Smart meters
22 June 2023 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe Government wants everybody to have a 'smart meter' installed on their electricity supply, claiming that it will save the population vast amounts of money.
We had a smart meter fitted years ago, and it was pretty much useless from that point of view; when we changed supplier it stopped working, and there didn't seem any point in doing anything about it since it wasn't giving any information to speak of. The only thing it showed was that when you used electricity to heat up water, power consumption shot through the roof (boiling a kettle or heating the washing machine water), and since heating things using electricity is basically achieved by massively inefficient transmission (which is why an incandescent bulb, which works by heating the element until it glows, uses so much more power than LED lighting) that was not exactly news. The rest of the time the meter simply showed green all the time -- and since we didn't exactly boil the kettle or run the washing-machine for fun, we didn't reduce those few minutes of 'red' per day/week at all as a result of having the meter. It had literally no effect on our (already low) energy consumption whatsoever, and was a nuisance to have around, constantly getting knocked over and yet another non-recyclable glowing-screen-thingy.
The only way a smart meter is going to save anybody money is if it causes them to make radical changes to their lifestyle; just having the thing present in the house doesn't do so, just as having diet books on the shelf doesn't cause people to lose weight :-p Obviously from the point of view of the energy company itself there is a great deal more advantage, in that it enables all sorts of new charging regimes and doesn't require them to pay anybody to read the meters to keep the customers honest...!
We had a smart meter fitted years ago, and it was pretty much useless from that point of view; when we changed supplier it stopped working, and there didn't seem any point in doing anything about it since it wasn't giving any information to speak of. The only thing it showed was that when you used electricity to heat up water, power consumption shot through the roof (boiling a kettle or heating the washing machine water), and since heating things using electricity is basically achieved by massively inefficient transmission (which is why an incandescent bulb, which works by heating the element until it glows, uses so much more power than LED lighting) that was not exactly news. The rest of the time the meter simply showed green all the time -- and since we didn't exactly boil the kettle or run the washing-machine for fun, we didn't reduce those few minutes of 'red' per day/week at all as a result of having the meter. It had literally no effect on our (already low) energy consumption whatsoever, and was a nuisance to have around, constantly getting knocked over and yet another non-recyclable glowing-screen-thingy.
The only way a smart meter is going to save anybody money is if it causes them to make radical changes to their lifestyle; just having the thing present in the house doesn't do so, just as having diet books on the shelf doesn't cause people to lose weight :-p Obviously from the point of view of the energy company itself there is a great deal more advantage, in that it enables all sorts of new charging regimes and doesn't require them to pay anybody to read the meters to keep the customers honest...!
no subject
Date: 2023-06-24 06:26 am (UTC)Apparently, they do make a difference if they show the data you want and are in a place in the house where they are easy to see.
We bought a little plug meter many years ago, and that had two instant effects. We got rid of a CD player that was using about 30 W when not in use, and an old, inefficient fridge followed not long after.