
No one says to me well it's cheaper if you pay by card so you get a
discount.




IME the goods were quite often marked as stolen/lost and the cash never
went in the till.

Don't shoop at those places, I wouldn't.
Some of the biggest fiddles going use money transfer rather than cash.
I don't know anyone that buys from ebay with cash.

Some do, particularly when you pick it up in person because
its too expensive to have it shipped with the bigger stuff.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 02:33:26 +1000, cantankerous geezer Rot Speed blabbered,
again:

Quite a bit. The surcharge for card transactions has
dropped dramatically, particularly with debit cards
and eftpos. And the retailers have realised that the
credit card operations were lying to them when they
claimed that the merchant agreement meant that
they couldn¢t apply a surcharge to the customer to
to cover the merchant fee. They used to offer a
discount for cash to get around that. They now
know they are free to slug the customer the fee
if they want to. And now that most don¢t pay
with cash anymore, they realise that handling
that cash costs them more than using a card does.

Darn, those lonely endlessly prattling seniles that nobody wants to talk to
in real life: now we got ALL of those trolling on Usenet! LOL

--
Richard addressing Rot Speed:
"**** you're thick/pathetic excuse for a troll."
MID:

Andrew wrote
Harry Bloomfield wrote

It is very reassuring to have a good idea of what the bill will be,
before you actually get it, on a day by day basis.

You don't need a smart meter to do that though. Just read the
meter every day if you must and write the readings and date on a notepad
kept by the meter. You'll soon work out what appliances are using the most
leccy, but tbh, it's easy to work out from the spec plate on every
portable mains electrical device.

Not with the stuff with thermostats like ovens and fridges and freezers etc.

And those plug in power usage meters make a lot more sense than farting
around manually reading a stupid meter and writing the numbers down.

On 13/06/2018 16:14, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 13:43:25 UTC+1, Andrew wrote:
On 13/06/2018 11:47, whisky-dave wrote:
There must be some reason they want more than just one reading a week, don;t forget they only really need one a month if yuo're paying monthly surely, if you're paying one a 1/4 why do they need readings taken every 30 mins.

Can you tell me why they need readings every 30mins if I pay once every 3 months ?

Because the ultimate aim is demand pricing.

No it's to increase profits or should I say to charge people more.


Anyone with the temerity to use leccy at 4PM on a gloomy midwinter day
with a blocking high pressure over Norway is going to be paying 50p or
more per KwH. (I wonder how much power an MRI scanner consumes per
year?).

So you'll see hopsitals turning off their MRI and care homes turning off the power at say 4pm when the cost goes up, I doubt that will ever happen as they want electricity usage planned so they can make better use of the powerplants so they don't have to keep using backup power at short notice which IS more expensive.
Do you really think the steel industry (if we have one at the time) will shut up and send everyone home at 4pm ?

No but industry already shed load as it approaches the next tariff point
to avoid extra bills. How they do this is dependent on the use.

On 13/06/2018 16:14, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 13:43:25 UTC+1, Andrew wrote:
On 13/06/2018 11:47, whisky-dave wrote:
There must be some reason they want more than just one reading a week, don;t forget they only really need one a month if yuo're paying monthly surely, if you're paying one a 1/4 why do they need readings taken every 30 mins.

Can you tell me why they need readings every 30mins if I pay once every 3 months ?

Because the ultimate aim is demand pricing.

No it's to increase profits or should I say to charge people more.


Anyone with the temerity to use leccy at 4PM on a gloomy midwinter day
with a blocking high pressure over Norway is going to be paying 50p or
more per KwH. (I wonder how much power an MRI scanner consumes per
year?).

So you'll see hopsitals turning off their MRI and care homes turning off the power at say 4pm when the cost goes up, I doubt that will ever happen as they want electricity usage planned so they can make better use of the powerplants so they don't have to keep using backup power at short notice which IS more expensive.
Do you really think the steel industry (if we have one at the time) will shut up and send everyone home at 4pm ?



However if they go down this route, I suspect sales of cooking foil will
spike as people learn how to build a Faraday cage around their smart
meter to stop it sending data back to base. :-)

The companies will get around that by saying if we don't get a reading we'll use the last highest reading we have and you'll be charged at that level.

On 13/06/2018 16:25, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 13:43:20 +0100, Andrew wrote:

However if they go down this route, I suspect sales of cooking foil will
spike as people learn how to build a Faraday cage around their smart
meter to stop it sending data back to base.

Next generation "smart" meters will not pass power if they can't get a
keepalive from the mothership ....


rubbish.

