OT: New National Grid Exec Director looks to Smart Grid to balance renewables output

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah OK. Yes you probably have a heat pump to cool the condenser and heat the input.

Mmm. MIne is pretty good.

[Tim Watts]

No - it's too old for such fancyness (1995). It just runs room air over one side of a heat exchanger and the wet air over the other. Which is why I believe the wet side may be a closed loop.

So's mine, but when you take out the main filter (not the lint trap), there's still a fair bit of grime and s**te in the ductwork on the "clean" side.

[Chris J Dixon]

Don't they need the Smart Meters in order to implement the new charges with time-of-day pricing, and whatever else they think might provide a financial incentive?

It won't be long before a whole new raft of complication is added to the already difficult tariff choice.

Chris

[harry]

It should be apparent to the most brain dead that "nukes" are obsolete technology.

[harry]

The purpose of the smart meter is to enable you to be charged more when the re is a dearth of electricity. When it's windy/sunny you might get electricity for free.

The purpose of "smart appliances" is to "know" when electricity is cheap. And to act in accordance with preplanned instructions. Which will be down to the ownwer.

Eg "When electricity costs more then (say) £0.08/unit, shut down."

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not sure I have a 'main filter'

But thats where the 'henry' comes in.

[tim...]

It isn't meant to

it's to smooth out the 10% surge when everyone switches on their kettle during the ad break in Easterners, or whatever.

The grid are very good at predicting these spikes and are ready for them.

So, by telling all of your smart fridges/freezers/washing machines/immersion heaters to turn themselves off for 5 minutes, one minute ahead you have coped with the surge from normal generation without bring in your back up

But as I have said before, the idea that people are going to replace perfectly good fridges/freezers/washing machines with smart ones just to help the grid is laughable, so it is 20 years away before enough smart appliances will be installed to make a difference.

tim

[tim...]

It is being rolled out at their expense

that is why it is happening so slowly

tim

[Tim Watts]

You probably won't if it's not a condensing type. The filter is accessed on mine in the bottom on the other side to the removable heat exchanger cartridge.

[Tim Watts]

They wouldn't - how many decades would it take to agree what the "smart protocol" would look like? They cannot even design a universal smart meter.

This would start out taking the form of a 13A adaptor, which 1 or more could be installed inline with key appliances.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The point is of course to then move to a 'smart tariff', so that they pay for peak time leccy through the nose.

Or simply build lots of nukes

[Andy Burns]

Well, 1/4 of my elec (1.5MWh/year) not of my elec+gas! It's only A rated, not A++++++ DeepGreenEcoBollox.

Devices such as kettle, oven, toaster etc show as a tall but usually narrow spike on my smart display, but the one thing that's recognisable above my base load and the random PCs, TVs and smaller appliances turning on/off is the approx 1:3 duty cycle of the fridge-freezer.

I use gas for C/H and for H/W all year round, so completely different usage pattern.

[Andy Burns]

I thought for a moment you were proposing smart kettles that would refuse to boil during ad-breaks :-P

I wouldn't object to a 5 minute interruption in any given hour to any of those, providing e.g. the washing machine is smart enough to just carry on afterwards, so long as the slippery slope doesn't become a one hour outage to cover the whole evening peak on dark winter evenings.

Yep.

[critcher]

[Capitol]

I worked on a smart meter in the early 90s. The metering was a nightmare at that time. The metering chips were somewhat unreliable and the reporting output system had to have a 20 year repair life. The worst problem was the reporting back to the central computer, which was totally unpredictable as the routeing varied from minute to minute. It reminded me of the billing problems on another job, where the call would be switched during the live period and if you were lucky, the person you called paid for the call. It took months to just start to sort that one out in software.

[Andy Burns]

And what compulsion would people have to insert this lumpy 13A adapter? The first time a bug turns off a few freezers for 2 weeks in the middle of the summer holidays it'll make the papers and they'll all end-up in the bin.

[Tim Watts]

Slightly more than buying a new appliance :)

[Vir Campestris]

I'm pretty sure mine doesn't recirculate. The room it's in gets noticeably humid as well as warm.

And that's a high efficiency heat pump type. (John Lewis, FWIW)

Andy

[Tim Streater]

Well quite. It's *only* apparent to the brain-dead.

[bert]

They work 24/7 unlike crappy renewables.