Smart meters

[Yellow Fang]

My new smart meter arrived yesterday
I've set it up this afternoon. It's jolly interesting. Much of the time my electricity use is kicking around 50W, but I put the cooker on and it shot up to 2kW. The kettle took about 3kW. I was a bit surprised my fridge freezer uses so little electricity, but a bit shocked about the kettle. At some point I'm going to get a pencil and paper and jot down how much each appliance uses. At the end of a month or so, I'll download its data to my PC and have a look at it. Then no doubt I'll get bored with it and lend it to a friend.

 

[Crankarm]

TBH you can do this already with the present meters and the consumption rating of each appliance. If you have a 2 KW heater, this going to use errr.... 2kW in an hour? So just work out what running it for an hour will cost you, simples.

I think the Government and energy industry requiring everyone to have a Smart meter in the next few years is a load of b0ll0cks. They shouldn't be called Smart but Thick meters, meters for thick people, who never bother to read their meter or provide it to their energy supplier and get upset when they get huge bills from estimated readings. For the already frugal users like me it will just be another opportunity for energy suppliers to raise their tariffs to compensate for the loss in income due to our lower consumption of energy. You won't end up saving any money with Smart meters, we'll all be worse off, I guarantee you .

 

[ASC1951]

They shouldn't be called Smart but Thick meters, meters for thick people, who never bother to read their meter or provide it to their energy supplier and get upset when they get huge bills from estimated readings.

In a former existence I occasionally used to turn out in the Magistrates Court to defend the hardened criminals of South Yorkshire.

One bloke bought a device for £20 from a man in a pub, who claimed he could wind back his electricity meter and save himself a fortune. It worked, alright - he wound his back well beyond the figure that the YEB man had come and written down in his book three months earlier. Which he been billed for and paid.

"Do you have anything to say on your client's behalf, ASC?"
"Er, no, your Worships. I think you can draw your own conclusion."

 

[Yellow Fang]

The dials on my electricity meter move rather too slowly to check how much electricity my appliances are using. It's not as if I'm going to switch on my kettle, then go outside my front door to check the electricity meter in the cupboard in the hall and time how long it takes for a dial to turn round a notch. Most appliances don't have power ratings on them; at least I've never noticed them. I've already been surprised several times. I had a light fitting in my kitchen which takes four 40W spot bulbs. I replaced them with halogen bulbs a couple of years ago and I've just found out they only use 18W between them. How about that? My electric immersion heater OTOH uses 3kW! Then there are appliances like kettles which take a lot of energy but for only short periods. It will be interesting to see exactly how much energy it would use over a month. Without a smart meter, you would have to note how often you used the kettle and how much water you boiled each time. For me, it's not a question of saving money, but energy.

 

[on the road]

Smart meters are for the benefit of the power companies.

 

[Globalti]

..... go on? Would that be to remove the need for costly meter readers legging it around every house and business in the land?

 

[Garz]

Smart meters are for the benefit of the power companies.

.. and to highlight the consumers usage

The device (the OP has) is more than likely a display unit and not technically a smart meter. It's job is to not be amazingly accurate but to just show what is being used and to aid trimming down the waste consumption.

The chief benefit as maybe OtR was implying was the bills are accurate and can be generated quickly.

 

[marinyork]

I have a smart reader. They aren't too bad accuracy wise. Anyway a kettle isn't too surprising that it uses a lot as you can work out how crudely much energy it would take to warm water from say 10C to 100C quite easily. That you want it done quickly makes it worse. The specific heat capacity is about over 4000 Joules per kg so warming a rather larger quantity like a litre of water would need something like 400 kJ going into the water. 1 J = 1W.s

3000 Watt kettle x 120 seconds = 360kJ. Of course you have plenty of other things to take into account like efficiency and the kettle will usually keep a bit of the heat but you get a ball park figure.

 

[Night Train]

DP

 

[Night Train]

I got one of those gadgets and I used it to check the more awkward appliances to check on. The fridge freezer over 24 hours, the washing machine and the tumble dryer.
It is also useful for checking the electricity consumption of my workshop while working on a job as I can clip it on the workshop's CCU.

Real 'smart meters' are the ones that monitor consumption and transmit data and readings to the suppler to save having meter readers. They are also able to change the tariff at different times of day to reflect cost against supply and demand. That is the thing the Government wants to impliment. The tariff will go up during the ad breaks of TV soaps when the kettle goes on, during major televised sporting events and when the Sunday dinner is put on. You are then supposed to monitor the tariff and decide not to boil the kettle or cook dinner when demand is high and the tarriff is high!

 

[Crankarm]

I got one of those gadgets and I used it to check the more awkward appliances to check on. The fridge freezer over 24 hours, the washing machine and the tumble dryer.
It is also useful for checking the electricity consumption of my workshop while working on a job as I can clip it on the workshop's CCU.

Real 'smart meters' are the ones that monitor consumption and transmit data and readings to the suppler to save having meter readers. They are also able to change the tariff at different times of day to reflect cost against supply and demand. That is the thing the Government wants to impliment. The tariff will go up during the ad breaks of TV soaps when the kettle goes on, during major televised sporting events and when the Sunday dinner is put on. You are then supposed to monitor the tariff and decide not to boil the kettle or cook dinner when demand is high and the tarriff is high!

Or they observe when your consumption of energy is highest and charge you the most expensive tarif .

 

[hackbike 666]

I knew the kettle uses 3000 watss.I just wonder how many watts I took yesterday when I got a shock off of one of the lamps I was fiddling about with.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Real 'smart meters' are the ones that monitor consumption and transmit data and readings to the suppler to save having meter readers. They are also able to change the tariff at different times of day to reflect cost against supply and demand. That is the thing the Government wants to impliment. The tariff will go up during the ad breaks of TV soaps when the kettle goes on, during major televised sporting events and when the Sunday dinner is put on. You are then supposed to monitor the tariff and decide not to boil the kettle or cook dinner when demand is high and the tarriff is high!

There was also the idea that the utilities could switch off some electrical appliances for a short while during electrical peaks, such as freezers and washing machines. This would mean they would not need so much spinning reserve. The only thing is freezers don't appear to use much electricity.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Amazingly, my DAB radio seems to use negative power. When I switched it off, the meter reading jumped up 3W. I suppose that explains why wind-up radios are viable. The kettle OTOH uses 3kW. I've been pondering on the feasibility of a pedal powered kettle, but I'd be hard pressed to generate a tenth of that. It would take about ten-fifteen minutes hard cycling to raise a mug's worth of water to a temperature sufficient to make a decent cup of tea. I seem to recall seeing a cycle powered kettle at the cycle show one year. Apart from safety issues, I can see why they haven't caught on.