In article ,
David writes:
"We need to upgrade your electricity and gas meters to our new self-
reading smart meters.
Why are we changing your meters?
We need to install smart meters into all of our customers' homes as part
of a government led nationwide upgrade programme. The good news is they
have great benefits for you:
€¢No need to provide meter readings, they're sent to us automatically
€¢No more estimated bills1
€¢See how much energy you're using and what it's costing you, with a
helpful in-home display.
"

However I can ring up and tell them that I don't want one. :-)

I wonder how many neighbours will go onto smart metering?

Having had the knee jerk "No Way!!!" response, I am wondering if there is
a major down side if the meter is SMETS 2 compatible.

Do all power companies support SMETS 2 meters and use them if you switch
suppliers?

There are no SMETS 2 meters being installed yet.
No one should be allowing a SMETS 1 meter to be installed.

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

On Thursday, 14 June 2018 17:08:48 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 17:08, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 16:57:13 UTC+1, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
whisky-dave laid this down on his screen :
why would you need to tell them ?
The idea is that you can view it on your phone, it doesnt or shouldn't need
to go to them as that sort of information is avaible to me anytime minute by
minuite for years, it's called a meter reading.

Manually reading your meter every 30 minutes would seem to bit of a
chore to me. The smart meter can do that every 30 minutes, without
fail.

The Q is why would anyone need a meter reading every 30 mins ?


Why would you want it that infrequently?

Because it is very little use.
I don't NEED a meter reading as all that telles me is how much I've used since the meter was installed, what I want to kn ow is HOW MUCH POWER I'm currently using that is what I want and I achived that at a rate of about 2-3 times a second, I don;t need iot any more reguallery than that.

On Thursday, 14 June 2018 17:11:12 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 14/06/2018 11:22, whisky-dave wrote:

Does your water company need to know how much water you use to wash your car ?
Does it make any differnce whether you wash your car, yourself, or your dog to the water company ?




Yes if drought restrictions are in force.

No they don't they put restrictions on hose pipes they dontl say I can;t wash the dog or take a bath, I don;t even think even an advanced smart water meter can tell that I'm bathing a dog or myself or watering houseplants.

On Thursday, 14 June 2018 17:35:42 UTC+1, Rod Speed wrote:
"whisky-dave" wrote in message
...
On Thursday, 14 June 2018 08:32:40 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 16:41, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 16:36:09 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 13:20, Andrew wrote:
On 12/06/2018 17:11, dennis@home wrote:
The consumer pays for all the costs of a business!

But benefits from *none* of any savings that they
(the customer) make on behalf of the company.

Of course they do, if they didn't make the savings the consumer would
have to pay more when they put the price up more to pay the extra
costs.


Take BT, they used to give credits for customers
opting for electronic bills. Then the saving was
quietly removed, along with a variety of call credits
and free caller-id.

And your point being?

BTW you can still have free CI, and there are bill savings to be had
if
you pay by DD and have paperless billing.

How long do you think that will last ?
When will they charge extra for NOT paying by DD and then won't accept
any other method of payment other than DD.

You used to be able to get discounts by paying cash few places do this
now.





That's because they were getting caught with the fiddles for paying in
cash.

Who was getting caught or rather who wasn't making a profit from a
transaction between me and the suplier is key here ?

You don't think that when you paid cash for things that you actually got
legit goods or that the legal taxes were paid do you?

Yes I do.
I think if I go into a shop and pay cash for my lunch I'm getting the same
lunch as if I paid by card, I do it everyday.
No one says to me well it's cheaper if you pay by card so you get a
discount.




IME the goods were quite often marked as stolen/lost and the cash never
went in the till.

Don't shoop at those places, I wouldn't.
Some of the biggest fiddles going use money transfer rather than cash.
I don't know anyone that buys from ebay with cash.

Some do, particularly when you pick it up in person because
its too expensive to have it shipped with the bigger stuff.

Then that is risky as it's outside of ebays control and would make it difficult to get back if there was a despute.
Supose I gave you cash for something I brought from you, and I handed you fake money that yuo didnlt notice at the time ?

On Thursday, 14 June 2018 19:57:39 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 16:14, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 13:43:25 UTC+1, Andrew wrote:
On 13/06/2018 11:47, whisky-dave wrote:
There must be some reason they want more than just one reading a week, don;t forget they only really need one a month if yuo're paying monthly surely, if you're paying one a 1/4 why do they need readings taken every 30 mins.

Can you tell me why they need readings every 30mins if I pay once every 3 months ?

Because the ultimate aim is demand pricing.

No it's to increase profits or should I say to charge people more.


