Anyone know how much energy smart meters consume? and the displays?

France ,like every other nuclear country in the world doesnt yet have a solution for dealing with its nuclear waste. So they are storing it deep under ground. Thankfully it has stopped throwing it into the sea off of Brittany which it was doing until a few years back. There are lots of highly radioactive barrels sitting on the sea bed in the english channel, waiting to rot into a nuclear environmental disaster

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26425674

Posted By: Ed DaviesSteamy, what's wrong with my arithmetic then?

Nothing, but is it average load or average peak load for an average house? I would think that average peak is higher (but then I am all electric so it is often higher)
A friend of mine was asked to look at some substation data to see if they could flatten the peak, re recommended that they fit gas cookers. Was not the solution they wanted to hear as they fancied a battery bank, inverters and spending lots more than necessary. All the housing had gas to the street but not connected to the housing as it was social housing built on the cheap.

Posted By: SteamyTeaNothing, but is it average load or average peak load for an average house?

Isn't it the average load for an average house over the whole peak period, say from about 17:00 to 20:00? Different houses will peak for half an hour or so at different times in that period. Reducing the size of individual peaks by delaying water or space heating a bit won't make much difference to the national peak.

Persuading people not to use, e.g., their immersions at all during the whole evening might help a bit - just limiting them to 3 or 6 kW so they have to switch it off while cooking won't make much odds.

You can get one of these:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/household-bills/11196763/250-energy-saving-from-new-black-box.html

Posted By: SteamyTeaYou can get one of these:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/household-bills/11196763/250-energy-saving-from-new-black-box.html" >http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/household-bills/11196763/250-energy-saving-from-new-black-box.html

This is interesting because it appears to avoid the execrable practice of retail spot pricing, i.e. utilities charging consumers what they like, when they like.

I am not the only person to loathe spot pricing. 'Citizens Advice warned that some of the lifestyle adaptations needed to make the most of variable electricity costs could be “extreme”, such as ironing at night'

Marriages have ended, over less

I used to get a discount for using less than I did the year before. It worked well for me.

Trouble is that most people don't understand or even care enough about the finer details of a bill, and the power companies have been asked to simplify them anyway.

Demand shedding really has to be centralised, or at least not in the hands of consumers. Be a bit like having a private road with no rules, would not take long till a crash happens. What the bumper cars at a fairground are all about.

Is the UK a net imported of energy from France via the interconnect? Wikipedia says "As of 2005 imports of electricity from France have historically accounted for about 5% of electricity available in the UK"

If French Nuclear plants are likely to be decommissioned is that yet another energy source that the UK needs to replace?

The big thing that is always talked about is turning fridges and freezers on and off. I have not seen any research that shows when a fridge is actually on or off. You don't save anything by trying to turn a switched off freezer.
Washing machines are a problem, most would have to be replaced because they reset to zero or error if they are powered down during a cycle. Then you may have to reheat the water in them anyway. So probably not that great at saving either energy or money.

When I look around my house I try and think what can be delayed, my hot water can (I actually do this already myself). My Storage heating can, and they could be a lot 'smarter' if they could predict the next days temperature and windspeed (not that hard).
But if you shift too many water and storage heaters to take advantage of lower emissions or lower price, you just create a new peak somewhere else. This sort of system only works well when there is a small uptake (probably 20 to 30% but not worked it out).

Turning off one switched off freezer may not make a difference but turning off hundreds of thousands during the peak period will as some would have run some of the time.

Industrial freezers would be OK switched off regularly during the peak period if rules would allow.

Smart meters dont do this but the web could very easily do this, indeed one day we may well see it doing it.

Dead before they started in my book, so called smart meters are not smart the way we need them to be smart.

In France most peoples including my hot water is electric immersion heating run during the night, which is a no brainer and already happening without smart meters.

Night storage heating is tricky. For example today its 21 degrees, tomorrow it could be colder. The weather forecast is not accurate enough to know if we will really need the heating to be charged during th enight for the next day. They might forecast 19 deg but it turns out to be 16 and we needed the heating, or they forcast 16 deg and it turns out to be 19 in which case its wasted energy and money.

Smart meters dont answer the problem of why we have peak load in the first place! We all tend to do the same things at the same time.

Firstly some of the peaks are only a few minutes long from people putting the kettle on when TV programs end etc – this can be covered just be delaying for a few minutes when a freezer or fridge turns on their compressor. (E.g. change the target temperature from -18 to -16 for a short time.)

A lot of power stations also take minutes to start up, but are left running producing no output at present, as the grid needs a response in seconds.

Then you need new washing machine and dishwashers, when you set the time you wish the washing to be finished and let the machine decide the best time to do each stage of the wash. It could do its first cold rinse as soon as it is set to check everything is OK.

The BIG opening for a lot of this is electric cars, when you get home with power left in the car, this could be used to reduce your peak usage, then recharged by the time you wish to go out again. You would have to tell your car when you wished to use it.

As to shifting too much, that’s way you need the pricing system to respond to what the demand is, if more people start shifting their usage, then the reward for doing so will just reduce hence it is unlikely to overshoot.

We don’t need the smart meter to be able to control all the above, we just need them to be able to measure what is going on, so we can reward people for using other systems to control the above.

For example I often cook a roast in a weekday evening, put it would not take match for me to switch it to the weekend I am also just about to put the washing machine on.

I think Britain and France are 'special cases' when it comes to load balancing.

Britain is basically isolated from mainland Europe electrically, we have a little (3GW) interconnect with Europe and a tiny one with Ireland/NI (1GW).

France has overcapacity of nuclear but can export and import from Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, as well as the UK. There are probably interconnects between other countries i.e. Netherland and Germany, Belgium. Denmark and Germany, Germany and Sweden, I think you get the idea.

So we have more incentive to balance our grid more effectively (probably why our grid is very stable and reliable).
We also do not need the large investment in a DC network yet as we do not have to transport out power too far (there are physical limits to keeping the frequency right on a very large geographic network). We may need a DC network in the future if we go down the distributed generation route.

There are also other technologies that can be used for generation electricity, some are old but underused in the UK (geothermal, MSW and LFG) and others are not politically acceptable (tidal barrage), others are in their infancy (tidal stream, dry hot rocks).

There is also the opportunity to have very small and short lived storage attached to the grid (flywheels, batteries) that we spoke about here:
http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/forum114/comments.php?DiscussionID=8229&page=1

It is not all about turning things off.

The first thing we need to do though is reduce usage, then the problems becomes smaller

As for hot spinning reserve, it may seem like a waste, but it is not using anything like the fuel that even partial generation needs. It is just one of the necessary tools in the tool box.

Posted By: bot de pailleFor all those wind farms sitting idles a lot of the time there needs to be another solution.

Thing about windfarms is that the output is very predictable, generally 2 or 3 days in advance they know within 10% what they will do. 2 Hours in advance and it is probably about 1%.
Now France may have a problem exporting 5% excess capacity with 2 hours notice, but Britain does not, it just turns on the E7/10 and that soaks it up.

The other thing about turning a windfarm off is that you are fine tuning almost at the 100 kW level, which may be what is needed. It may also be cheaper to do this, and in some circumstances even lower pollution levels.
I don't think that our National Grid controllers get caught out but a bit of a gusty day or a few puffy clouds. Why central control is needed.
If you go to the BMRS website you can see the wind and temperature data they use:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/additional/soapserver.php

Posted By: bot de pailleIm not sure what you mean Ed. My point is that to level out peak loads you need to use some form of storage.

Right, but in a grid with a lot of renewables the problem is not levelling out peak loads - it's matching loads to generation when it's available.