Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

Re: Not so smart!

"In other countries, "load shedding" is used, i.e., power cuts."

Interruptible tariffs (cheaper energy for large users who are prepared to reduce demand at relatively short notice) have been used in the UK for quite a while too, for gas as well as electricity, just not on a domestic basis.

When demand menagement via interruptible tariffs and voltage reductions was insufficient, there wasn't much option except wide area load shedding via wide area disconnections.

See e.g. the day a few years ago when Longannet and Sizewell both had unplanned outages within a few minutes of each other, and there were wide-area non-selective blackouts affecting hundreds of thousands of electricity customers in various parts of the UK.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7423169.stm

Now work out what smart meters with a remotely addressable off switch might bring to the table.

Rather more recently, in 2016 for example, Eggborough was asking for £2500 per MWh because there was a likelihood that demand would come close to exceeding supply. (Normally, £50 per MWh would be more typical ).

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/eggborough-power-station-wins-12-month-reprieve-1-7723522

Re: Not so smart!

A number of years ago I had a tangential involvement with the communication to smart meters....

One scenario the were looking at was the control of a second output from the meter that could be turned off remotely. The idea being that a house could have non-critical circuits connected to that output so that they could be turned off for a short period to cover for spikes in demand (the "make a cuppa in the ad-break in Corrie" scenario). The sort of things that might be connected to that output would be the immersion or other forms of heating where you wouldn't miss it for the duration of an ad-break...

The idea was a discounted tariff if you used the 2nd output as you would be "load shedding" when required.

Not having a smart meter, I don't know if these second terminals have been implemented!

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

To reply to both of you ACs.

I have an unpainted flat and my neighbours in the same block is painted cream/white. Interior temperature in mine at 3am during the hot spell? 32c with windows open, I had to put desert snakes and large lizard (male Tegu) in a lukewarm bath to cool off because they were showing signs of heat agitation.

The temperature in the next door flat at the same time? 26c.

You were saying?

As to the fridge - it was a cheap replacement - creates less heat than an incandescent and reduces that functions power use by 5x, 6000k frequency light is actually helpful to the eyes (it's the reason why you get better vision with LEDS because it's closer to the daylight wavelength than incandescents (2700k or so). Yes you are entirely correct that the main load is from the pump - however every little efficiency helps.

In the summer my energy usage with all LEDS - remote sockets & pir lights/remote control lights is less than 60% of a normal flat - it's less than that if it's a hot summer and I can shut down *all* the heat mats for the reptiles.

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

OK just doing this in my head but assuming 15 mins. fridge door opening per day that bulb swap saves about 25p per year.

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

The biggest consumption in fridge/freezers is the motors. Strategies like keeping the freezer full - even with added blocks of newspaper - will cut down that consumption.

My freezer, when opened, presents me with a column of closed drawer fronts, so there's very little cold air wafting out. And it beeps at me when I have the door open for longer than (a minute I think).

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

"The biggest consumption in fridge/freezers is the motors. Strategies like keeping the freezer full - even with added blocks of newspaper - will cut down that consumption."

I fill the empty spaces with the plastic food tubs used for storing the chilled or frozen curries, chillies, stews, soups etc. when they are waiting to be used for the next batch. Freezer AND fridge. Also easily removed and nested when other stuff need to go in there.

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

Ha are you testing us ?

The bulb is only on when the fridge door is open

your saving is 12W times very little time

say 2 mins/day 700/year = 11.5hours

1200W would cost you 15p/hr so 12W costs you 0.15p/hr

That changed has saves you 11.5*0.15p/hr =2p per year

Re: just one bulb reduced my fridges light use from 15w to 3.3w

>I reduced my fridge's light use to 0W by shutting the door.<

ow do you know the light goes out when you shut the fridge door?

I mean, that's a difficult to measure metric to ensure that you're saving 3.3w!

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

Well, that's strange - I'm still using two PIR LED 6w bulbs I bought in 2008 and most have lasted 5 years or more, through a house move too. I don't spend stupid money on them either - cheapies from Amazon. I think it depends on how clean the power supply is and whether lights and sockets are on a separate circuit. A neighbour has LEDs blow all the time but the wiring in that flat is suspect to say the least.

