…
No one needed a smart meter when we had smart baseload. Beware Australians, despite the promises and threats, smart meters may or may not make UK customers a paltry saving. When all is said and done it’s not even clear the benefits outweigh the costs.
People who have smart meters installed are expected to save an average of £11 annually on their energy bills, much less than originally hoped. A report from a parliamentary group now predicts a dual fuel saving of £26.
Customer pays, but energy firms save more:
Customers have financed the smart meter programme by paying a levy on their energy bills, while suppliers have frequently blamed the levy for rising costs. However, the report claimed most of the eventual savings would be made by energy firms, rather than consumers.
It is an £11 billion programme. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears the country would be richer if the government just gave back £170 to each person instead.
Smart meter looks like a dumb elephant:
The report also said that:
- More than half of smart meters “go dumb” after switching, meaning they stop communicating with the supplier
- Up to 10% of smart meters don’t work, because they are in areas where mobile phone signals are not strong enough
- By the end of the year only 22% of households will have the meters installed, meaning the 2020 deadline is certain to be missed
- The eventual cost of the programme could even outweigh the benefits
Remind me why the UK needs them?
Smart meters are supposed to play a major part in the UK’s clean vehicle revolution by allowing electric cars to charge overnight when wind power is strong, demand is low, and energy is cheap. — Read it all at the BBC News.
Another hidden cost of wind and EV’s.
Note the advertising spiel — every dumb program has the word “smart” in the title.
h/t Pat, GPWF
Image: Wikimedia National Institute of Standards and Technology
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Smart meters are introduced in order to get rid of meter readers. In Victoria also to allow the suppliers to turn off all or any of your power – particularly to the air conditioning or sub floor heating.
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Not our way. Meter readers have to physically read our meters because there is no wireless connection to do otherwise. That’s also why we can’t read our usage in real time on any device (other than a Watts Clever). These smart meters also no longer separate the hot water service from other power in the house, so we can’t avail ourselves with better deals where the hot water service is managed separately. And everything is time of use and what household is using much electricity between 11pm and 7am?
I have a suspicion that turning off power is an all or nothing affair with our meter.
50
Have had smart meters for several years and still have off peak hot water.
20
The other thing Smart meters do is read and store for daily ‘text message’ the usage per half hour ( or 20 mins) to match the grid supply charging time blocks.
Mine can also display the current voltage, the amperage, the instantaneous kW and a few other things I dont understand.
It is able to switch off and on the hot water which is separately wired from the time when ripple control was used for that under old style meters. If I want uninterrupted hot water ( I dont , I have my own timer and currently have 75 mins only per day), then I pay a higher tariff and presumably the smart meter is coded to allow that.
30
We were having a duscussion about snart meters ladt night at dinner, and every single person said they increased cost to households significantly and allowed maximum prices to be charged for electricity, overall the opinion was dont ever get one….
60
I told my supplier I didn’t want one.
And if they kept asking, I would sue for harassment.
If they fitted one without permission I would sue for trespass and criminal damage.
20
Several years ago our local power company (actually a RECC) installed digital AMI/Smart meters with the advertised reason to eliminate humans reading the old analog meters plus to detect outages and capture usage data. No attempt was made to control a homes electronic usage. It was proposed and explained along with the cost-benefit analysis at the annual meeting prior to installation. Haven’t seen a meter reader in years.
10
Have readers here seen this?
https://inpowermovement.com
People are responding to these smart meters being imposed on them with ‘letters of liability’.
20
Have readers here seen this?
https://inpowermovement.com
People are responding to these smart meters being imposed on them with ‘letters of liability’.
10
Experiments with intermittent generators leads to erratic gluts and droughts of energy, which leads to experiments in fancy metering, loved by the developers, paid for by consumers to benefit the suppliers.
121
We haven’t seen a meter reader since 2012.
In central Washington State, our utility installed meters that send a signal to a small plane. There has been no claim that the meters are smart – – just more modern than the ones of 50 years ago.
In the future, perhaps, the piloted plane will be replaced by a “drone” type thing.
Initial report claimed the readings took just 1/4 of the time of sending out readers in the utility’s vehicles.
11
My experience of having the smart meter installed in a Chicago suburb:
The power went off for maybe 10 minutes, which of course led to a computer restart and a microwave flashing 12:00, no biggie.