Anyone with the temerity to use leccy at 4PM on a gloomy midwinter day
with a blocking high pressure over Norway is going to be paying 50p or
more per KwH. (I wonder how much power an MRI scanner consumes per
year?).

So you'll see hopsitals turning off their MRI and care homes turning off the power at say 4pm when the cost goes up, I doubt that will ever happen as they want electricity usage planned so they can make better use of the powerplants so they don't have to keep using backup power at short notice which IS more expensive.
Do you really think the steel industry (if we have one at the time) will shut up and send everyone home at 4pm ?

No but industry already shed load as it approaches the next tariff point
to avoid extra bills. How they do this is dependent on the use.

So nothing will change, E7 the cheatest electricity runs at night how many factories have closed during the day to run at night to make use of cheap electricity ?

You do know why electricity is cheaper at night don't you ?

On 14/06/2018 17:13, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 22:09, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Rod Speed has brought this to us :
The Q is why would anyone need a meter reading every 30 mins ?

To see what is taking the power and what its going to cost them.

Exactly! Three months is a very, very long time to wait, to know what
energy you have been using over the preceding 3 months.

It is very reassuring to have a good idea of what the bill will be,
before you actually get it, on a day by day basis.

Yes its nice to know if the daughter has left the fan heater on in her
shed/greenhouse/studio before its been on for a week+ when she next
visits. 35p an hour soon adds up and there is the fire risk too.




If there is no snow or frost on its roof, or it is covered with
birds keeping warm, then that should have alerted you long before a
week is up.

On 15/06/2018 12:30, whisky-dave wrote:
On Thursday, 14 June 2018 17:08:48 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 17:08, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 16:57:13 UTC+1, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
whisky-dave laid this down on his screen :
why would you need to tell them ?
The idea is that you can view it on your phone, it doesnt or shouldn't need
to go to them as that sort of information is avaible to me anytime minute by
minuite for years, it's called a meter reading.

Manually reading your meter every 30 minutes would seem to bit of a
chore to me. The smart meter can do that every 30 minutes, without
fail.

The Q is why would anyone need a meter reading every 30 mins ?


Why would you want it that infrequently?

Because it is very little use.
I don't NEED a meter reading as all that telles me is how much I've used since the meter was installed, what I want to kn ow is HOW MUCH POWER I'm currently using that is what I want and I achived that at a rate of about 2-3 times a second, I don;t need iot any more reguallery than that.

If the red led is visibly flashing then something is using a lot
of power.

On 14/06/2018 22:53, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
David writes:
"We need to upgrade your electricity and gas meters to our new self-
reading smart meters.
Why are we changing your meters?
We need to install smart meters into all of our customers' homes as part
of a government led nationwide upgrade programme. The good news is they
have great benefits for you:
€¢No need to provide meter readings, they're sent to us automatically
€¢No more estimated bills1
€¢See how much energy you're using and what it's costing you, with a
helpful in-home display.
"

However I can ring up and tell them that I don't want one. :-)

I wonder how many neighbours will go onto smart metering?

Having had the knee jerk "No Way!!!" response, I am wondering if there is
a major down side if the meter is SMETS 2 compatible.

Do all power companies support SMETS 2 meters and use them if you switch
suppliers?

There are no SMETS 2 meters being installed yet.
No one should be allowing a SMETS 1 meter to be installed.


There was another item about this on todays Rip-Off_Britain where
the ladies pointed out that most of the smart meters installed to date
are SMETS1 (The BBC are learning !!) and become dumb if you switch
supplier.

whisky-dave wrote:

what I want to kn ow is HOW MUCH POWER I'm currently using that is
what I want and I achived that at a rate of about 2-3 times a second

For a typical (1000 pulses per kWh) meter, 3 flashes a second is well
into electric shower territory ...

On Friday, 15 June 2018 13:30:54 UTC+1, Andrew wrote:
On 15/06/2018 12:30, whisky-dave wrote:
On Thursday, 14 June 2018 17:08:48 UTC+1, dennis@home wrote:
On 13/06/2018 17:08, whisky-dave wrote:
On Wednesday, 13 June 2018 16:57:13 UTC+1, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
whisky-dave laid this down on his screen :
why would you need to tell them ?
The idea is that you can view it on your phone, it doesnt or shouldn't need
to go to them as that sort of information is avaible to me anytime minute by
minuite for years, it's called a meter reading.

Manually reading your meter every 30 minutes would seem to bit of a
chore to me. The smart meter can do that every 30 minutes, without
fail.

The Q is why would anyone need a meter reading every 30 mins ?


Why would you want it that infrequently?

