Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Had letters, binned letters.
I know when the lights on and I can't power off fridge.
I know when the lights on and I can't power off fridge.
Smart meters for energy
- Thread starter planetgeli
- Start date
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
I was having a think.
One of the tariffs I remember from years ago was "Maximum Demand" the meter read the max demand for electric over a time period (I think during each half hour or hour) the user was then charged to reflect this usage. It was an industrial / business thing as the requirement to be on the MD was quite high: Currently "Any UK corporation that uses more than 100,000 kWh of electricity per year have these meters installed as a mandatory requirement. These meters, also known as “00” meters because of the numbering, “Smart” or HH, measure and record consumption automatically" .
Still is !
Half hourly meters - What HH meters can do for businesses | uSwitchforBusiness
and
Electricity Pricing for Half Hourly Meter Customers
Buried somewhere in what I have just read is that all smart meters do this 'continuous reporting' but whether a domestic tariff actually has the lower night / weekend prices ? ... it should, the technology is there - but, what would worry me is the domestic equivalent of the penalty charge MD customers can get if they go over their agreed threshold(s) if the MD is actually underestimated (in a business context, something like getting a new machine and not realising that starting it up takes you over the threshold for a short time).
Not to mention getting stuck on one of the expensive, in-appropriate and inflexible tariff / contracts when the "special deal" expires.
One of the tariffs I remember from years ago was "Maximum Demand" the meter read the max demand for electric over a time period (I think during each half hour or hour) the user was then charged to reflect this usage. It was an industrial / business thing as the requirement to be on the MD was quite high: Currently "Any UK corporation that uses more than 100,000 kWh of electricity per year have these meters installed as a mandatory requirement. These meters, also known as “00” meters because of the numbering, “Smart” or HH, measure and record consumption automatically" .
Still is !
Half hourly meters - What HH meters can do for businesses | uSwitchforBusiness
and
Electricity Pricing for Half Hourly Meter Customers
Buried somewhere in what I have just read is that all smart meters do this 'continuous reporting' but whether a domestic tariff actually has the lower night / weekend prices ? ... it should, the technology is there - but, what would worry me is the domestic equivalent of the penalty charge MD customers can get if they go over their agreed threshold(s) if the MD is actually underestimated (in a business context, something like getting a new machine and not realising that starting it up takes you over the threshold for a short time).
Not to mention getting stuck on one of the expensive, in-appropriate and inflexible tariff / contracts when the "special deal" expires.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Apologies for bump, but thread is on topic.
Scottish gas checked my boiler last week for the start of the home care contract. The work had to be done in two parts so it wasn't the same person that came back to do the second part. Not only did he recommend changes that he admitted were cosmetic and 'upgrades' (£700?! I think not), he also was pushy about Hive and meter upgrades.
I got booked in for meter changes but cancelled the appointment - I found out my brother had nothing but issues with his meter, and a friend got told his was malfunctioning because his flat had 'the wrong wiring', and he would need to get the entire property rewired for it to work. I am working away from home most of the week at present, so if it goes wrong and shuts off the freezer, I'm a bit fucked.
Glad I cancelled if I can't change energy company easily, they'd not said anything about that
Scottish gas checked my boiler last week for the start of the home care contract. The work had to be done in two parts so it wasn't the same person that came back to do the second part. Not only did he recommend changes that he admitted were cosmetic and 'upgrades' (£700?! I think not), he also was pushy about Hive and meter upgrades.
I got booked in for meter changes but cancelled the appointment - I found out my brother had nothing but issues with his meter, and a friend got told his was malfunctioning because his flat had 'the wrong wiring', and he would need to get the entire property rewired for it to work. I am working away from home most of the week at present, so if it goes wrong and shuts off the freezer, I'm a bit fucked.
Glad I cancelled if I can't change energy company easily, they'd not said anything about that
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
Hive was £20 a month for 10 months, plus he was pushing fancy light bulbs and plugs. I really felt he was treating me like a idiot because I was a woman. The first person that came said 'x, y and z need to be done to make the boiler safe', not 'I don't like the way that drainage pipe has been arranged, it needs to be moved and put straight through the back wall of the property, and I didn't tell you it would be £450 + VAT'
Calamity1971
If Mr Peanut says It's okay, then it is.
Fuck em off equationgirl. I've seen stuff about this smart meter bollocks. Trying to roll it out too fast and people/engineers are inadequately trained. There's been house fires because of shite wiring. A friend of mine gave them the go ahead until I pointed out he had a big tent full of plants 
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
True, but people aren't being told that the wiring is unsafe, just that it won't be compatible with a smart meter.
Chilli.s
mingling jets and statuettes
It's only for the energy companies.
A friend says that their household often like to do their own readings so when the price goes up they accidentally read a fuck ton of extra that they haven't yet used and pay in advance at the old cheaper price. Apparently this is only possible by not answering the door when the meter person comes.
A friend says that their household often like to do their own readings so when the price goes up they accidentally read a fuck ton of extra that they haven't yet used and pay in advance at the old cheaper price. Apparently this is only possible by not answering the door when the meter person comes.
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
It took me three goes to log meter readings via my online account yesterday. That did not give confidence in anything more sophisticated, I must admit.
newbie
undisambiguated
a full tekkie explanation of this supposed lack of compatibility would be interesting. For our SM installation there was an electrical impedance test plus basic visual inspection, along with a gas safety check- pressure test and visual inspection + on/off test for all appliances: one of ours failed and I had to work hard not to have the household gas cut off, eventually the whole thing was put back until sorted.
danski
"vibey"
Smart electric meters are (the ones I’ve seen installed en masse by British Gas) are an electric meter with a plug in device to transmit the data. The meter itself isn’t much different to a normal one, just able to connect to a transmitter. There’s nothing fancy or complicated to it.