Then I got my next months bill that was 500% above normal, apparently the meter reader misplaced a few digits from the old analog meter 🙂
A phone call to the provider, in which I assured them that I was in fact a scrooge and didn’t have any Christmas lights burning, led them to believe that it was simple human error.
They adjusted the bill, and now they don’t have to pay any meter readers payroll/benefits/insurance.
Business is business, just don’t try to sell me on the “improving grid reliability”.
70
Beware the smart meter. It will become a tool to regulate and control not only how much power you can use but when you can use it.
When we had one installed the first thing that happened is that the current and past meter readings disappeared from my bil. When I enquired I was told that with the smart meter they no longer have that information to give me. Bottom line, I lost my ability to audit my bill.
When the meter was installed I looked it up by exact make and model number which are displayed prominently on the meter below the display. I found out that among other things it can do, it can be configured so Edison can shut off my power remotely at any time they choose. I don’t know if the one on my house right now has that option but I suspect it does. Why would they not include that? If used properly it could shut off power when someone moves out and turn it back on again when the new tennant moves in and there would be no need for an expensive technician visit to do that job. But if used improperly… Anyone’s guess.
The smart meter can be configured to charge you more or less per kWh depending on time of day. So now, your bill each month might look like the result of throwing darts at numbers on the wall. They can screw you with these things if they want to.
Since when has someone selling a service like electricity had a sensible need to charge differently at different times of day? Only since the state wants to avoid building the additional capacity needed to keep a growing base load running. Only since the state wants to prove to the world that California can single handedly save the world from climate change. Only since good judgment went down the drain and was replaced by something I will refrain from calling what it is. But you can juxtapose the letters B and S and get exactly what I mean.
Beware the smart meter. As our households have more and more things consuming electricity we are being slowly choked off from our ability to use them.
I rue the day I decided to have one installed so my bill wouldn’t be a guess each month because they were suddenly too lazy to read the meter as they had been doing for years and getting it right.
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I don’t know if they can download new firmware to the meter remotely but it wouldn’t surprise me if they could. The advantage would be huge in terms of adapting the meter’s features to changing legislation, business needs or simply to correct an error in the original firmware.
I don’t rule out the urge to be dishonest. It would not be the first time someone tried to screw someone. I remember Enron.
When the means to measure what they sell you is changeable at will instead of constant as the old rotating disk meteers were, they can do anything they want to do. And they can prevent you from effectively auditing your bill.
191
Brilliant expose, got it all there Roy!
KK
30
That’s my concern with smart meters the diddling of rates/charges alternating throughout the day could become representative of more erratic changes in retail prices due to an unstable grid trying to compensate the unstable supply from the renewable (hate that word) sources wind and solar, it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of reality for retailers to push for this as their margins shrink trying to deal with a failing grid and big government.
There would be an ironic justice for energy retailers to fail considering they all jumped on the climate whore thinking they could have a good time while someone else paid.
50
Enough vitriol there to keep us going for another week.
KK
40
Yoni,
I initially decided not to comment on what you said. But this consideration has been boiling inside of me for a long time.
Why do I not see Edison fighting publicly for their customers? You would think that Edison’s management would want to sell electricity, not restrictions and 1 hour blackouts on hot days or gadgets hooked to customer’s compressors that allow them to be turned off at will. I suspect that computers make it easy to handle time of day pricing where before computers they couldn’t have done it without a huge investment in bean counters even if they could get the usage differentiated by time of day in the first place, which they couldn’t.
To me this all adds up to the utilities finding it more profitable to go along with government even though they must have engineers and scientists who can tell them all the drawbacks of going along with renewables. Think about it, would you run Southern California Edison without people capable of doing the same simple analysis TonyfromOz does or what Jo does? I think your answer would be no.
It looks like to hell with the customer. After all, we’re trapped. I can’t run so much as a tiny light bulb without hoking up to Edison’s lines running behind my house. So your climate whore metaphor looks very accurate to me. Go along to get along with the least effort possible has been around for so long we’ve gotten used to it. Why fight city hall when you have the public utilities commission that will always grant you a price/kWh hat makes you profitable.
Damn this nonsense. I’m tired of it.
10
The metaphor appears crass until an erudite explanation such as yours brings it into context, I Plagiarised the image from lieutenant colonel David Hackworth where he said,
“… I was forty years old, and I’d suddenly realized that the Army, this rotten whore I’d been madly in love with for the last twenty-five years, wasn’t going to mend her ways.”
