Energy 'smart Meter' In Every Uk Home

[cashinmattress]

The Government will give the go-ahead this week for 'smart' energy meters to be fitted in every home.

It will also unveil plans to create an 'intelligent grid' for appliances to be turned on and off automatically, taking advantage of cheap off-peak power.

The announcement, only days before the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, aims to show that the UK is taking the threat to the environment seriously and is prepared to spend billions cutting greenhouse gases.

At the centre of the new system is the creation of a multi-billion pound company that will collect information from meters in 26 million households.

Telecoms giants O2 and Vodafone are negotiating key roles in the organisation, which will be responsible for receiving information on electricity and gas usage in every home and passing it on to energy companies.

Initially, this 'hub' is likely to be a joint venture, but energy analysts expect that once established, it could be sold off as a single company.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband will announce details on Wednesday. If it works as planned, it will make the UK the most advanced 'green energy' country in Europe by 2020.

The blueprint will set out how energy companies will design and install the new meters. Crucially, for the first time it will also give a glimpse of how an 'intelligent grid' would operate, with household appliances coming on when energy is cheap.

Over the next two years, the energy and telecoms industries will design a system that will be compatible with all the various computer and communication systems operated by fuel suppliers. As the rollout starts, energy companies are certain to compete fiercely to win customers.

Energy suppliers may have begun cutting their gas and electricity charges - but some are still a lot cheaper than others. These links should help... special report 'Is it worth switching?' and try our fuel bills calculator

The installation programme is expected to cost £7 billion by 2020. Information from the meters will be sent, usually through the mobile phone network, to the supplier via the energy hub. This will show household consumption and end disputes over bills.

The meters will also show how much carbon is being used and allow consumers to identify exactly where energy is being used throughout the house.

They will also allow consumers to sell back surplus energy generated by solar panels or mini-wind turbines to the grid.

Finally, if householders agree, the meters will be capable of being used by power companies to remotely control some appliances. Fridges, for example, could be turned off at times of peak demand and be automatically switched back on if the temperature inside rises too high.

In a few years, when electric cars become the norm on Britain's roads, smart meters could be used to control periods of high demand and low electricity supply. They could take power from the batteries of plugged-in vehicles that are fully charged and divert it to the grid.

Households are expected to save between two and three per cent of the energy they consume each year, cutting bills by up to £40. At the same time, more efficient use of power stations is expected to reduce demand, saving millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year.

I don't give a sh1t about 'greenhouse' gases, especially within the UK. Our contribution globally will drop over the coming decades, as inversely as BRISC output will grow. It's just a more effiecent way to tax, and a built in, real time, home regulation and monitor. This could even be used to penalize and restrict folk.

Having an outside body influence when I can operate an appliance in my own home is completely the wrong way to go.

[D.C.]

How many months until Npower accidentally turn off someone's home dialysis machine and kill them I wonder?

[Guest UK Debt Slave]

I don't give a sh1t about 'greenhouse' gases, especially within the UK. Our contribution globally will drop over the coming decades, as inversely as BRISC output will grow. It's just a more effiecent way to tax, and a built in, real time, home regulation and monitor. This could even be used to penalize and restrict folk.

Having an outside body influence when I can operate an appliance in my own home is completely the wrong way to go.

If they could control how many times you flush the bog, they'd do it

Nasty control freaks.

There's no limit to their desire to control everything we do

[winkie]

I knew that HIPs would lead to other things....higher taxes for poorly insulated homes maybe.

[R K]

Only party members will be permitted an electricity allowance this winter comrade.

Did you not vote for Supreme Leader Mandelschild? Let me see.....oh dear, it seems not.

[abaxas]

What a fantastic idea, make people pay for the cost of something!

Who would have thought it.

[shedfish]

this article, not entirely unrelated, is the 'most read' currently, in The Times

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

[Darkman]

Any sign of fraud or unpaid debt and your power will be shut off remotely. No warrant necessary. I think the meters do have benefits though, allowing you to save money and be better informed. But readers will still call to check the meters. Energy companies are obligated by law to maintain the meter. The only way they can do that is get inside your house and take readings etc. It'll mean less visits though.

But none of this will happen until they find a smart meter that actually works and sends a clear signal from most locations. That hasn't happened yet, and it's getting late in the day for the 2020 deadline.

[Darkman]

this article, not entirely unrelated, is the 'most read' currently, in The Times

Well that needs a thread all of it's own! Personally I think it's an international scandal.

