Oh good...

I was so bored of having to make all those tedious "energy management" decisions myself. I'll happily entrust this complex and difficult task to a group of people including the Government (who've led us into bankruptcy), the energy companies (who have managed to get one in three bills wrong-in their favour), and the green lobby (Read Orlowski for full details of their most recent triumphs).

Are we really going to have another six months of this before an election?

However, whilst we wait for the election, shall we pass the time by suggesting some campaign slogans?

"Labour: It's not fascism when we do it"

A remote cut off?

That seems incredibly risky, what if there is some sort of software fault, or the system becomes compromised. It would be intresting to see what happens if for some reason half the country was commanded to switch off and then switch back on again, I don't think we'd be left with much functioning infrastructure!

Though I agree that load balancing should be part of future smart meters, but implemented in such a way that only compatibe appliances respond to its requests. So you'd buy a modern fridge with a chip in it and it would adjust its compressor run times depending on the available energy, in return you's get a slight reduction in £/kwh. This sort of technology can make wind power feasible for more than a small percentage of installed capacity without having to build dozens of Dinorwig type stored energy plants.

All of this can be implemented without any sort of snooping of your usage patterns.

I don't see the problem

Really, if you don't pay your bill then you can expect to get cut off anyway.

What's more interesting is, will it be able to handle spikes in demand, for instant, half time on FA cup final day, or half time during the World Cup final, or the end of a blockbuster like Kylie and Jason's wedding in Neighbours a few years back, etc, etc, etc.

Yes for reasonable steady consumption, it will be a benefit, I believe so anyway. As for the fears of direct marketing from the data, surely people have heard of the Mailing Preference Service by now, or at least know how to mark unwanted email as spam.

heh

Well at least they're planning for when out nuclear reactors go off line, they'll just manage it with rolling powercuts using their new fandangled smart meters.

Err...

On radio 4 news a couple of days ago, they were at pains to point out that:

1) The meters will not network back to the individual energy company, instead there will be a central meter management company who will collate and pass information to back to the individual energy comapnies.

2) The energy companies will not be able to make the decision to cut someone off, they will have to get a court order and present it to the management companies, in much the same way that they have to get a warrant to enter your property to cut you off at the moment.

As for active energy management - It won't apply to Gas, except in that your gas boiler may be able to be sent a signal to tell it not to switch on. Your fridge/freezer/washing machine/tumble drier will have to have extra hardware or be a specifically enabled type of device to get the 'switch off/don't switch on' command. You will also be able to override any 'switch off', if required.

Never be more than 10% implemented.

Typical FUD.....

For this to be anything more than an exercise in job cutting by getting rid of the army of meter readers requires either the cooperation of every manufacturer of electrical equipment on the planet or for the power companies to extend their responsibility beyond the meter/main fuse which would cost them a fortune !

Under the current system/legislation all they would have is their smart meter/controller across the main feed to your house and would be able to see how the usage for the whole house is changing. Yes they could assume if they saw an increase equivalent to a 2.8KW load that you have turned the kettle on but you could also be taking a shower or be using an electric fire. There would be no way to implement remote control.

To extend beyond this would require every piece of electrical equipment to have some form of comms built-in which is pretty much impractical. Anything over the mains is too easily disrupted by a simple filter, wired networking is easily unplugged and also requires the power company to assume responsibility in the home, wireless is again easily blocked or disrupted.

Lets assume that the technical difficulties are overcome and the full capabilities are realised consider the following example - your elderly parent comes home from hospital and now has a respirator and some dork at the ministry of power compliance sees the load has gone up substantially the last 2 weeks, decides you're a bad person and shuts it down during peak ! So we now have to start informing the power companies of changes in our private lives so they don't kill us inadvertently.

Ok it's an extreme example but it's the sort of thing ( and much more ) they would have to manage if they wanted to take the proposals to their ultimate end.

The cost involved is phenominal and would also require substantial changes to current legislation.

I suspect all you'll ever see is remote meter reading and a better way to see your usage in real time than the current spinning wheel.

--sean

nothing to do with Lord Truscott, then?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/4401188/Lord-Truscott-Peers-charge-up-to-5000-a-day-to-facilitate-law-changes.html

What happens if...

What if I'm in the middle of some electrically-powered medical process, like, say, I live in an iron lung? And the Powers That Be decide to limit my electricity usage for a while?

For that matter, what if I'm running on a treadmill and they cut the power -- can I sue for damages?