Kind of apt I think. 😉
00
Don’t worry Roy, those things are part of the IoT (internet of Things) and some script kiddie will eventually start using them to either play with the lights of a city or hold the city to ransom (pay up or we switch the power off).
There is no security from outside hacking in those things which also leaves the household vulnerable to crims finding out if you are at home or not.
20
My understanding of them is that they form their own radio network, most likely on a dedicated band, allowing the whole network of a community to report to the base station located somewhere, which would then be connected to, in my case, Southern California Edison via internet.
So there would be two possible hacking scenarios. Taking over individual meters and taking over the whole thing through the internet.
I didn’t find any information about how each meter is addressed but I suspect they don’t have IP addresses, rather some other numeric address assigned to the meter at the factory and probably not changeable. That would be in line with the TV set top boxes I have that are on the internet through the router. They get a private 192.168.1.x IP address in my local private network but Frontier gets to them by forcing port forwarding in the router. Each box has its individual hardware address which they don’t mind if I can see right on the TV screen, which tells me they aren’t afraid of someone hacking into the boxes.
I don’t like to think of the horrors our internet has made possible. To encrypt my banking activity enough to keep it safe allows the same encryption to be used to hide the traffic among terrorists. And the government is worried about not being able to crack all the traffic. And I wonder if I want them to.
20
Smart Meters, oh boy! Now if we could just build and install “Smart Leaders” we could replace our current crop of government officials.
210
🙂
11
People already have the tools to build such a thing, free access to information and a vote, they just have to walk out the door of the BB sheltered workshop and write their own contracts.
20
That’ll be the day! 🙂
11
There’s no such thing as a smart politician (leader). That’s why we elected Donald John Trump. He was never a politician and had a long history of getting things done. If we could elect more like him the swamp would eventually dry up.
Meantime, we get smart meters.
20
The BBC gave the 14 year old lad in charge of public relations for this project pretty much free air to talk garbage about smart meters being an important national infrastructure project that would enable a bright new world of CHEAP clean power (and do away with those nasty expensive filthy fossil fuels).
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha……….
Meter readers/estimated bills are already redundant in the era of the internet and automated phone systems, dumb or smart meter – periodic safety/security inspections will still be required.
Like many ‘hold outs’ I cannot possibly save a penny from a smart meter which I have been charged for anyway, as I don’t use an electron I don’t need to use.
The real reason for smart meters is power management when the grid is failing and highly variable pricing tariffs based on time of day or if the wind is blowing.
150
Absolutely right, it’s all about bringing in variable tariffs depending on the time of use, and creating the ability to ration use.
Within a few short years, unless things change, they will be used for centrally controlled rolling blackouts when renewables can’t deliver enough power.
120
Probably not, at there’s moment there are mandatory reliability standards and if this is not met you are entitled to compensation, the only way to do this then is to get you to voluntarily allow them to demand manage your air conditioner by you choosing that tariff. More that 20hours outage a year, demand compensation.
PS, it’s easy to block the control channel for this if you don’t want the air-con managed anyway.
00
Here, Edison has this program where you can get a better rate if you allow them to install a device on your air conditioner that allows them to shut it down remotely. My neighbor’s compressor has such a device, it’s obvious since his compressor unit is right across the wall from my yard.
Unfortunately something hooked up that way can only stop the compressor, leaving the air handler running and you thinking you have cooling when you don’t. I’m well aware that the air handler costs much less to run than the compressor and cooling fan. But judging by it’s size and the amount of air it moves and the fact that it runs at full speed for cooling it still costs more than I’m willing to pay simply to waste the energy.
They have the option of shutting me down completely for an hour if they “need” to. But apparently the master circuit serving us also serves the local hospital but they don’t shut down hospitals so even on the hottest days we have never had a blackout. Considering that I’m well aware that California’s energy shortage is manmade, I’ll take the benefit of the good luck and smile through the hot weather.
30
An electric motor is the single largest power user in your house unless you’re doing something I can’t imagine. And a capacitor run motor isn’t doing some small job, it needs significant power.
10
The Green Lobby has been used by scheming politicians to justify actions when looking for another vein to tap.
The former independent local Newcastle and Hunter Valley Water utility has been tapped for ” spare cash ” on several occasions by our State Government masters in Sydney in what would have been Criminal Offenses but for the fact that they had been legitimized by legislation in Parliament.