[XswampyX]

Automatic health and oestrus control in dairy husbandry through computer aided systems.

Disturbances in health and reproduction are leading to immense economic losses in dairy husbandry. Improvements are possible by using computer and sensor technology in animal monitoring and herd management. The development and usefulness of sensors for automatic health and oestrus monitoring, integrated into a “computer aided management system”, are presented in this paper.

Mooo!

[cells]

What bloody *****ers. This is a scam with big business and big government finding ways to give each other backhanders

There is ALWAYS a cheap way to do a job almost as good.

They say we need smart meters to help manage the grid. Well its not bloody rocket science, there are perhaps only 2 hours in the day (and then only in winter) where the grid is really pushed. Well then just ask/force manufacturers to not allow their electronic devises to run at those times. Problem solves for a few pennies.

For example a fridge would be told not to operate at 5 to 7 pm when the grid is pushed. That means a simple clock and a simple program in the fridge. Total cost perhaps 10p.

Likewise if electric cars take off (which they wont do next decade guaranteed) just put a simple program on which only allows charging after 11pm when the grid is not pushed. You don’t need a big expensive smart grid when very cheap easy alternatives are available.

As for the £7B cost, total ********.

This is going to cost a minimum of £26B or £1000 per house. how on earth they expect to do it for £7B (about £250 per house) is beyond me. If will not be a quick job, remove the old meter, install a new one, buy the meter, put in all the electronics, etc. £1k per house MINIMIUM.

Well instead they should take the timer option and spend that £26B on 10 nuclear plants. Those 10 nukes will provide 30-35% of our electric and it would be dead cheap with that £26B subsidy. These meters are not going to cut consumption by 35%.

[cells]

Any sign of fraud or unpaid debt and your power will be shut off remotely. No warrant necessary. I think the meters do have benefits though, allowing you to save money and be better informed. But readers will still call to check the meters. Energy companies are obligated by law to maintain the meter. The only way they can do that is get inside your house and take readings etc. It'll mean less visits though.

But none of this will happen until they find a smart meter that actually works and sends a clear signal from most locations. That hasn't happened yet, and it's getting late in the day for the 2020 deadline.

Lots of things are a good idea but we live in a limited world. Spending perhaps £30B on these meters is a wasteful task when we could build 15 nuclear plants or 10,000 wind turbines or install 15 million solar hot water heaters all of which would help the nation far far more than these smart meters.

[thod]

Every home already has a meter in it which the electricity company uses to bill you. They know your consumption between readings. The gird itself is constantly monitored, they already know what the draw on the grid is from second to second. Thus there is no advantage in building a 'smart grid'.

The only thing this does is allow a more fine grained picture as each homes usage is monitored from second to second too. Yet they do not need this level of information for billing or provision of power. The only reason they would want it is because they intend to place time based restrictions. If you were to draw power at a steady rate, it would make provision easier, they do not want you drawing heavily one day then lightly the next. So they will charge a higher rate if you draw above your allocation on any day. The idea of an allocation is unappealing since it is a restriction of supply based on ration coupons rather than willingness to pay.

[erat_forte]

Variable pricing is another 'smart' option - your fridge could watch the current spot rates and 'bid' for power - it would hold off for an hour or so when the price rose too much. You would be billed for what you used at the spot rate.

However that would not be so controlling would it?

[shedfish]

Well that needs a thread all of it's own! Personally I think it's an international scandal.

you could be right... i think i'd assumed someone had already picked it up.

it's just incredible

[ChumpusRex]

Every home already has a meter in it which the electricity company uses to bill you. They know your consumption between readings. The gird itself is constantly monitored, they already know what the draw on the grid is from second to second. Thus there is no advantage in building a 'smart grid'.

It's more complicated than that. It's a free market for the supply and consumption of electricity. You contract with a power generator to provide your energy, but they have to supply it over a shared distribution network. Electricity, by its nature, cannot be stored and must be generated extemporaneously to meet the instantaneous demand. In addition, there are multiple generators competeing to supply, with different overheads and primary fuel costs.

Because demand varies greatly over the course of a day, and day-to-day, there are huge variations in the price of electricity from time to time. Last Winter, there were times when the wholesale spot price exceeded £1 per unit.