I assume the problems arise from different companies being unable to access the transmitted data. An IT problem, not electrical.
I assume the problems arise from different companies being unable to access the transmitted data. An IT problem, not electrical.
newbie
undisambiguated
it's preparation for a smart grid, whereby electricity will be priced in eg 15 minute chunks and smart appliances will be able to choose when to run, and consumers will be able to choose when to feed power back into the grid from eg EV batteries.
Chilli.s
mingling jets and statuettes
I never thought of that, sounds too good.
a_chap
When the world came apart, where were you?
It's not solely an "It problem".
Smart Meters use the mobile phone network. The most common problem is them not being able to get a signal which, if you think where most meters are located, isn't that surprising.
Large energy users are already billed in half-hourly chunks so that is definitely where the domestic market is heading also. I've always been amazed how few people realise this.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I do wonder what that means, though. Unless there is some very subtle aspect to the way a smartmeter is operating, what it's essentially doing is monitoring the current flow through a pair of wires. There are other considerations - availability of mobile networks, and whether it can connect into your own wifi for the home energy monitor to work, but those are nothing to do with wiring
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
A slight irony is that it is perfectly possible for stuff to do this autonomously, just by monitoring the mains frequency:
Dynamic Demand
newbie
undisambiguated
Smarter energy consumption on the rise with introduction of time-of-use tariffs | SMS
One of the interesting things is that currently nuclear base load means that electricity is cheaper at night, because consumption is lower. But solar means there's sometimes more available during the day than can be used, because the baseload is there all the time. So a smartgrid might change that during the summer so that it's cheaper during the day. In the longer term more solar might enable nuclear to be turned off for good (hurrah, only a few thousand years for our descendants to deal with the dangerous mess).
newbie
undisambiguated
it doesn't use wifi it uses encrypted Zigbee with absolutely no provision for users to sniff the data. SMETS 1 anyway, I really hope SMETS2 is better but I'm not holding my breath.I do wonder what that means, though. Unless there is some very subtle aspect to the way a smartmeter is operating, what it's essentially doing is monitoring the current flow through a pair of wires. There are other considerations - availability of mobile networks, and whether it can connect into your own wifi for the home energy monitor to work, but those are nothing to do with wiring
newbie
undisambiguated
Is that minute frequency drift fully independent of power factor?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Ah, in my reading around the subject, I thought there was some stuff about hubs, which implied the use of Wifi. Zigbee makes sense, as I imagine relying on the vagaries of people's existing wifi setups would be a little challenging.
Shame it's not sniffable, though - you'd think that having a nice open API would be a good thing.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I have no idea, only that it's a reasonably good approximation of generator load.
newbie
undisambiguated
I was so disappointed. It is, after all, my data not theirs for all the fact I employ them to provide the power and measure it. In my imagination I would be able to interrogate the meters in real time, to get readings and see the effect of eg the fridge, the gas burners and boiler fan coming and going. In reality I can laboriously copy the monthly history from meter to pc, by crouching the cellar with pen and paper
, or read whatever the supplier chooses to put on their website. As I've changed supplier i have to read manually, and the only method involves being in the cellar, because their little display box doesn't actually show the readings. There are probably fairly few people who want to geek this stuff, but there really is no reason we shouldn't be able to sniff our own meters.
newbie
undisambiguated
I'm not sure either but I've read that controlling power factor (reactive/capacitive apparent load) is a major part of grid management and one of the reasons for distributed smart metering rather than doing it from the centre.
Gridwatch is currently showing 49.917Hz. As all the generator sets have to be in sync (don't they?) I'm not sure I see why your measurement or mine might be different: if it is, is that down to local pf or something else?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I totally agree. But there a (particularly British) mentality that fights hard against the idea of letting anyone have anything they don't absolutely have to have.I was so disappointed. It is, after all, my data not theirs for all the fact I employ them to provide the power and measure it. In my imagination I would be able to interrogate the meters in real time, to get readings and see the effect of eg the fridge, the gas burners and boiler fan coming and going. In reality I can laboriously copy the monthly history from meter to pc, by crouching the cellar with pen and paper
You can get aftermarket ones, but they're not cheap: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=neurio
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
As I understand it, the whole grid is kept in sync anyway, so a dynamic balance is maintained, generator load being a major input factor to that balance. So the grid frequency won't vary locally, and the idea of using it as a dynamic power balancing metric isn't intended to be a locally-managed thing.
newbie
undisambiguated
That's a current clamp, claiming 1% accuracy. The one I tried seemed to be about +/- 10% depending on clamp positioning, iirc it goes up when closer to the meter. That was an analogue meter with rotating disk so I think the EM field matters.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
The accuracy went up, or the sensed current? That'd make some sense, given that those meters do have big fuckoff coils in them!
The current sensing shouldn't be the hard bit - I think the bigger faff would be interfacing it to some kind of WiFi, but maybe that'd be fairly straightforward with an Arduino type setup.
But yeah - why can't they just make the smartmeter output open? I imagine someone would crack the encryption pretty swiftly, in any case.
newbie
undisambiguated
I misunderstood your post then, I thought autonomously meant local measurement. In the last couple of minutes it's jumped to 50.117 (the Dynamic one isn't quite the same as Gridwatch but that might be latency) so autonomous devices would flipflop on and off as the grid corrects the frequency by bringing gas turbines in and out.