So now we do not have the much needed new dam that was saved for, nor do we have the money that was ready to pay for it.
Stripped and left naked with the added insult of appropriate compensatory measures; Water Rationing.
The parallels between the two essential public services, water and electricity are striking.
Service has been throttled back.
Essential basic infrastructure has been put off and delayed.
Now we have the same Overlord attitude with electricity.
The cash transfer from us to them has been and continues to be substantial.
If we can’t have criminal charges laid in relation to this blatant manipulation of public funds the only legal solution we have is in our vote.
Do Not, repeat, do not vote for Lib Lab or Greens.
Smart Meters.
Smart A Politicians.
KK
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[…] Smart metres could save 11 pounds a year in Britain! And interesting developments in Canada as the states start to kick back against […]
00
Reaching right into the home?
A while back Peter Hitchens remarked that, despite talk of democracy, things far more important are under threat: ancient safeguards, rights and privileges which existed even a thousand years ago. These things have often come under attack or even been freely violated by those in authority, but never have people accustomed to them ever been willing to sign them away.
Is it the media? Well yeah, duh. Even as late as the 1990s there would have been an expose or two about government and corporations getting their fingers into the most private matters – and leaving them in with the help of automation and algorithms. Now it’s all cool. The winner of Ultimate Warrior is going to appear on Masterchef. Get excited.
You don’t need no grubby old coins and notes, do you? You’d just be tempted to do naughty things with them, right? If your app doesn’t convince you not to buy any more lollies or Fanta, your card can just say no. Your card is, needless to say, smart.
Running a large load through your washing machine at the wrong hours? Might have to stop that before the rinse, you naughty thing. Anyway, you shouldn’t be a mummy with babies and too many things to wash when you can be out participating in the smart economy. Get smart, chick. Get agile. (Sorry about the rinse. How are you at beating and squeezing clothes? It’s very trad and green.)
They’d like us to move about freely like in the old days, but y’know…there’s that t*rror thing to worry about now. (Authorities just happen to be running a drill on dealing with a t*error situation when the actual situation occurs! It’s amazing how many drills are interrupted by real situations these days. That’s got to convince us how bad it is. They better keep an eye on us, just in case. Thank God for those drills. Talk about lucky.)
Guys, they’re talking about getting their fingers into our homes. Right inside our homes.
We shut our doors…but they’re INSIDE OUR HOMES.
120
Correct.
The NBN made sure a govt mandated device was effectively forcibly installed in your home to monitor all of your internet traffic….and bathe you in microwaves…what a bonus!
The NBN was nevet about tevhnoligy, it eas basically making people easier to monitor. If you think its anything else youre fooling yourself.
Liberty us the ability to halt the dead hand of govt at the door.
Winston Smith scenario isnt far off…
40
Smart meters are not (YET) compulsory in the UK, but senior citizens have been targetted with junk mail, seemingly official leaflets in Post Offices and door to door snake oil salesmen suggesting that if they don’t have one installed, they may have to pay for one when they are made compulsory.
Interesting (and useful) site at http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/ and newspaper article “Six reasons to say no to a smart meter” (click)
20
I’m a cattle farmer. When I sell my cattle to the meat works I do so on a ‘grid’. Basically each animal is sawn in half, then each ‘side’ is weighed and priced based on dentition, fat cover, meat colour, and something called butt shape (supposedly an indication of lean meat yield). I’m then given a ‘kill sheet’ with all this information on it. My annual turn off of 400 steers produces 800 records. Which I can then study, the difference in price received per ‘side’ can be huge. So naturally I carefully analysis this information, and adjust my breeding and feeding program to produce more high priced ‘sides’. Here’s the thing – After 20 years, the figure at the bottom of the sheet (the av price received) hasn’t changed relative to the current market. It has slowly dawned on me that the meat works operators have computers too. They know what the bell curve of the animals they are slaughtering is, and they simply adjust their grid to produce the av price they want to pay. The primary purpose the ‘kill sheet’ is to distract me from the bottom line, and create the illusion that I have some control over it.
You will find the same thing with variable tariffs. Its gives you something to think about other than the bottom line, and creates the illusion you have some degree of control. It people change their usage they will simply change the tariffs to maintain their av price. So your total bill for the year won’t change.
Like my steers it doesn’t matter if one sells for $2000 and another for $1000, what matters is my total return for the year.
150
Interesting.