There is therefore a big problem supplying residential electricity, with only quarterly readings - neither the supplier, nor the distributer, know what your instantaneous consumption was. So there is a problem balancing up the costs when it comes to doing the accounts. There are also problems in planning generation, as an electricity supplier can't actually know how much electricity they are supplying at any instant. To some extent, the suppliers can use financial derivatives, such as electricity price futures to hedge against the need to buy in extra power at short notice - but it's still just a work-around for a broken system.

Because of this, it is a legal requirement that all commercial electricity supplies (except for those comparable to a normal home supply electricity supply) must electronically return half-hourly readings - as without this, there would be no easy way for suppliers to ensure that large customers paid a fair price. The residential smart meter is similar to this same electronic metering, brought down in cost enough to be suitable for home use.

None of that does anything about power consumption, or improving grid reliability - so the current plan goes a bit further - allowing the meter to receive instataneous price information and grid health information from the grid. The meter can then communicate that information via a screen, or it can transmit it to compatible household appliances so that they can modify their behaviour. For example, it's a daily occurrence that at about 18:00 on a Winter evening, electricity consumption surges, and so does the spot price - as everyone gets home from work, and puts the lights and TV on. A smart meter could receive the surge in price information, and send it to the fridge and freezer, which will respond by temporarily adjusting their thermostats by a couple of degrees. The result is that demand is slightly reduced for the duration of the surge period. Similarly, problems occur at power stations - maybe a squirrel jumps onto a power line and shorts it out, forcing the shutdown of the generator. This sudden shutdown can produce a big imbalance in the grid, and it may be 10-15 minutes before enough smaller power stations can be started up to make up for the loss. By sending a 'grid health warning' the meter could allow compatible appliances to lower demand during the unstable period.

This type of action is widely used in industry. Big supermarket freezers, steel plants, etc. are often remote controlled in this manner through industrial smart metering. No harm is going to come from shutting off a freezer for 15 minutes, and the lost production from shutting of a steel furnace for 15 minutes isn't great - in return, the electricity customer is able to get a better rate on their electricity, and they get paid everytime their equipment is shut off.

[corevalue]

It's more complicated than that. It's a free market for the supply and consumption of electricity. You contract with a power generator to provide your energy, but they have to supply it over a shared distribution network. Electricity, by its nature, cannot be stored and must be generated extemporaneously to meet the instantaneous demand. In addition, there are multiple generators competeing to supply, with different overheads and primary fuel costs.

Because demand varies greatly over the course of a day, and day-to-day, there are huge variations in the price of electricity from time to time. Last Winter, there were times when the wholesale spot price exceeded £1 per unit.

There is therefore a big problem supplying residential electricity, with only quarterly readings - neither the supplier, nor the distributer, know what your instantaneous consumption was. So there is a problem balancing up the costs when it comes to doing the accounts. There are also problems in planning generation, as an electricity supplier can't actually know how much electricity they are supplying at any instant. To some extent, the suppliers can use financial derivatives, such as electricity price futures to hedge against the need to buy in extra power at short notice - but it's still just a work-around for a broken system.

Because of this, it is a legal requirement that all commercial electricity supplies (except for those comparable to a normal home supply electricity supply) must electronically return half-hourly readings - as without this, there would be no easy way for suppliers to ensure that large customers paid a fair price. The residential smart meter is similar to this same electronic metering, brought down in cost enough to be suitable for home use.

None of that does anything about power consumption, or improving grid reliability - so the current plan goes a bit further - allowing the meter to receive instataneous price information and grid health information from the grid. The meter can then communicate that information via a screen, or it can transmit it to compatible household appliances so that they can modify their behaviour. For example, it's a daily occurrence that at about 18:00 on a Winter evening, electricity consumption surges, and so does the spot price - as everyone gets home from work, and puts the lights and TV on. A smart meter could receive the surge in price information, and send it to the fridge and freezer, which will respond by temporarily adjusting their thermostats by a couple of degrees. The result is that demand is slightly reduced for the duration of the surge period. Similarly, problems occur at power stations - maybe a squirrel jumps onto a power line and shorts it out, forcing the shutdown of the generator. This sudden shutdown can produce a big imbalance in the grid, and it may be 10-15 minutes before enough smaller power stations can be started up to make up for the loss. By sending a 'grid health warning' the meter could allow compatible appliances to lower demand during the unstable period.

This type of action is widely used in industry. Big supermarket freezers, steel plants, etc. are often remote controlled in this manner through industrial smart metering. No harm is going to come from shutting off a freezer for 15 minutes, and the lost production from shutting of a steel furnace for 15 minutes isn't great - in return, the electricity customer is able to get a better rate on their electricity, and they get paid everytime their equipment is shut off.