Because it is very little use.
I don't NEED a meter reading as all that telles me is how much I've used since the meter was installed, what I want to kn ow is HOW MUCH POWER I'm currently using that is what I want and I achived that at a rate of about 2-3 times a second, I don;t need iot any more reguallery than that.

If the red led is visibly flashing then something is using a lot
of power.

It's always visibly flashing on the meter, but it depends how long you watch it for and it;s not a good indication of a fault.

I';m referiong to my energy meter which sits above my fire place, and indiccates the number of whats consumed at that moment in time on a LCD display. (NOT THE METER READING).
I'd estimet that presently it's about 160W. Tonight after dark it will be about 400W once the TV tivo, lights, etc are all put on.
When I switch my kettle on it goes up by about 2.9KW same with my immersion heater, I can pretty much tell what is on or off.
I don't see why the electrically supply company needs to know this every 30 mins.

On 15/06/2018 13:34, Andrew wrote:
snip



...and become dumb if you switch
supplier.

As an unqualified statement that is just plain wrong. We have switched
between 4 times between 3 different suppliers with the same smart meters
working as such for both gas and electricity. We are not alone. So if
anyone is dumb it is (still) the BBC.

--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On 15/06/2018 13:29, Andrew wrote:

8

If there is no snow or frost on its roof, or it is covered with
birds keeping warm, then that should have alerted you long before a
week is up.

75mm of fibreglass insulation in the walls and roof stops that.

On Friday, 15 June 2018 13:37:47 UTC+1, Andy Burns wrote:
whisky-dave wrote:

what I want to kn ow is HOW MUCH POWER I'm currently using that is
what I want and I achived that at a rate of about 2-3 times a second

For a typical (1000 pulses per kWh) meter, 3 flashes a second is well
into electric shower territory ...

I see you;re confused too, where have I mentioned the LED the LED doesnlt tell me much especailly when I'm in the front room or anywhwere else.

My LCD energy meter which updates around 3 tiumes a second tells me how much power is coming through the live wire from the outside world, I can set this meter to read the number of watts, or the curretn cost of that power.
It ahs a setting for me to imput day and night rates and will display accordingly, it also has the option where I can (using a USB cable) send the info of how much I use in increments of 30 mins for something like 3-4 months , where I can export this to a speadsheet or use their own tools to draw me a graph.

Again I DO NOT NEED to send this info the my leccy supplier every 30 mins.

whisky-dave wrote:

Again I DO NOT NEED to send this info the my leccy supplier every 30 mins.

When my meter was smart (I changed supplier so now it isn't very) the
supplier's website allowed me to choose how often readings were taken,
30 minutes, daily or monthly, I believe that is an OFGEM requirement.

On Friday, 15 June 2018 15:09:39 UTC+1, Andy Burns wrote:
whisky-dave wrote:

Again I DO NOT NEED to send this info the my leccy supplier every 30 mins.

When my meter was smart (I changed supplier so now it isn't very) the
supplier's website allowed me to choose how often readings were taken,
30 minutes, daily or monthly, I believe that is an OFGEM requirement.

For the user(s) or supplier there's a big differnce. That was the problem my friend found when writing an app to do it, there just wasnlt the bandwidth for 1000s of users all to upload their data every 30 mins.
Dont; forget this 1000 would actualy be millions as most housholds have electricity and teh plan is for tehm all to be smartmeters.
So see if yuo can calculate the sort of bandwidht needed to up load millions of users data within a few minutes.

whisky-dave wrote:

my friend found when writing an app to do it, there just wasnlt
the bandwidth for 1000s of users all to upload their data every 30 mins.
Dont; forget this 1000 would actualy be millions as most housholds have
electricity and teh plan is for tehm all to be smartmeters.

It doesn't take much to realise that you can take the readings every 30
minutes, store them locally, then upload a compressed bundle say once a
week or month, cutting out a ****load of handshaking ...

So see if yuo can calculate the sort of bandwidht needed to up load
millions of users data within a few minutes.
Trivial sums

On Friday, 15 June 2018 15:56:19 UTC+1, Andy Burns wrote:
whisky-dave wrote:

my friend found when writing an app to do it, there just wasnlt
the bandwidth for 1000s of users all to upload their data every 30 mins.
Dont; forget this 1000 would actualy be millions as most housholds have
electricity and teh plan is for tehm all to be smartmeters.

It doesn't take much to realise that you can take the readings every 30
minutes, store them locally, then upload a compressed bundle say once a
week or month, cutting out a ****load of handshaking ...

Yes you can but that won't tell the electric company how much leccy your using NOW or at any other time, that is the point.
You don;t need to upload every 30 mins or even every hour or even everyday.