30
“Smart meters are supposed to play a major part in the UK’s clean vehicle revolution by allowing electric cars to charge overnight when wind power is strong, demand is low, and energy is cheap.”
What happens if there is a still night? Will lots of electric cars be charged anyway? And, if so, where does the electricity come from, seeing the wind turbines won’t be working? In one sentence the whole stupidity of renewables is laid bare.
90
I recall some time ago people complained when they had smart meters installed and their power bills actually increased. My electrician friend advised me against taking up a free offer in NSW to convert for that very reason.
40
Charge electric cars at night while the wind is strong? Well, that’ll work well judging by their lack of wind the last few weeks.
‘Smart’ is another example of newspeak, meaning the opposite of its original meaning.
61
Is it true that the smart meters transmit data via the mobile phone system? Way back in the 80’s the SECV was transmitting directly via the transmission wires and set up a “private” system for the Cain government outside the then Telecom system and could do do because it was government owned and outside Federal control.
Last summer part of our home that included the air-con was shut off for about 3 hours. We kept the fridge going by running a long lead from part of the house still on power (and yes, the fuse switches were checked had not been tripped).
40
Smart energy meters – it’s just a joke everyone knows that!!!
After a scathing MP’s report on the benefit of smart meters in the UK, it (the report) the concludes that the government should speed up the implementation of the smart meter program!
What crap!!!
If theses MP’s had any balls, let alone common sense they would recommend an end to this disastrous program. The 11 million smart meters already installed should be immediately removed and replaced by ‘common sense meters’ and the defuct and useless smart meters either dumped into suitable landfill or alternatively melted down and forged into a monument to climate change stupidity.
This monument would be displayed directly infront of Parliament House!!!
Regards Geoff W
70
I like the monument idea.
10
I often think smart phones fall into the same category. My old green screen nokia was bulletproof and all i needed.
The irony is for every smartphone, we pay $1000 for a free linux distro…..
10
slightly more to it than a linux distro really, but its a good line
00
Smart meters have so many advantages, why fight the inevitable ?
Not needing meter readers walking around is a big saving and so much more efficient.
I can read my daily usage immediately on the internet, at a glance.
The suppliers have a lot more real time data, allowing them to run their business more efficiently and economically.
To say none of these savings would be passed on to consumers is just wrong IMO.
05
More profit to the business owners of the electricity distributorship.
KK
20
A more efficiently run business with more information and options for consumers.
02
Goodie. Tomago Aluminium and its thousands of employee can now follow their own doom online.
Of course, with modernised, extended, abundant and constant coal power this seat-sniffing, peeping-tom stuff would be irrelevant. Because there would be no rationing, just fair price for a great product. Like the proverbial boiling frog, we are being conditioned for measliness and power rationing, right by the world’s greatest coal supply. It’s rather like sitting someone down by a huge river and forcing them to buy water in fancy bottles. It’s that kind of “business” and that kind of “market”, the Posh Left’s idea of the Invisible Hand.
But, of course, as we just go greener and greener and more and more shutdowns occur, our degraded and neglected coal power will be blamed. It’s why we have The Conversation and HuffPo, after all.
90
Good analogy.
20
Jeff, if it was just a matter of closer monitoring for the consumer and easier reading for the provider few would worry. In fact, I like that idea. Hell, who wants meter readers driving out to remote properties just to write down a number?
If you read back through the thread you’ll see many of us are concerned about interference and loss of privacy. Smart meters know too much about what we do with the product we buy, and they enable external manipulation of how we use the product. That, if you haven’t noticed from comments above, is the problem.
Interference and loss of privacy are already matters we are being persuaded to shrug off. But to date we have been able to shut our doors on governments and corporations. Laws are enacted against bugging, listening in to our phone calls and collecting our internet data, and those laws need to be a lot stricter. I’m not naive about the honesty of governments and other agencies and I’m well aware that our privacy is constantly violated on line and online, but at least the law is on my side not the side of the intruders.
Phone and internet are domestic facilities but also public conveyances akin to roads and there are valid (though greatly exaggerated) arguments to justify some legal eavesdropping. I can protect myself online by using Linux, a reputable VPN, mail and browser like Proton and Brave, and by not signing in to eg YouTube and so on. (Not that I should need to do all this.)
But my electricity? It’s already possible for an agency to know if someone is using far too much and to act on that in cases where there is suspicion of drug-growing. But to allow a politicised, cumbersome and hyperactive bureaucracy (is there any other kind?) control over how and when I use power is a step down into Big Brotherland.
