Smart meter

[Alex_]

May I ask what battery you're using and how it is fairing during this cold weather? Can you fully charge it/them within 6 hours even in freezing conditions?

It's a stack of sigenergy sigenstor 10s. They have a built in heater and sit in an unheated garage on an external wall. The stack was about 10C last night while the internal garage temp was about 0C. Charged from near empty to 100% in 2h 30mins exactly at around 20kw for most of the charge, obviously slows down towards the end. The battery preheats to charge so went from 10C at midnight to 22C by 0130 when the charge started, peaked at 32C at 0200 before steadily dropping down to the current 10C. All very civilised.

 

[Flyfisher]

Thanks for that info. Sounds like a fairly hefty setup and the 3-phase clearly helps.

I've since investigated a bit more (ie read the manual!) and it seems the Solax batteries do have a heating function for protection against cold temperatures and, coincidentally, I noticed that they had started to draw power from the grid outside of their programmed charging time even though they were at 18% SoC. I'm guessing this was the heating function kicking in because it was very cold here today (-8.5c last night) and according to the BBC weather reports, the coldest temperature recorded across the UK last night was -12.5c and only about 10 miles away!

 

[montyjohn]

But, as pointed out above, all things seem to be moving towards electrification with EVs and heat pumps probably being the biggest drivers of this change so perhaps 3-phase will gradually become the norm, even if it takes a decade or two.

I'm thinking of getting three phase.
The DNO is upgrading our transformer in March to support a nearby development, so it will never be cheaper to do than to piggy back it onto that upgrade.

It won't be long (next year maybe) before all new build will have to have three phase. This will trigger some serious network upgrades that will help everyone.

When I spoke to the DNO they said they won't fit new single phase meter boxes anymore, they don't have them in stock. They'll only fit three phase.

 

[Mrs McG]

I can see that this thread has moved on from the original post but it gives me the chance to rant and wail about my recent experience. Woke up one morning recently to find no heating and a boiler error message so, having tried and failed to resolve matters myself I called my plumber who thankfully arrived within a couple of hours.

In very short order he said there was no issue with my boiler and the problem was that my gas meter had cut off my gas supply. HUH?? He couldn’t explain why this happened but said he’d seen it several times. I called EonNext and to be fair they immediately logged it as an emergency call out and said that if an engineer wasn’t with me within 3 hours I would get financial compensation. Small comfort but I appreciated the gesture. He arrived within 90 mins.

So, onto the meat of the matter. The engineer quickly diagnosed the problem which was that the battery inside the gas meter had run out and the system registers this as someone tampering with the supply so it automatically turns it off. Who knew smart meters even had batteries, let alone that this was programmed to happen???

I asked if it was simply a case of replacing the battery and he said sadly not, they were not allowed to do that (even though he knew exactly how to do it) and he would have to replace the whole meter. He also said that EonNext would get the government payment for installing a new smart meter - the cynical among you may draw some conclusions from that statement. I certainly did.

Then salt was added to the wound. My new gas smart meter was SMETS2 but my electric smart meter remained SMETS1 which meant that they wouldn’t talk to each other and EonNext would not be able to draw readings UNTIL my electrics smart meter was upgraded to SMETS 2. Beyond belief!! It took me a couple of weeks of nagging but EonNext did replace it and all is back to normal but HOW, I mean HOW, does it make sense to replace two functioning smart meters all for the sake of a new battery?!?!

Sorry for the long read, but I feel better everytime I retell this

 

[Cubist]

My sympathies but....

Don't you just love how the SMART new technologies are making life easier and cheaper..... for the Pseudo-FS companies that by the way don't actually produce the gas or electricity we consume, to then waste more of our money by securing government cash to pay for the replacement of SMART Meters containing a limited life and un-replaceable battery - in other words all of them?

So that's more E-junk heading to a re-cycling centre or landfill near you (where they can start a fire - which you are also paying for via your rates no doubt.

Some might suggest that it would be easy for the batteries used in such devices to be re-chargeable and a simple link between the gas and electric meters could provide and manage the re-charge cycles of both.... Ah but then that would push up the supply costs for the meters themselves AND introduce an unwanted and unmanageable Fire Risk in our homes.

Seems like a rather DUMB design for a purportedly SMART device - but when politicians and lawyers get involved what more could we possibly expect.

And for a moment there @Mrs McG had me thinking that my thought of government and/or the supply side companies were 'remotely throttling back' the service as I've long suspected they might.

Ho-hum, The Ludlow Luddite

 

[Alex_]

On the other hand in exchange for letting my energy company control my charger I'm paying 7p/kwh for electricity which, given electrical heating/charging has near 100% efficiency, works out cheaper than gas as is, and will be cheaper still per unit of heat once I get the air to air heat pumps installed..

Smart meters allow for precise, near real time billing and at scale that leads to efficiencies in generation and distribution that will bring energy costs down (or at least stop them rising as fast).

 

[Flyfisher]

I'm certainly no Luddite and am a fan of smart meters so it's disappointing to learn that their design appears to be so dumb!

I knew about the SMETS1/2 debacle (where your could change provider but they couldn't 'adopt' your old meter), which was bad enough, but being reliant on a non replaceable battery . . . that's really appalling. Perhaps they figured that gas would be phased out within the 10-15 year life of the meter battery?

 

[fernicarry]

leads to efficiencies in generation and distribution that will bring energy costs down

I don't think we have ever needed smart meters to determine how much to generate. They report 30 minutes in arrears anyway. What smart meters enable is real time pricing to the end consumer. Its not there yet but its undoubtedly coming as margins get tighter. Want to boil the kettle for a cup of tea when you get home from work, that'll be 5 quid please...

Smart meters really aren't that smart. The just collect usage on 30 minute intervals. They should be the hub that coordinates all of the energy dense appliances in the home, but to my knowledge they have no functionality to support that. Instead you get Octopus in cahoots with various manufacturers building back channels into their own infrastructure and thereby locking in customers. You want our cheap EV charging rate? Then you must have this brand of charger fitted by an approved installer. That sort of malarky is anathema to many of us on here.

Then you have further stupidity in the form of the proposed EV mileage levy. The correct and fair way to do this is for the smart meter to be in the loop and register the usage of the EV charger as a separate line item with its own tariff rate. Octopus (other energy providers are available) then collect the levy based on actual usage on behalf of HMG instead of this one size fits all 3p or 1.5p per mile policy. If you own a behemoth of a thing then you pay more. If your plug-in spends more time on petrol than on leccy because of your pattern of usage or because its 10 years old and its battery is shot then you pay the actual amount instead of paying twice.

Its not like no one could possibly have predicted that this sort of thing would be necessary. Absolute lack of imagination and ambition on the part of the powers that be and we're all contributing to the billions that the industry has blown on the smart meter roll out.

 

[fernicarry]

they said they won't fit new single phase meter boxes anymore, they don't have them in stock

The DNO don't supply the meter box, the builder/homeowner does. They give you a specification which for 3 phase is about half an acre for their equipment. When I was getting a quote to move my 3ph cable head I pointed out that it was all currently fitted onto a board about 20cm wide by 40cm tall and they eventually did agree to honour that amount of space in the new location. So far I haven't needed to take up the quote as the board itself has proven to be quite mobile...

 

[fernicarry]

the problem was that my gas meter had cut off my gas supply

Used to happen from time to time when we lived in Japan. The gas meters are designed to cut off if there is an earthquake but sometimes they could be a little too sensitive.