Smart meters (again?)

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kwackers
Posts: 15643
Joined: 4 Jun 2008, 9:29pm
Location: Warrington

Re: Smart meters (again?)

Post by kwackers »

squeaker wrote:Thanks, and for your earlier elucidations. They prodded me to look at Gridwatch again, which led me to their CO2 pageand its interesting table of lifecycle CO2 emissions for different generation methods. The surprisingly high (to me) value for SolarPV then took me to their source (published in 2011) which inherently only used earlier papers, many of which were also secondary sources - you get the picture :roll:

So, back to Ecosia search engine, which threw up this 2020 report, an interesting read in itself. Its lifecycle data seems to come from the International Energy Agency, which seems fairly kosher, although seemingly open to criticism about it's environmental forecasting? The IEA's home page threw up this interesting report about the environmental impact of battery storage with SolarPV, summary slides here. So I still don't know how much the manufacturing efficiency improvements over the last decade have reduced the lifecycle emissions of SolarPV, but I've broadened my mind :lol:

There's a channel on YouTube called "Just Have a Think" - well worth a watch imo.
To my mind at least it's a no nonsense look at various topics without any whitewashing.

I'm pretty sure he covered solar pretty recently (including some of the newer technologies coming up).

It's definitely an issue with a lot of tech (EV, solar, wind) that information just a few years old is seriously out of date.
yakdiver
Posts: 1466
Joined: 12 Jul 2007, 2:54pm
Location: North Baddesley Hampshire

Re: Smart meters (again?)

Post by yakdiver »

Smart meters via the back door, a lot of landlords are locking the meter cupboards under Elf and Safety, so what I have to do is email the housing officer and she reads the meter and then puts a card through your door.
All this can take up to 4-5 days, but your also being told you can all get a smart meter if you like !!!
mercalia
Posts: 14630
Joined: 22 Sep 2013, 10:03pm
Location: london South

Re: Smart meters (again?)

Post by mercalia »

Seems like electricity supply may fluctuate due to lack of wind

Gone with the wind: why electricity shortages are becoming the norm

If it wasn’t miserable enough being told that I ( Ross Clark) have to spend the next month at home, now I have ‘Pete’ from Octopus Energy emailing me and asking if I would mind terribly turning off a few appliances between 4.30pm and 6.30pm. If fact, he says, if I can halve my energy usage during those hours he’ll give me a half price deal on the rest.

Apparently it’s because the National Grid has issued an ‘electricity margin notice’ for those hours – basically a plea for Britain’s remaining coal and gas power stations to turn up the power and squeeze a little more energy out of their plants. That’s not going to be easy, admits Pete, and so electricity companies like his are going to be paying through the nose for the power – ten times as much as normal, he says. Hence the plea for me to switch off the TV, or whatever.


https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/gone-with-the-wind-why-electricity-shortages-are-becoming-the-norm?

any one here had an email from "pete"?
rjb
Posts: 7200
Joined: 11 Jan 2007, 10:25am
Location: Somerset (originally 60/70's Plymouth)

Re: Smart meters (again?)

Post by rjb »

mercalia wrote:Seems like electricity supply may fluctuate due to lack of wind

Gone with the wind: why electricity shortages are becoming the norm

If it wasn’t miserable enough being told that I ( Ross Clark) have to spend the next month at home, now I have ‘Pete’ from Octopus Energy emailing me and asking if I would mind terribly turning off a few appliances between 4.30pm and 6.30pm. If fact, he says, if I can halve my energy usage during those hours he’ll give me a half price deal on the rest.

Apparently it’s because the National Grid has issued an ‘electricity margin notice’ for those hours – basically a plea for Britain’s remaining coal and gas power stations to turn up the power and squeeze a little more energy out of their plants. That’s not going to be easy, admits Pete, and so electricity companies like his are going to be paying through the nose for the power – ten times as much as normal, he says. Hence the plea for me to switch off the TV, or whatever.


https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/gone-with-the-wind-why-electricity-shortages-are-becoming-the-norm?

any one here had an email from "pete"?


I noticed couple of days ago the grid is calling the most expensive generators to be connected to the system. This then sets the generation price. (Note the whosale price is made up of the generation price and the supply price which pays for the infrastructure to get it into your house). These are the open cycle gas turbines whereby the jet exhaust blows onto a fan connected to an alternator. Very quick to connect and load up but rarely needed. We all pay to have these machines sitting idle for 99% of the year, but the alternative is disconnecting customers. Peak load generally occurs at tea time during the winter. Who remembers the winter of discontent during the miners strike of the Thatcher era. The NUM president Arthur Scargill instructed all his miners to switch all their electric kettles on at 6.00 pm in the hope he could crash the national grid by overloading it. :shock:

And i just spotted this on the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528 Looks like we will be running on hot air shortly. :lol:
At the last count:- Peugeot 531 pro, Dawes Discovery Tandem, Dawes Kingpin X3, Raleigh 20 stowaway, 1965 Moulton deluxe, Falcon K2 MTB dropped bar tourer, Rudge Bi frame folder, Longstaff trike conversion on a Giant XTC 840 :D
Jdsk
Posts: 24639
Joined: 5 Mar 2019, 5:42pm

Re: Smart meters (again?)

Post by Jdsk »

If that's a reference to the Electricity Margin Notice for 4 November it's already been cancelled.

rjb wrote:And i just spotted this on the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528 Looks like we will be running on hot air shortly.

The more options for balancing the better. But I'd bet against this one taking off at large scale.

Jonathan
kwackers
Posts: 15643
Joined: 4 Jun 2008, 9:29pm
Location: Warrington

Re: Smart meters (again?)

Post by kwackers »

mercalia wrote:Seems like electricity supply may fluctuate due to lack of wind[/url]

I didn't get a mail but I did see that my lecky price was a solid 35p between 4 & 7.

I simply made sure I didn't use anything that used a lot of power between those times which is exactly how tracked prices are supposed to work.
The lack of wind has also meant fairly high (7p - 9p) prices during the night so we've avoided using the kiln or charging the car.
It's not just negative prices that bring my average price down, it's changing how I use power when it's expensive too.

Prices are a bit more reasonable tonight so the kiln is going on and I predict cheaper rates over the weekend so I'll probably charge the car.

All in all, looks to me like trackers work well.


As for storage I personally think hydrogen will end up playing a big part, partly because you can run turbines/trucks/planes/trains etc on it but mostly because whilst inefficient it's still a good way to store excess energy from renewables using fairly simple infrastructure.
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