So, if were just the advantages you mention, I’d say yes. It’s not. And I say a huge NO.
80
No one will ever care when I use electricity, or make phone calls or what I buy at the supermarket.
You need to go off grid and use only cash if you are that worried.
04
If there is no plan to interfere with electricity use then we must be talking about different systems, Jeff. In which case we have no disagreement whatever. I’d love to hear more of how the system in Australia won’t be able to vary supply, disconnect utility services and how it won’t be hackable. Just saving the meter reader guy a trip down a couple of gullies to read a number on the side of my house and giving me off-peak deals that are considerate of neighbours? Love it. Bring it on.
Cash for me is just an option, thanks all the same. And, like you, I’m not important enough to have my calls monitored. So far the nannies only want to nag me electronically over what I eat or buy, but give them time. Love cards and phones and really love the grid (it’s a coal thing with me). If there is a more efficient way of metering and billing electricity I want it. Who cares about that old clock thing hanging off the side of the house.
But that’s not the whole story, is it? Not by a long shot is it the whole story.
But let’s get back to some serious coal use and forget the seat-sniffing. Meter me accurately any way you like, but give me electricity at a fair price and leave me alone to do what I like with it. If I use too much I pay too much, right? (Just be sure your “smart” system doesn’t get Enron-ed by the smartest guys in the room. Crony capitalists follow Big Green like a pooch on heat.)
50
“disconnect utility services and how it won’t be hackable.”
They can’t disconnect people without going through a long thorough process and is very uncommon.
People with smart meters are protected by exactly the same strict regulations that protect anyone with a traditional meter.
Hacking is extremely unlikely and hasn’t been a problem with the millions of meters worldwide over several years so far.
If your meter was maliciously hacked I would say you would be an instant media sensation.
13
This is very comforting, Jeff. I’ll quote your reassurances.
20
Jeff, are you living in cloud coco land?
As a domestic customer with a smart meter all they need is your meter number to be able to switch you off when there isn’t enough power available. They can start rolling blackouts as necessary and there is nothing you can do about it and with some variants of the smart meters they ca just switch off any heavy load you are using, washing machine, water heater etc,, but leave the lights on, again with you being unable to do anything about it.
The switch off ability is the main reason for smart meters being used where power is obtained from unreliables, remote usage reading is way down the list if reasons for forcing ‘smart’ meters on households.
40
With you there ivan & mosomoso, have posted on this at #10.1.1 above
If smart meters were so benign. why the need in the UK to indoctrinate children and scare Old Age Pensioners (Senior Citizens) into having them installed?
40
My reply ended up as #20.
00
Deloittes did a study for Vic Govt on smart meters that reported total costs $2.3 billion, total benefits $2.0 billion, net cost $300 million over 20 years, or about $15 million per year. That works out to about $15 per customer if there are 1 million households in Victoria, so comparable tot he UK number. Benefits included lower tariffs, lower network costs through demand reduction, and avoided network costs such as meter reads etc.
I can now download the history of my electricity consumption for every 30 minute interval over last two years.
But I suspect the biggest expected benefit is customer response. Some new tariffs now have peak, shoulder and off peak prices, encouraging customers to change their electricity use patterns.
Can you see the future news reports: Tomorrow the sun will be shining and the wind will be blowing, so do your cooking, washing, etc in the middle of the day and take advantage of 50% off your normal electricity rates. But at night turn off your heating from 5-9pm.
10
Only wish it was 50%. In my country you can chose a power supplier who offers ‘ wholseale
market spot pricing + a margin’ , so it goes further than 2 tariffs, peak and off peak. The price could be different for each 1/2 period. They have an occasional horror price when it totally rockets from say 11c kWh to 40c or higher for short periods.
The spot price only covers a small portion of the bill as network charges, metering taxes etc
10
In Australia, you can buy “green power” from a supplier who is sourcing power from renewable sources only. The trick here is that they include legacy hydro power, built decades ago, before the greens stopped the building of any new dams through compliant politicians of the ALP.
But try and buy power from “coal only” sources. No way.
10
One reason never to buy power from AGL (apart from the annoying ads I mean)
10
See: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/mps-expose-smart-meter-con/#more-34679
00
Mps wouldnt know up from down. I can absolutely guarantee they arent going back to analogue meters ever.
20
Nobody is suggesting that are they? the debate seems to be the extended functionality in what was previously a usage measuring device.