So see if yuo can calculate the sort of bandwidht needed to up load
millions of users data within a few minutes.
Trivial sums

Yep and you'll find some interesting numbers that are trivial but significant especailly inn rural areas, It'll be a bit like the old style christmas post.

On 14/06/18 17:15, Andy Burns wrote:
Jeff Layman wrote:

Direct debits are for those who are content to let someone else run
their financial affairs, by abrogating control of their bank account to
a third party. In theory, they are fine; in practice, there can be
problems. Just do a Google search on "direct debit" and "problems".

While you're there, do a search for "computer problems" or "car
problems" or "wife problems", plenty of people seem to manage OK with
one or more of them too ...

Are you saying that technophobic, stay-at-home monks aren't the norm?

--

Jeff

On 15/06/2018 14:58, whisky-dave wrote:
On Friday, 15 June 2018 13:37:47 UTC+1, Andy Burns wrote:
whisky-dave wrote:

what I want to kn ow is HOW MUCH POWER I'm currently using that is
what I want and I achived that at a rate of about 2-3 times a second

For a typical (1000 pulses per kWh) meter, 3 flashes a second is well
into electric shower territory ...

I see you;re confused too, where have I mentioned the LED the LED doesnlt tell me much especailly when I'm in the front room or anywhwere else.

My LCD energy meter which updates around 3 tiumes a second tells me how much power is coming through the live wire from the outside world, I can set this meter to read the number of watts, or the curretn cost of that power.
It ahs a setting for me to imput day and night rates and will display accordingly, it also has the option where I can (using a USB cable) send the info of how much I use in increments of 30 mins for something like 3-4 months , where I can export this to a speadsheet or use their own tools to draw me a graph.

Again I DO NOT NEED to send this info the my leccy supplier every 30 mins.


You do if you want to use it via their web site.

whisky-dave has brought this to us :
But I already know that and even if I didn't why does that information need
to go to the provider every 30 mins.
Sure collect the data on what I'm using every second if you like but why
transmit it back to the supplier ?.
I do have a unit which records what I'm using every 1/2 hour.

For the Nth time - The meter does not transmit the data every 30 mins,
it stores it every 30 mins and then forwards it once per day, as a
batch of data!

Andrew has brought this to us :
but tbh, it's easy to work out from the
spec plate on every portable mains electrical device.

Is it? Lots of (most) things run intermitantly, fridges, freezers,
kettles, water heaters, central heating pumps, immersion heaters, ovens
microwave ovens. Fine, when they are on you know what they draw.

whisky-:-[ explained :
I don't see why the electrically supply company needs to know this every 30
mins.

They DON'T NEED TO KNOW, they only need a reading once every three
months for billing purposes. Your meter forwards it to them, so that
YOU have access to a log of YOUR CONSUMPTION on their website.

whisky-dave formulated the question :
Dont; forget this 1000 would actualy be millions as most housholds have
electricity and teh plan is for tehm all to be smartmeters.
So see if yuo can calculate the sort of bandwidht needed to up load millions
of users data within a few minutes.

Why all within a few minutes, that makes no sense at all. All that is
needed is the data to be uploaded once per day and at anytime when
capacity is available. Likely that will be over night.

24 x 2 x 7 digits plus meter details and checksum, per customer - is
not really a lot of data.

Jethro_uk formulated the question :
Next generation "smart" meters will not pass power if they can't get a
keepalive from the mothership ....

Don't be silly!

Robin laid this down on his screen :
As an unqualified statement that is just plain wrong. We have switched
between 4 times between 3 different suppliers with the same smart meters
working as such for both gas and electricity. We are not alone. So if
anyone is dumb it is (still) the BBC.

...and in the same program, they seemed to be suggesting that some
SMET2's are being installed. Last I heard was that some test samples of
SMET2's were being installed.

My experience so far, is three sets of new meters, with three swaps of
suppliers.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 20:24:40 +0100, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

Andrew has brought this to us :
but tbh, it's easy to work out from the spec plate on every portable
mains electrical device.

Is it? Lots of (most) things run intermitantly, fridges, freezers,
kettles, water heaters, central heating pumps, immersion heaters, ovens
microwave ovens. Fine, when they are on you know what they draw.

And computers vary depending on what they're doing. By quite a lot.

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Bob Eager formulated the question :
And computers vary depending on what they're doing. By quite a lot.

True - The Acer laptop I am typing this on, on my knee is usually quite
cool, but if some software freezes in a loop it can become quite hot
and uncomfortable due to waste heat.

The only sensible way to assess how much power such an item uses, is
over a period of time.