Bet British Gas a feeling a bit silly.

Doesn't it mean their smart meter customers have to give up the smart features if they want to move supplier? So if they want smart metering aren't they tied to BG for another year or at least face limited choices?

There already appears to be some iffy practices going on. Last year I was called out of the blue by someone who wanted to make an appointment for an engineer to come and replace my electricity meter because it was "too old". My meter and indeed my whole house was only five years old at the time :-) Turned out they were pushing smart meters.

At £366 per household would it be more effective to give away highly efficient TV's,fridges, freezers, lights etc. This would also do away with the need for the £14 billion somerset nuclear plant. Also it would reduce maximum demand and some standby/spinning reserve.

Richard

So-called smart meters are becoming obsolete before they are even rolled out.

As far as I can see, the main purpose of smart meters is to introduce spot pricing of energy. This would make tariffs even more complicated and impossible to compare. It relies on market forces to influence consumers' behaviour - fat chance.

Peak load shedding would be much better achieved with smart appliances, or simply smart plugs, not smart meters. That could genuinely reduce the need for new power stations and pylons, and maximise our utilisation of renewables.

Posted By: barneyThere is nothing like a kWh display and one which shows real money ticking away to get mum or dad shouting at the teenagers to turn things off when they finish using them

You can have an energy monitor without a smart meter. I have one. It has two main limitations:

(1) the monitor doesn't know the actual cost of electricity. It uses whatever rate you key into it. Not necessarily a disadvantage. You could key in 50p/kWh to scare those teenagers proper!

(2) it doesn't apportion consumption between appliances. I think this is a more important deficiency. Consumers really need to know how much each appliance uses, not just instantaneously, but long-term. You want to be able to compare, say, a phone charger using a trickle of electricity all the time, with a toaster, more powerful but only used a few minutes a day.

Posted By: rhamduPeak load shedding would be much better achieved with smart appliances, or simply smart plugs, not smart meters.

Yes, but there are only really two ways to motivate that to happen: regulation or spot pricing. Personally, I'd prefer spot pricing.

The Smartmeter technical spec omits the details of exactly how the desired communication ability is to be delivered and merely describes the functionality.

DECC are evaluating bids from several communication companies to licence to provide the service. One bidder is Arqiva (sponsors of last night's BAFTAs) who are proposing long-range radio as a solution for areas with poor mobile phone signals.

See http://www.arqiva.com/smart_meters_and_grids/smartreach/ and http://smartreach.com/successful-smart-metering-trial-in-scotland/

Fair point Rhamdu - the lower-overall-tariff method would work. It'd work for electric heating (both space and hot water) and perhaps for refrigeration and EV charging. It'd be pretty complicated for anything else but maybe other things are sufficiently time-sensitive or low-enough consumption for that not to matter. The borderline cases are, I think, cooking, dishwashers and washer/driers. They're the sort of thing you'd usually prefer to run when electricity is cheap but sometimes need when it's expensive and once you start you want them to run to completion.

Mentioning cooking here might seem odd but maybe there's something to be said for encouraging the use of slow cookers during the day to reduce consumption during the evening peak.

While it's partly about shaving the top off the peak there's also the matter of adaptation to more variable sources. Things like if the wind and/or PV produce less than expected during a particular period there's the opportunity to turn off people's immersions and freezers for an hour or two while they wind up some more gas stations. Or if a day turns out sunnier than expected turn on some heat pumps to store some energy - reducing the demand later. Ie, it's partly about reducing the amount of spinning reserve needed rather than total capacity.

Hi, I am a fan of the SMART grid. SMART meters seem to give little benefit for a cost of £11 billion. £366/home. I think that demand management gives far more bangs for the bucks. Energy efficiency/frugality probably gives the biggest bang per buck. Although I am not a big fan of regulation this one seems "sensible" :-

"Under EU legislation, every new fridge, freezer and fridge freezer sold in the UK must have an energy label (pictured right) that gives its energy rating. From 1 July 2012, any new model manufacturers make will have a rating of A+, A++ or A+++, with A+++ being the most energy-efficient."

From :- http://www.which.co.uk/energy/saving-money/guides/energy-labels-explained/fridge-and-freezer-energy-labels/

So my A+ fridge freezer rated at 1 kWh/day will still be available but nothing with larger consumption. The A+++ version will use half of this i.e. 0.5 kWh/day.

If all the older fridges/freezers are replaced over time then GW's will be knocked off peak demand AND overall consumption will fall AND people will save money. My fridge freezer payback is 10 years and allows me to freeze all my home grown produce so win win.

Richard

There was a bit in today's Telegraph about turning off fridges to same energy. Seems there are not enough fridges to make much difference and as they become better insulated then the advantages become less and less.
So to be of any use nearly all the fridges in the UK have to be running at the same time, and that has to be at a time of peak demand, then you could save 12 GW (based on 100Wp and a fridge and freezer for every house), or about a third of the UK peak load in (does depend what time of year it is). Now if we decided to do that kind of switching (an unlikely scenario anyway), we would be into real grid instability problems.
So let us get a get more realistic and just disconnect all domestic fridges at the peak times and stagger the switch on when the peak has passed. So if 10% of fridges are active during peak times, and they run for 10 minutes at a time, then we have 1.2 GW we can save, a couple of large CCGTs, but only for 10 minutes, or about the half the time it takes a turbine to come on stream. So all that would happen is that we would, in effect, take 200 MW out of use for an hour.
Just to make it really hard, generators get paid to be taken off line (really galls the REF ), but that is how the market works, so if load shedding was done at the relatively small scale there would not be any saving for the domestic user as 200 MW easily falls within normal variation.

What has to happen is being in a situation where where a 3 kW load can be guaranteed to be turned off, and that only really leaves stored hot water, and then you have to be sure that the heaters are on, which means denying service for several hours before, which only really lengthens the peak time.

Alternatively more pumped storage is needed to smooth out the peaks and troughs and rely on industry to play a bigger part (already plays the biggest part).

Just for a laugh, how much would we be willing to be paid to not use a kWh and how much extra would we be willing to pay for a kWh at peak time, let's do it as a percentage rather than a price. Can add in cash values later.
Without thinking too hard about it I would except 140% to not use but only and extra 25% to use at a peak time.