I can't use halogens anyway because my pets *hate* them - current thinking is they hurt their eyes. I wouldn't go back to incandescent bulbs when I can light the whole place for less energy than a single 60w bulb.

I guess YMMV applies.

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

they simply dont last anywhere as long as they claim.

We've bought a bunch of them at IKEA[0][1], various wattages and both dimmable and not, and none have failed in over at least three years; a number are approaching five, and I can probably locate two or three that were fitted when we moved in seven years ago.

[0] Cheap enough that I can't be arsed to look for even cheaper ones. That might come with probably higher failure rates anyway.

[1] Hex key not needed, therefore not included.

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

"the 20 or so LED light bulbs in my house are costing me about 6 times the cost of electricity they save in replacement - they simply dont last anywhere as long as they claim"

One of the afflictions of being an engineer is knowing what a kWh is, and having the ability to do complicated things like, erm, basic arithmetic…

So let’s see how plausible this all is:

First let’s assume your LED lamps are really crap, not only do they not last the 10’s of thousands of hours promised, yours only last as long as a bog standard filament lamp – say 1000 hours. So you have replaced your 60W with a 6W LED. Your 60W lamp used 1kWh of energy in 1000/60 = 16.67 hours. So in its 1000 hour life, that is 1000/16.67 = 60 kWh of electricity. If you pay 23p per kWh, that’s £13.80. Let’s include the cost of the lamp and round it up to £14.

Your LED will use a tenth of the electricity, so £1.38, and let’s say you paid top money for the poor quality lamp at £5. Brings the total cost to £6.38. So best case, your claim seems to be about 12 x out!

Note also that was an overly pessimistic calculation. In reality you may be paying a bit more for electricity, the LED was probably cheaper than £5, and it will likely do at least 3000 – 5000 hours even if not the full amount promised on the box. That could bring the savings up quite a bit, at 5k hours: old style lamps use £69 quid of lekky, plus a quids worth in lamps, so £70. LED £6.90 of lekky, and a more realistic £3 of lamp – call it £10, and 4 fewer bulb changes.

Re: Nah.. They won't be getting a grilling..

"the 20 or so LED light bulbs in my house are costing me about 6 times the cost of electricity they save in replacement - they simply dont last anywhere as long as they claim."

Really? Maybe it's the brand. I replaced all my bolbs with LED about 5 years ago. None have failed in that time. So far, fingers crossed.

"[...] SMETS meters have been found to over-record usage by considerable amounts"

The electricity supplier decided my mechanical meter had reached the end of its planned life and fitted a replacement***. This has an LCD display but is not a Smart Meter. Would it have basically the same transducer mechanism/algorithm as a Smart Meter?

One of my major uses of electricity has been running the big PC for some processing that can take at least a day every week. This year I stopped doing it. It was a surprise when the "same quarter" consumption comparison from the supplier says I have used significantly more electricity this year.

***a few months after the replacement they told me to make an appointment for fitting a Smart Meter as the current meter was "past its planned life". I pointed out they had fitted a new one recently - and they went quiet. None of Eon's attempts to get me to have a Smart Meter have ever indicated that it is voluntary.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

Smart people only need to be smarter than their meters. A smart meter that's unaccountably unable to make a useful network connection won't respond to attempts to turn it off.

Re: Ca$h...

"The only trick I probably missed was in not getting solar panels when the cost v feed-in rebate was good."

That's probably a good thing, for your conscience. The rebate was paid by the leccy companies and almost certainly financed by raising prices for all those who didn't have a convenient roof to put some subsidised panels on. A shameful case of robbing the poor to make the quiche-eating classes feel good about themselves.

Re: Ca$h...

It's probable gov had a hard on for smart meters on the assumption they might be able to finally measure electricity supplied to the network instead of the blanket assumption of 50% of generation capacity. The current shower seem intent on wiping out domestic solar and it would have helped before they just nuked support from space.

Whether that's a good or bad thing I'm not going to get into, or whether the meters will ever be able to do it!