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Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
http://www.x404.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=13191		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  Amnesia10 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... old-saving

Quote:
Smart meters, which monitor energy use in real-time, will save households £7.3bn over the next two decades, the government said on Wednesday as it set out its strategy for the roll-out of the energy-saving technology.

The roll-out – the most comprehensive yet planned in any country – will require 53m smart meters to be installed in 30m homes and businesses, starting in 2014 and finishing in 2019. Households are likely to save £23 on their annual energy bills by 2020, the government has estimated, up from its previous estimate of £14 in savings.

But these figures were disputed by the consumer group Which? and by smart metering industry experts.

Jessica Driscoll, senior advocate at Which?, said: "It's too difficult to say that people will save a certain amount of money. The savings depend on people making changes to the way they use energy, and that is very hard to do. Smart meters are just one way of helping people make those changes."

She said Which? had not yet made an estimates of the cost or savings from the technology because there was not yet enough information to make a reliable estimate.
Author:  HeatherKay [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
£23 eh? Why that's nearly enough to half-fill my car's tank with fuel.

An alternative view is smart meters are convenient spies in the home, letting the authorities learn more about what people get up to in the privacy of their own property.
Author:  Amnesia10 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
HeatherKay wrote:
£23 eh? Why that's nearly enough to half-fill my car's tank with fuel.

An alternative view is smart meters are convenient spies in the home, letting the authorities learn more about what people get up to in the privacy of their own property.

The savings are not enough to rapidly encourage uptake of them.
Author:  tombolt [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
Woohoo, good news for my client who manufactures them!
Author:  forquare1 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
Excellent, that'll pay for just under half a month's electricity usage (I have no gas, only electric)
Author:  cloaked_wolf [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
HeatherKay wrote:
An alternative view is smart meters are convenient spies in the home, letting the authorities learn more about what people get up to in the privacy of their own property.

+1. In future, they'd probably enforce usage limits or something.
Author:  adidan [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
B0ll0cks. If you're not using something you switch it off, don't need a meter to tell me that.

How much they wasting on that then?
Author:  Linux_User [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
I heard that these smart meters allow National Grid/power companies to switch off appliances in your home remotely, to reduce demand. Can anyone verify?
Author:  rustybucket [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
Don't these smart meters use power? If they only use 1W each and we install 50 million of them, that's an extra 50MW to reduce electricity consumption.

Just sayin'
Author:  JJW009 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
rustybucket wrote:
Don't these smart meters use power? If they only use 1W each and we install 50 million of them, that's an extra 50MW to reduce electricity consumption.

Just sayin'

They possibly use less than the electro-mechanical ones.

More importantly, you won't need hundreds of meter-reading vans driving around using diesel.

The last paragraph interested me:

Quote:
Charles Hendry, energy minister, said: "Smart meters will enable us to modernise the electricity system over the coming years and create the smart grids we will need to bring new low carbon energy sources online, and handle much higher demand for electricity as we progressively electrify transport and heating."

Until we get the majority of our power stations running on renewables rather than fossils, the last thing we want is to change from burning the fuel locally to transmitting it all over power lines. There's a very good reason for gas being a fraction the price of electric, and that's efficiency. There's also no reason that gas can't be produced from "green" sources.
Author:  forquare1 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
I'm sure there were rumblings in Sun about trying to use Sun SPOTS to do this kind of thing, but the project seemed to fizzle out before I left.

JJW009 wrote:
There's also no reason that gas can't be produced from "green" sources.


Grow beans in big green house, get people to wander around and eat loads of them, collect the resulting outbursts somehow?

:wink:
Author:  finlay666 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
Linux_User wrote:
I heard that these smart meters allow National Grid/power companies to switch off appliances in your home remotely, to reduce demand. Can anyone verify?

Not the rollout ones, they just transmit data back, they use a negligible amount of power, simply send off a reading certain points in a day which can be used to calculate bills, it's not even more advanced than a wireless thermostat you can put in a room in your house to control the heating. *

You can get other devices that let you turn things off remotely, Eon do one and so do NPower I think

* Just finishing off a project at work that is will have a second stage of all rental properties on the system being fitted and reporting back with these
Author:  JJW009 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
forquare1 wrote:
JJW009 wrote:
There's also no reason that gas can't be produced from "green" sources.


Grow beans in big green house, get people to wander around and eat loads of them, collect the resulting outbursts somehow?

:wink:

I think I produce several units a day. I know a few people who would be grateful if I could collect it and take it home with me, rather than causing greenhouse pollution in the office :oops:
Author:  Amnesia10 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
Linux_User wrote:
I heard that these smart meters allow National Grid/power companies to switch off appliances in your home remotely, to reduce demand. Can anyone verify?

Yes but only low priority items like fridges and freezers, possibly hot water tanks etc.
Author:  Linux_User [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Smart meters predicted to save households £23 a year by 2020
Amnesia10 wrote:
Linux_User wrote:
I heard that these smart meters allow National Grid/power companies to switch off appliances in your home remotely, to reduce demand. Can anyone verify?

Yes but only low priority items like fridges and freezers, possibly hot water tanks etc.

TBH I think I will decide the priority of my appliances. I don't like what this represents, TBH.
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