In your quote above. If the substation has no meter then what are you comparing the sum of the smart meters usage with?
The substation also powers hundreds of legally unmetered supplies such as street lights and traffic crossings.
In message , at 16:12:12 on Sun, 8 Mar 2015, ARW remarked:
You still might be able to spot serious greedy [unmetered] sinks of power like the said cannabis farm. I think they prefer using infa-red cameras in helicopters though.
I don't disagree but each business needs its 'levers' to pull to attract new customers. If they automatically moved each customer to the new cheapest tariff as it was announced then the changes would have to be minimal to keep their turnover within their internal budgets and they would largely fail to attract new customers.
For good or evil we have a de-regulated energy market and whilst the Govt can fiddle round the edges, the bottom line is that business principles will win out unless they re-nationalise.
I don't know if you use the energy saving club comparison tools but you can set this up to email you when there is a useful saving to be made by switching. I think it triggers at £25pa saving.
being able to see power usage in real time is usefull in cases of appliances being left on, you become used to the "normal" reading and soon realise something is still consuming power.
Well we did spot that SWMBO'd had left the iron on but not by the (CurrentCost not smart meter) real time display but from the ploted power use graph from the logged data.
The iron being intermiitent and not overly large isn't that obvious on the real time display. When I started watching the display after seeing the plot (where it was very obvious) it was several minutes before I saw it come on and then it was only on for 30s or so.
In message , Roland Perry writes
Brocket estate had a C&E raid on a heated farm building let for costume storage:-)
They found one not far from me - EDF (as was) had the road up and the jointer noticed a branch cable to a derelict farm was running warm.
It was raided by the police in short order who found hidden near the back behind the derelict buildings was a fairly serious and large growhouse.
In message , Roland Perry writes
I prefer the monthly DD arrangement - , winter gas consumption pretty high due to biggish old victorian house, summer consumption low. So whilst we do built up credit in the summer, for some of the winter we can be running significant debits as well.
It is also the best rates as well and every little helps, and is one less household budget aspect to worry about.
We've been on fixed deals for a few years now I think, as they have been the cheapest.
The only downside really is that some deals have exit penalties - in the £15-30 range it seems - which isn't that much on an annual energy bill for most people. But not all fixed deals have it - eg our Scottish Power electricity doesn't, and they can't apply it within 49 days of the end of the tariff.
Best rates at the moment (and for a few years now) seem to be on fixed rates - in fact since there were forced to simplify their tariff ranges often there seems to only be a choice between the standard tariff and fixed deals
In message , at 18:56:06 on Sun, 8 Mar 2015, Chris French remarked:
After having been jerked around right royally by nPower's "sculpting" scheme (where they overcharged by manipulating the way tariff changes interacted between periods of high and low consumption) I never again want to be in the situation of having to check I've been billed the correct amount when estimated consumptions and my billing periods don't co-incide with the timing of price increase/decreases.
I'll pay for what I use, when I use it; thanks.
The fixed price they offered me was higher than I was already paying, expecting me to bet that ad-hoc energy prices were going to increase more. As it happens, they've gone down, as has BG's ad-hoc rate.
Very different to a radio receiver because there is no turning mechanism.
None of my monitors are.
In message , at 06:38:35 on Mon, 9 Mar
2015, john james remarked:The tuning(sic) mechanism is digital signal processing, which produces the same effect as analogue signal processing with inductor/capacitor circuits/PLLs etc.
Because their overall power consumption is lower, not because the percentage used for the backlight is less.
I too am with OVO and I too am going to ditch them.
In message , Roland Perry writes
Which is precisely the technique used by our local Crime Commissioner to sell an increase in the Police part of council tax - it's less than the price of an apple a day.
They don't deserve to retain customers with their current policy. As it stands at the moment none of their staff are able to negotiate terms to retain existing customers. If I were you, before switching, withdraw the maximum cash available of any excess balance on your account.
Nothing even remotely like the same effect.
With two TVs running at the same time, its never going to be possible to work out from the total house power consumption what is on the screen of either TV program wise because it is never going to be possible to work out what the backlight power of a particular TV currently is.
With some other power consumers like say the toilet light it is certainly possible to work out that it is the toilet light from the times that it comes on and how long it stays on for compared with an internal cupboard light or say a some other room light.
In message , at 07:35:25 on Mon, 9 Mar
2015, john james remarked:It is, but it's clear I won't ever convince you, so I'm out.
In message , Roland Perry writes
Fair enough, it suits some people. I prefer to save a few quid
I always take a reading at tariff change times anyway (in fact I normally send in readings every couple of weeks or so nowadays - easy with a smartphone to just stand in front of the meter and send it off)
A while back, fixed price tariffs tended to be more than variable tariffs and I stayed on a variable tariff. but that seems to have changed lately - I think maybe because prices stopped rising so much (and then ahve fallen) and also they have less tariffs now.
All the cheapest deals when I recently checked (and switched gas supplier) were fixed priced deals. Though I think they have bottomed out Npowers current fixed tariff is a little higher than the one I moved to about a month ago.
If you are on the standard variable tariff (which of course you might not be - could be a legacy variable tariff), I'd be very surprised if a fixed deal was not cheaper at the moment
You not being able to explain how you work out what the backlight intensity of a particular TV from the house power consumption when there are two TVs on different programs noted.
If you have an LCD set without dynamic contrast enabled the power doesn't vary anyway (well not enough to be able to tell what program is on). If you have a plasma set you can probably tell but who has them these days?
We've a couple in our collection, they make great room heaters.
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