Smart meters and Loop Energy
The subject of smart meters is one that
we might cover in the future but in the meantime, let me share my own recent
experience.
Since I switched supplier just over year
ago, my smart meter itself continued to send readings to EON every half
hour but the monitor inside the house failed so I now have no access to any measure
of my instantaneous gas or electricity consumption. However, there is an app called Loop
which can be downloaded to a tablet or smartphone from e.g the Android Playstore
and which can access the national database of household electricity use.
After downloading, you need to provide
Loop with email and home addresses together with a four digit code obtained
from the Settings menu of your monitor (which will still display even
though there is no network connection as in my case) so you cannot monitor your
next door neighbour.
Loop will display graphs of your gas and
electricity use (kWh) and costs at half-hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or
yearly intervals. The data is updated at 3-hour intervals so, again, does
not provide instantaneous readings. The Loop data is available in the home of
course but also from anywhere you have internet access and might be similar to
the energy suppliers’ own apps.
By examining how your use changes with time of day and day of the week etc some valuable information can be obtained on the relative importance of heating, lighting and hot water. As a guide, an average household consumes on average 400W of electricity. My overnight electricity use is 100W which is accounted for by a fridge and freezer and electronics on standby. As for gas, here is an example of two days use in January. In the evening of the second day (in green) I turned off the central heating and turned on a gas fire to heat just one room. There was a not unimpressive 70% reduction.
Demand Flexibility Service - at last a use for smart meters
National Grid are supporting several Demand Flexibility Services with Octopus,
British Gas, EDF and E.ON this Winter for households with smart meters. Provided you reduce your usage by at least
40% of your baseline (your normal usage for the same period), your supplier
will pay you for every kWh saved. The aim is to reduce
electricity use in the evening and avoid massive spikes in its price.
The Scheme was triggered for the first time between 4.30pm and 6pm on Monday
last week with 400,000 eligible customers being paid £2.50 for
reducing usage by an average of 60% - this compares with the 30p that you normally pay your supplier. More
energy was saved on Tuesday, when the payment was larger than on Monday.
Nationwide, the total amount of energy saved was about 250 megawatt
hours (a single generating unit at Ratcliffe Power Station operating for half an hour) and it surprising that such a small reduction can trigger
such large payments. This is due to the extreme volatility of electricity prices (see below), a consequence of trying to control an essentially technical system using commercial means.
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Volatile wholesale electricity prices; £500 per megawatt hour equates to 50p per kWh |