Smart Meters - the Telegraph's take

[michael adams]

How comes they're showing a picture of Turnip's house. when the article is supposed to be about Germany ?

michael adams

...

[Robin]

If you put aside your presumptions and re-read more carefully what I posted you may see that I said nothing to dispute that smart meters and demand management go hand in hand. I was merely pointing out that the Telegraph article, and the underlying Ofgem consultation document, involve not on jot or tittle of further progress towards it.

If you would like that repeated, with gratuitous insults, just ask.

[John Rumm]

What if the technology does it for them and does not offer the choice?

Its the usual bait and switch - get the punters to buy in with the promise of discounts, and when its too late, they work out there are strings.

Still at least it could all be "joined up", so when you kid's jumper is still wet in the morning because the system decided not not run the tumble drier when you wanted it, you won't have to worry since it also used too much of the power in your EV and now you have not got the range to drive them to school anyway ;-)

Personally, no. However I expect that some people were sold on the idea that this kind of scheme would make intermittent power generation somehow more "useful", by allowing automatic "demand management".

[tabbypurr]

obviously that's not what motivates electricity companies or governments

why you think that

NT

[tabbypurr]

The first wave of demand management will be for things like immersion heate rs, freezers, washing machines, dishwashers. Whether it will produce much s aving for the system overall is a fair question. A later wave could cover a ll sorts of things, changes in background lighting, perhaps going from left on to PIR operation etc etc. The billions of £ of equipment could sav e us at least tuppence.

NT

[michael adams]

The first wave of demand management will be for things like .... freezers,

Yup.

Demand management for appliances controlled by thermostats.

Who'd have thunk it ?

Presumably it switches the thermostat off first.

michael adams

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[Robin]

ISTM the "first wave of demand management" is likely to be much lower tech - an evolution of Economy 7/10 which tells people when power will be cheaper/dearer and leaves them to decide what to use when. Already being tried out by some smaller suppliers. Eg Agile Octopus tells people a day ahead the prices by half hour slots. I'm waiting for news of how it works in practice - and of their customer service - but as pensioners with gas heating and cooking at present I'd not rule it out in principle. Means I need a bit more than the present spreadsheet to compare tariffs though :(

[Dave Liquorice]

price,

That'll only work for appliances that, to the consumer, are "always on", things like fridges/freezers etc.

Like it. B-)

cooking

Same here. There is a certain amount of "novelty value" when you first get a display that shows current consumption and you can make savings. But there are only some many things you can switch off rather than leave in standby or plugged in and "on". Once the novelty has worn off, habit will have those things being left in standby/on again in fairly short order.

If any "automatic demand management" impinges on when people can do things they want to do they'll opt out. It can only be effective if it has no or very minimal affect on what people want to do and when they want to do it.

Of course any demand management is more to do with clipping the peak off the early evening winter peak deamnd. By knocking 500 MW of that you can "save" a whole power station being required but sit idle for the vast majority of the year.

500 MW, how many fridges is that?

Lets assume that when the compressor is running a fridge takes 100W.

500,000,000 / 100 = 5,000,000 fridges, hum a lot...

BUT a fridge doesn't run it's compressor all the time. Lets assume a

20% duty cycle. That means to save 100 W on average you need to control 5 fridges. 5,000,000 * 5 = 25 million fridges, thats more than the number of households in the country...

It ain't going to happen any time soon.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Think a fridge compressors takes more than that. 100-200W is AVERAGE and up to 1Kw AVERAGE for big fridges and freezers.

So you can get there with only 5 million fridges

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You leave non essential stuff switched on when not being used? Why? If you are that lazy, why would a different price for the electricity matter?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

So that's why you want cheap food from around the world? Move the costs of refrigeration elsewhere? Then chuck things out here rather than refrigerate?

[Andrew]

It's going to make the runninmg of all those 365/24 MRI scanners with their superconductor magnets really expensive.

[Bill Taylor]

I think you're living in the past.

Our fridge (big, full height one) consumes about 65W for 8 minutes in every 40 minutes. True there's a spike to about 750W as the compressor starts, but that's only a second or so.

The upright freezer which is a bit bigger consumes about 32W for 40 minutes every 105 minutes.

Chest freezer consumes about 60W for 18 minutes every hour.

Any appliance that's modern enough to be switchable remotely should have similarly low consumption.

Can't see switching appliances like these off remotely achieving anything.

[Andy Burns]

By putting the price of liquid nitrogen up?

[Robin]

You mean all those scanners that the NHS only got around recently to using _at all_ at weekends, let alone using 24/7?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Why the NHS isnt 24x7 is beyond me.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Because it costs more to run anything 24/7. But then the likes of you probably expect others to work 24/7 for 8/5 pay.

[charles]

because people only get ill during "office hours". ;-)

[michael adams]

The usual nonsense

The busiest A&E departments run 24/7.

The ambulance service and paramedics are in call 24/7

Junior doctors can be on call 24/7

They can't operate 24/7 for routine operations, because there aren't sufficient surgeons and there will be even less following Brexit.

Just as there hardly enough nurses to go around now .

Emergency operations can and are performed 24/7 in larger centres.

As somebody who's taken full advantage of the NHS given the number of heart operations you claim to have had, all at the expense of your fellow taxpayers it goes without saying - basically another hypocritical parasite just like your mate Timmy, I'm rather surprised you didn't know any of this already.

But then your ignorance of just about everything seems to be all encompassing, doesn't it ?

michael adams

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[Jock Green]

Yes.

Because that is much more convenient than turning everything off when it is not being used. Much more convenient to plug the charging cable into the phone when it needs charging than it is to turn the charger off when it isnt being used to charge the phone. And with modern switch mode chargers, they use very little power when not charging the phone so the convenience costs very little and in fact over a decade costs less than having a plug board with individual switches on it for the chargers.