Biggest load of self-serving ****** I've seen for a while.

Exactly when are these "compatible appliances" likely to be marketed, and how quick will the uptake be? I'll make you a bet too - that they will cost more, and that the consumer will see absolutely no benefit, as the reduction in energy costs will not offset the purchase of the appliances AND their installation.

The peak loads are well known and predictable, as you say, and the power companies can and do plan for them. The best that could come of this is that the consumer will become aware that electricity will cost a shed load more at certain times, and for most, this would mean minute-by-minute observation of the "smart" meter to see when. Others will just have much bigger bills. The only winners are the generators who hope to get by, by not building any more power stations.

Or am I being too cynical?

We have a serious problem with the grid and it's lack of generating capacity looming on us, but this will do nothing to solve it. If the energy companies are going to hold us to ransom California-style, then we should simply nationalise them.

[Injin]

It's more complicated than that. It's a free market for the supply and consumption of electricity. You contract with a power generator to provide your energy, but they have to supply it over a shared distribution network. Electricity, by its nature, cannot be stored and must be generated extemporaneously to meet the instantaneous demand. In addition, there are multiple generators competeing to supply, with different overheads and primary fuel costs.

Because demand varies greatly over the course of a day, and day-to-day, there are huge variations in the price of electricity from time to time. Last Winter, there were times when the wholesale spot price exceeded £1 per unit.

There is therefore a big problem supplying residential electricity, with only quarterly readings - neither the supplier, nor the distributer, know what your instantaneous consumption was. So there is a problem balancing up the costs when it comes to doing the accounts. There are also problems in planning generation, as an electricity supplier can't actually know how much electricity they are supplying at any instant. To some extent, the suppliers can use financial derivatives, such as electricity price futures to hedge against the need to buy in extra power at short notice - but it's still just a work-around for a broken system.

Because of this, it is a legal requirement that all commercial electricity supplies (except for those comparable to a normal home supply electricity supply) must electronically return half-hourly readings - as without this, there would be no easy way for suppliers to ensure that large customers paid a fair price. The residential smart meter is similar to this same electronic metering, brought down in cost enough to be suitable for home use.

None of that does anything about power consumption, or improving grid reliability - so the current plan goes a bit further - allowing the meter to receive instataneous price information and grid health information from the grid. The meter can then communicate that information via a screen, or it can transmit it to compatible household appliances so that they can modify their behaviour. For example, it's a daily occurrence that at about 18:00 on a Winter evening, electricity consumption surges, and so does the spot price - as everyone gets home from work, and puts the lights and TV on. A smart meter could receive the surge in price information, and send it to the fridge and freezer, which will respond by temporarily adjusting their thermostats by a couple of degrees. The result is that demand is slightly reduced for the duration of the surge period. Similarly, problems occur at power stations - maybe a squirrel jumps onto a power line and shorts it out, forcing the shutdown of the generator. This sudden shutdown can produce a big imbalance in the grid, and it may be 10-15 minutes before enough smaller power stations can be started up to make up for the loss. By sending a 'grid health warning' the meter could allow compatible appliances to lower demand during the unstable period.

This type of action is widely used in industry. Big supermarket freezers, steel plants, etc. are often remote controlled in this manner through industrial smart metering. No harm is going to come from shutting off a freezer for 15 minutes, and the lost production from shutting of a steel furnace for 15 minutes isn't great - in return, the electricity customer is able to get a better rate on their electricity, and they get paid everytime their equipment is shut off.

That's right folks, we have to have energy meters because it's comletely impossible to bill someone an average for their use of something over time.

Edited November 30, 2009 by Injin

[Guest Steve Cook]

Energy meters are the latest piece of the strategy to be put in place in preparation for what is to come.

None of it is designed to help us.

All of it is is designed to monitor and control us.

We are going to need monitoring and controlling when we start to kick off, once the lights start going out.

Edited November 30, 2009 by Steve Cook

[ChumpusRex]

Biggest load of self-serving ****** I've seen for a while.

Exactly when are these "compatible appliances" likely to be marketed, and how quick will the uptake be? I'll make you a bet too - that they will cost more, and that the consumer will see absolutely no benefit, as the reduction in energy costs will not offset the purchase of the appliances AND their installation.