00
“It must be noted that the saving of £11 pa is not net of the cost of the rollout. In other words, customers will effectively pay at least £400 for a smart meter, in order to save £11 a year thereafter”
If figures like this are true, it is a worry.
My main concern is the pure economics of it.
10
A smart meter offers me no advantages.
I could see my daily usage ‘at a glance’ by reading the meter. But I monitor my consumption monthly.
My daily usage being pretty predictable.
Yes, I have to go online to provide the utility with my monthly reading, but the site is bookmarked, so less than a minute.
Consequently, I haven’t seen a Meter Reader in years.
Generators have to adjust rapidly to changes in demand as a whole, and already have the required data.
In what other areas do you see individual real-time data benefitting the suppliers?
30
That should have been under #17. Ah, well.
00
I am getting bombarded with requests to install a ‘smart’ meter which no doubt I will be paying for through my electricity bill.
For the last 8 years I have been using an OWL meter to show my electricity usage.
It cost £25 and shows me all I need to know. IF the estimated average saving with a ‘smart’ meter is supposed to be £26 per year (as quoted by the government publicity)then I have already paid for it 8 times over.
I send my main meter readings to the electricity supplier once a quarter, so have no problem over ‘estimated’ readings. A meter reader comes about once a year to check the meter reading I have been sending in is accurate.
On a different tack, we have had no wind to speak of for the past 6 weeks, with a resulting negligible amount of electricity being produced. Times must be hard for the windmill operators if they are being paid for electricity actually being produced. Or are they being paid for the electricity the ‘might’ have produced according to their nameplate capacity.
No spare electricity to charge the EV batteries or pump water to refill pumped storage.
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Under federal legislation, smart meters are now the default installation for all new homes, or where an electricity meter needs replacing for NSW, ACT, SA, Tas and Qld.
In Victoria there are incentives available under the Energy Saver Incentive scheme to support the installation of in-home displays.
According to the Victorian Energy Saver site site, worldwide trials have found in-home displays helped consumers reduce their energy consumption from between 5 and 15%.
These devices show in real time:
– how much electricity you’re using
– how much your electricity is costing per hour.
By contacting your network provider you can arrange to downlaod consumption data in 30 minute intervals for last 24 months.
The two wireless networks your smart meter use are called HAN (home area network) and WAN (wide area network). Smart meters use HAN to communicate with each other and your in-home display. WAN is used when smart meters need to communicate with an energy provider.
WAN is a secure network, similar to the one your mobile phone uses to send and receive data,
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You don’t need a £400 smart meter You are paying for to tell you how much electricity you are using in real time, or how much it is costing. You caqn get that information by buying a simple meter you can install yourself, with no need to interfere with your wiring.
At £11 per year saving in electricity costs it will take 36 years to get your money back.
Will the smart meters even last that long?
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When smart meters were introduced into Australia on the back of the hysteria in the UK, it was made very clear in the accompanying literature that smart meters could be used for “load shedding”.
What this was described to mean was the supplier could turn off supply to your premises in a range of circumstances, some of which were referred to, like emergencies etc, and others which were vague.
But what has emerged in Left politics and the fanatical commentary of the Greens, is that this feature was also pushed so that it could be used to enforce the UN Agenda 21 goals of rationing power supply to residential and business users. This is especially frightening when the same fanatics are deliberately causing gross power supply to be reduced under the guise of moving to renewables.
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The title of this piece is a tad misleading, smart meters will not save £11, they will save £11 EACH.
I’m thinking of getting two
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😀
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You’ve got to look behind their rhetoric and propaganda and cross reference instances.
The “white goods” makers are pushing internet connectivity as well as “connected devices” – an example: there are a number of washing machines with NO CONTROLS on them – you set them up and start them from an app on your smartphone.
It’s only a short step from that to having the Gen2 or Gen3 (Gen 1 was the failed one that stopped communicating when you switched suppliers) talking to your hardware and cancelling it in high load conditions.
Imagine you guys in Oz – shit hot day and your A/C suddenly stops working because the smart meter told it to because there’s “unusually high demand”.
It’s the way of the future – they won;t put on more production (just as they won;t build more dams)… but YOU are the “criminal” for wanting what the hell you;re paying for!
Smart meters are coming in to enable them to control your usage – these lies and propaganda of “look at all this savings you COULD make” is just the smokescreen.
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