The peak loads are well known and predictable, as you say, and the power companies can and do plan for them. The best that could come of this is that the consumer will become aware that electricity will cost a shed load more at certain times, and for most, this would mean minute-by-minute observation of the "smart" meter to see when. Others will just have much bigger bills. The only winners are the generators who hope to get by, by not building any more power stations.

Or am I being too cynical?

We have a serious problem with the grid and it's lack of generating capacity looming on us, but this will do nothing to solve it. If the energy companies are going to hold us to ransom California-style, then we should simply nationalise them.

I don't actually think you're being too cynical. The goals for smart meters are not unreasonable - after all, they are used in industry. The problem with moving them into the home is that you get a smaller return for a fixed large expenditure. My post was not intended to sell smart metering as the solution to all the problems that it is supposed to address, but to correct some of the misleading and wrong statements earlier in the thread (like that a smart meter would allow your power to be cut off, if you get behind on your bills - which it wouldn't).

The problem is that by opening up and providing competition in the domestic energy market, the government have opened a big can of worms, as the suppliers now basically have to guess who supplied what to whom and when. They have therefore been getting a lot of pressure from suppliers to sort this out with half-hourly metering.

My main problem with this scheme is the cost. It's going to work out at about £1000 per home, which strikes me as somewhat excessive. From an environemntal perspective, it's of limited value - the main benefit of smart metering is that it can provide real-time pricing and move demand to a less polluting time. But that requires that either a) you have smart appliances, or you are there and are keeping an eye on the price. When you consider the type of appliances in a typical home, the cost benefits of moving the consumption around are likely to be small. While my example was of fridges and freezers - modern fridges and freezers have small energy consumptions and the likely cost savings would probably only work out at £5-£10 per year. Of course, this mounts up when one considers millions of homes - but if you're paying £1000 for a meter, you're getting a very bad deal.

As others have mentioned, there are easier ways of achieving similar effects - timers, mains frequency monitors (a simple tool for measuring grid stability which can be produced for pennies), etc. While from a technical stand point, the idea of a sophisticated network allowing the fridge and electricity meter to negotiate a price is entertaining - it does seem that it is an overcomplicated and overengineered solution.

If the government were serious about reducing CO2 emissions, then the £26 B would be better off spent on ten nuclear power plants. That would cut the country's CO2 emissions by 10% in one go, as well as drastically improving the need for fuel imports and drastically reinforcing the grid.

Like many other NuLabour projects - this one seems to be about supplying something of relatively little benefit, at a high price, for the benefit of a select group of cronies.

[Lagarde's Drift]

Like many other NuLabour projects - this one seems to be about supplying something of relatively little benefit, at a high price, for the benefit of a select group of cronies.

So, a tax then?

[cockrobin]

This type of action is widely used in industry. Big supermarket freezers, steel plants, etc. are often remote controlled in this manner through industrial smart metering. No harm is going to come from shutting off a freezer for 15 minutes, and the lost production from shutting of a steel furnace for 15 minutes isn't great - in return, the electricity customer is able to get a better rate on their electricity, and they get paid everytime their equipment is shut off.

If an industrial freezer is shut off for 15 minutes extra energy will have to used to cool it back down to its set temperature. Same with a steel furnace, switch that off for 15 minutes and you lose alot of heat, more energy is then needed to heat it back up to set point.

The MOD have tried saving energy by remotely switching off heating and ventilation systems at times of zero occupancy during the day. The energy usage went up due to the fact the heating systems had to work harder after the off period to heat the buildings back up to occupany temperature. The MOD will spend millions trying to save 50p, as do all public sector/civil service organisations.

[Johnny Storm]

Only 5 more months of these stupid ideas that will come to nothing.

[Justice]

Yes and these meters phone home to tell Big Bro what time you put the kettle on, what time you cook dinner and what time you turn the lights out and go to bed.

of course every home should have one so lets make it law and talk about global warming and with the mejia on side we can pretend it's what the public wants.

Have you seen the latest sci-fi Terminator or is that thining too far ahead ? Darwin at it's best and all them dead people don't waste gas do they now.

Sounds mad

it also sounded mad 30 years ago to say drones would be flying over pakistan taking out anyone big bro says is part of the taliban so there you go.

[youthoftoday]

Are they trying to tell me that my fridge stays on unnecessarily? I thought it came on and chilled the inside until it gets to the required temperature and then switched off again. Silly me.

Sounds like more Government control freakery. This is no longer funny. This Government must die.